Stuttering Cakewalk

  • Thread starter Thread starter Daver
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Daver

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When recording in Cakewalk, I get stuttering or skipping when I've got more than say three tracks. Can sometimes happen with less. This usually happens when the cursor over the waveform window gets to the end and "wraps around" and the wave form is redrawn. Turning down the video acceleration has helped some. Any ideas? Can I give you more information? Thanks!
 
what are your computers specifications?

ten bucks says your running an amd of cyrix processor...

- eddie -
 
As well as yout computer specs, what version of CW?
They fixed the wraparound skip in ver 6.
 
The audio configuration settings can make a HUGE difference too. There too many things that can hamper your performance... we need more info.
 
Thanks! I'm running a Gateway with 450MHZ pentium III, 192MB memory, 5400rpm 13.2 Gig HD,16MB NVIDIA TNT AGP graphics accelerator. I'm using Cakewalk Audio Pro 9.0 with the latest 9.03 drivers. I've got a Gadget Labs Wave 424 sound card as well as the stock Sound Blaster Audio PCI 64D. I've gotten updated drivers for everything. I've let Cakewalk profile the sound card and tried settings suggested by Gadget Labs. There don't appear to be any IRQ conflicts. Any other ideas? Any other info I can give? Thanks alot for the help and interest!
 
Are you running any real-time effects when the stuttering occurs, or just 4 or 5 "dry" tracks? If you are running effects, which ones and how many?

The meters are FAR from being accurate, but what are the readings for CPU and Disk usage (roughly) when you start stuttering?

Also, some info from your audio options in Cakewalk would be useful:

General tab:
* How many "buffers in playback queue"?
* Where is the slider for "Buffer size" set?

Advanced tab:
* What's the "I/O buffer size" set to?
-- You might try 192, 256, or even 512 as an experiment.
 
I've got one stereo track that's a backing band with no effects and four guitar tracks with a little delay on them. The buffers in playback queue are set to 8 (have tried 4), buffer size slider is currently set all the way to safe. It started out at 87 to 92 msec. I/O buffer is already at 512. The meters read CPU 13 to 15%, Disk 5%. Thanks again for the help!
 
You're not pushing your system hard and your settings are exactly what I use when I'm trying to squeeze "just one more EQ" out of an already bogged down project. I'd suspect a conflict or a defective card. You might try moving the card to a different slot, if you have one free (I know, it's a pain). If that fails, try a minimal hardware setup with just your Gadget card and the video card. If that works, install one other card at a time until the problem starts and you'll know which one was the culprit.

One other thought is that there was a known stuttering problem in the past for some users of the 8/24 cards and Cakewalk. These were supposed to be resolved with the latest Gadget Labs drivers and the latest version of Cakewalk. I've only seen two reports of lingering problems since the driver updates... well, possibly three :(.
 
pglewis,
Thanks! I'll give the card swap-arama a try. Would reinstalling Cakewalk be a good idea? I'm also considering going with Vegas Pro instead of Cakewalk. The Gadget Labs guys consider it to be less fussy than Cakewalk. Any input on that one? I'll report back on the card thing. Thanks again.
 
I don't know about reinstalling Cakewalk. If you DO go that route, make sure you backup any audio data you have before you do ;).

I have Vegas, but I haven't used it much over the past couple of months. Cakewalk's latency is much lower on my system for a moderate CPU load. Vegas _is_ very easy to use, it's a lot more intuitive than Cakewalk. My biggest usage gripe with Vegas is that resizing track panes is rather clunky and slow. Once I get more than 4 or 5 tracks, I ended up resizing a LOT because of Vegas' layout.

The real issue with Vegas is that a lot of people have been questioning Sonic Foundary's commitment to us audio folks. SF has some heavy hitters investing $$$$$ in the video side of the business. Not surprisingly, audio hasn't been as much of a priority since. I absolutely LOVE Sound Forge. It's fairly easy to learn, and it's about the only app I've found that gets zooming right! But Sound Forge is aging quickly. It doesn't support 24-bit audio, and I haven't heard of any plans to fix that.

If I felt confident that Sonic Foundary would keep their stuff up to date as the tech end of audio keeps moving, I'd suggest Vegas in a heartbeat. But I don't have that confidence right now, so caveat emptor.
 
I was wondering about a couple of things:

1) Does your CPU meter suddenly drop to 0% when the stuttering starts?

2) After the stutter: if you stop playback, goto the audio options screen, and just click 'Ok' without making changes, does the stuttering cease for a while?
 
pglewis,
When the stuttering happens, the CPU % stays the same until it's almost done stuttering. At that point, it goes up to 23% to 36% for an instant. Clicking OK in the Audio Options with no changes doesn't appear to have any affect. Could this be a video/video card problem? It only seems to happen when it has to redraw the waveform window. When it stutters, this redraw happens very slowly. Again, thank you very much for the help.
 
Ahhh... yours actually STOPS stuttering on it's own. Some of us (including me) are having a different stuttering problem as I mentioned above and in the Computers/Soundcard forum.

I would try taking the graphics acceleration down to about 25% while working with audio. That fixes things for a lot of folks. The card swaparama is the next thing to try... try the system with JUST your 4/24 and a video card, if the graphics acceleration doesn't fix things.

Another thought is that Cakewalk obviously has to do some extra work whenever it has to re-draw the screen. If you can zoom out so the whole wave fits on the screen, you might be able to work around it if you can't outright "fix" it.

Due to my stuttering issue, I may dust off Vegas after finishing up a few things I'm working on. I'll let ya know how it works for me when I dig my heels in.
 
I just had the stuttering cakewalk from my gadgetlabs 4/24. i went into bios and changed settings, moved the card to another slot, reinstalled my system & cakewalk, used the most current drivers -- pretty much everything i could possibly do. it still gave me that "helicoper" sounds (as refered to in the Gadget Labs manual).

SOLUTION:
bought a different card that worked.

with my current studio setup, i just need my pc to have ADAT connections. i dont really need anything else so i purchased the ADAT-EDIT By Alesis. it works like a charm and my studio was up and running again!! whoo hoo..!!
 
Mine doesn't do the helicopter thing. It just kind of skips and then keeps on going. I've already tried lowering the graphics acceleration. I tried making the wave form window fill the whole screen. It works right now. I can't call it fixed yet because it's worked before for a little while and then goes back to the stutter. Still haven't done the card swap. Been too busy. I'll report back on if the current changes hold or not. Thanks!
 
mbazini: I love my Gadget too much to give it up that easily ;). I'm a lot more willing to change software than my card.

Daver: Glad to hear it's behaving right now. I tried Vegas again and remembered why I opted to keep working in Cakewalk in the first place: You can't use standard DirectX effects as track effects in Vegas. I tried to work around it by routing things to busses and/or assignable effects, but it was cumbersome that way and the performance blew chunks. 6 hours later I was back to mixing in Cakewalk... occasional stutter and all :(.
 
I LOOVVEEDD the 8/24 but returned it for the 4/24 & ADAT option (for budgetary reasons). The 4/24 gave me the problem -- and spending over $400 for the whole package, it should work flawlessly without me having to fight it (going into bios, etc).

I simply needed the ADAT option so I got the ADAT EDIT -- worked without a fuss! Now, my studio is fully operational and was able to get my sessions going this past weekend. yeehaww!!
 
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