Improved dropout management

In version 2019.09 we introduced Dropout Analytics to allow diagnosing and resolving common causes of audio dropouts. While dropout messages may be useful to diagnose the cause of problems, they can be intrusive to workflow when small audio interruptions are inconsequential, such as when editing projects, loading and saving sessions, etc.

Cakewalk now manages dropouts more intelligently by masking certain categories of dropout notifications when they are less important. The following dropout codes are considered maskable since they are caused by CPU load issues, while other dropouts are caused by system events that cannot be resumed from easily:

Dropout code 1: Audio processing took longer than the buffers allotted time slice.

Dropout code 3: Driver did not request audio buffers for over DropoutMsec milliseconds. Possible driver overload.

Dropouts are masked in the following scenarios:

The application is idling (transport is not running)

Performing various editing operations

Performing real time bounce/export/freeze (rendered data will be free of glitches even if the audio playback contains glitches, as long as you are not rendering external hardware inserts)

Playing back using the Play List view

Opening and closing views

Opening and closing documents

Operating screen sets

Mix Recall

Handling dropouts during playback and recording

Under normal conditions, Cakewalk always stops playback or recording if too many late buffers are encountered while playing. However there may be circumstances where a dropout that stops playback is disruptive, such as when doing an unattended recording or playing back in a live scenario.

To handle these cases, a new MaskDropoutDetection option in Edit > Preferences > Audio - Configuration File can be used to suppress dropouts.

Setting this value to True will activate dropout masking during playback and recording.

When activated, Cakewalk will continue playback and recording after it encounters a maskable dropout. This can prevent unwanted interruption of playback or a lost take while recording.

 

Note:   4 If the dropouts are extreme, recorded audio may contain glitches. Please follow the normal dropout diagnosis procedure for minimizing dropouts. 4 The Play List view will always ignore dropouts irrespective of this setting. 4 Only CPU load related dropouts are masked. Other dropouts such as driver requested stops or disk underruns will still cause playback to stop.

 

See:

Dropouts and other audio problems

New features