Misc enhancements

Automatic activation refresh

In order to automatically keep your activation status up to date, Cakewalk will renew your activation status whenever a new version of the application is installed and run for the first time, and when you sign in to BandLab from within Cakewalk. If you have never signed in to BandLab from within Cakewalk, you will be prompted once to sign in.

You will see a “Cakewalk activation has been refreshed” message on starting the application for the first time. If you were not signed in to BandLab, you will be prompted to sign in, after which it will auto renew the activation status. Note that you must have an active internet connection for the automatic renewal process to work.

As long as you stay logged in to BandLab within Cakewalk, and use Cakewalk occasionally, it will automatically stay activated with no further user intervention required.

 

See:

Activating Cakewalk

Plug-in menu improvements

Plug-in menus have been greatly enhanced to make it easier and faster to find and select plug-ins:

Plug-in menus show color coded plug-in types (DX/VST2/VST3/32 bit)

Large plug-in menus can now show over 1,000 plug-ins

Multiple columns appear when applicable

Clearer fonts

Supports mouse wheel scrolling

Supports keyboard navigation:

HOME / END

PAGE UP / PAGE DOWN

Press any alpha-numeric key to go to the first plug-in beginning with that character; press the same character again to go to the next plug-in, etc.

 

See:

How to use real-time effects

Improved automation envelope UI

The appearance of automation envelopes has been updated:

Automation envelopes are slightly thinner

Nodes are smaller and no longer have a gradient

Selected nodes are larger and outlined

Ghosted envelopes no longer show nodes

 

See:

Automation

Show values on automation envelopes

You can now optionally show values on envelopes.

To show/hide values on automation envelopes, click the Track view View menu and select Display > Show Values on Envelopes.

Waveform outlines

You can now optionally show waveform outlines in the Clips pane.

To show/hide waveform outlines, click the Track view View menu and select Display > Show Waveform Outlines.

Track Manager preset support

The Track Manager dialog box now has support for per-project presets.

This is useful if you have a large project and you want to hide all other tracks apart from a certain group of tracks. For example, on a rock project you could have a “Drums only” or “Guitars” preset; on an orchestral project, you may wish to have a “Strings Section” preset that hides all tracks apart from your strings tracks.

To open the Track Manager, click the Track view Tracks menu and select Track Manager or press the H key.

 

Note: Tracks within the Tracks Manager presets are “opted-out” - i.e. it remembers which tracks you want to hide, rather than which tracks you want to show (to avoid not being able to see newly created tracks).

 

See:

To choose the tracks that are displayed using the Track Manager

Track Manager dialog

Configuring the Console and Track views

UI theme compatibility checker

When you select a theme in Edit > Preferences > Customization - Themes, or launch Cakewalk with an old custom user theme active, Cakewalk checks to make sure the custom theme is compatible with the current version of Cakewalk.

A user theme is considered incompatible if Cakewalk contains new or resized UI elements that have not been updated in the theme.

If the selected theme needs to be updated, Cakewalk will show a Custom Theme Incompatibility warning, and ask if you want to continue to use the theme:

If you click Yes, some UI elements might be corrupted until the theme is updated and resaved in Theme Editor.

If you click No, Cakewalk will revert to the factory Mercury theme.

 

See:

UI themes

Cakewalk Theme Editor

Customization - Themes

Improved plug-in exception handling / crash reporting

 

Note: Plug-in crashes should always be first reported to the manufacturer's support channels to allow them to diagnose these issues.

There are several improvements to error reporting to help diagnose plug-in or application crashes:

Cakewalk now distinguishes between plug-in and application crashes and will list the plug-in name where available in the crash dialog.

For easier reporting, the crash dump file when generated is now displayed as a hyperlink allowing you to click to open the location of the file.

The application also intercepts and reports errors that would previously result in the application silently shutting down. You will now get a dump file where possible and the ability to save your current work in these scenarios.

Additionally, when applicable, the crash dialog allows you to continue after a crash. Please note that the behavior after resuming is not guaranteed and is provided as a last resort to access project information when a crash occurs. It should only be used in cases where the crash is known to be continuable.

To specify the error detection sensitivity, add the following variable in Cakewalk.ini (Edit > Preferences > File - Initialization File):

ExceptionHandlingSeverity=<value>

Valid values for this setting are:

1 = Unhandled errors are caught (default)

3 = All access violations are detected and unhandled exceptions are caught

5 = Unhandled errors and heap corruption is detected

7 = Unhandled errors, all access violations and heap corruption errors are caught (this is the strictest error detection mode)

As of 2021.01 Update 1, we have dialed back the default error sensitivity to 1, since a few plug-ins were preventing projects from loading. The sensitivity value defaults to 1 but can changed to 7 make it catch even more plug-in errors.

To revert to the default value, delete the ExceptionHandlingSeverity variable.

 

See:

Initialization files

Cakewalk.ini

Disable Arranger Preview if project does not support it

To reinforce that Arranger Preview is not supported in projects that contain video, ReWire synths, and active Region FX, Arranger Preview is now disabled in such projects.

 

See:

Arranger tracks

To preview an arrangement

New features