Thanks Brandon. Understood.

It would be good if they were aware that this doesn't only happen with the wheel, and that there appear to be 96k issues with several of the other instruments in that family/generation of plugins, including Session Drummer 2 and Drop Zone. I've reproduced the problem using Dim LE in Reaper at 96k, and without touching the wheel.

This link will drop you into the middle of a thread where I was trying to track down an issue with SD2. Posts #45 and #46 on that page show the problem appearing in Drop Zone as seen across different bounce methods, and how the problem seems to show up only after the first time MIDI is sent to one of the instruments.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1349420&mpage=2&key=

Thanks again!

Yo! Cakewalk!

Just to add my voice to the choir ... I am using Sonar 7 PE x64 under vista, at 24/96, with Dim Pro and Rapture, a Novation Remote 61 SL for MIDI control, and have experienced the following:

Dim Pro 1.3: Pitch bend causes the sound to cut out, but no 99 db spike, thank god.
Zeta+ 1.5.3: Some patches get very loud after a second or two of playback (can't quantify beyond "loud") and cause the CPU meter to spike on one of my cores, followed by a dropout. This is without using any kind of controller.

I know the pitch bend issue is being addressed for the Dimension/Rapture twins, but I hope whatever fix there is spill over onto Zeta, 'cause it really is a cool synth. BTW, if a Zeta patch DOES come out, pretty PLEASE make it available to those who got it bundled with Sonar! Ok, I'll shut up now.

I just filed my BBB complaint, after giving Cake one more time to make it right. I encourage you to do the same. Maybe that will cause them to listen.

Start here: http://boston.bbb.org/

Go to the "BBB for consumers" section on the right and select "File a Complaint"

When prompted, search for "Cakewalk" as the company and this address:
268 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210 USA

Write a short description about what's happening, how they have not addressed this issue in an entire year (yet have released many other products and product fixes) and inform the BBB that the acceptible resolution would be a fixed product. I am not interested in a refund and hopefully you aren't either (although I'd understand if you were).

Yes. There still is no fix even after an entire year of waiting! Cakewalk has really dropped the ball here and embarrassed themselves greatly. It is unethical to claim Dim Pro works in 96khz, when it so obviously does not. I really find it hard to imagine so few people work in 96khz, but apparently they do, so Cakewalk doesn't care about us. There are (crappy) workarounds (look at some earlier posts), but no fix to the obvious bug.

If it took my company a year to fix a bug in our software, we would be out of business! We fix software bugs in a matter of days to weeks, or, at most, a couple months. But, then again, we actually care about our customers, unlike Cakewalk.

To anybody who owns Dim Pro, please file a complaint with the BBB. Cake refuses to listen to polite requests, so it's time to fight back. Believe it or not, BBB complaints tend to help get things resolved. No company wants a bad grade with the BBB.

Start here: http://boston.bbb.org/

Go to the "BBB for consumers" section on the right and select "File a Complaint"

When prompted, search for "Cakewalk" as the company and this address:
268 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210 USA

I'm experiencing this audio distorting issue with Dim LE Dim Pro and Rapture with some patches. Most notably, it happens with the Ballad Piano patch under the Electric Piano section in Dimension LE and Dim Pro, and it happens without using the pitch bend wheel at all! It happens just letting SONAR playback a recorded take using the Ballad Piano patch in areas above middle C. It's a darn shame because that patch sounds so good to me.

Would be nice if Cakewalk could fix this problem and release a patch. It's been over a year, and still no fix.What a bummer.

(let them know this affects a large group of people,....)

Yes,..all 5 of you,...lol

So,...what is the point of working at 96kHz anyway? If I work in 96kHz, will I be a professional?

10 - My mistake. For some reason when a company advertises a product to work in a certain way, I was under the impression it was supposed to work that way.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm bothering to address 10's snarky comment...

96khz (and, for that matter, anything higher) allows for a greater amount of bandwidth to reduce the amount of noise and digital artifacts in a recording when it is mixed down. The destination format is likely either CD quality (44Khz) or MP3 quality (different science altogether). However, before the final mixdown, a recording will go through many different digital signal paths. For example, I will usually be mixing down 20+ digital tracks, recorded at 96Khz/24bit. The mixed down signals will then travel through multiple effects processors and plugs for compression, limiting, EQ, sweetening, etc. If I use 44Khz recording, I am limited to an upper maximum imaging resolution of (audible) 22Khz. If I use a 96Khz recording, that limit is raised to 48Khz (well above human hearing). The "real world" problem with these calculations is it only indicates the maximum frequency of a sine wave under ideal conditions. Most AD/DA converters are far from ideal (even high quality ones). Using a SINC function is the only way to achieve the true 22Khz frequency reproduction in a 44Khz recording. Doing this is extremely expensive and even under ideal conditions can only be approximated to a certain degree (SINC is infinite in both time directions). The extra bandwidth provided by 96Khz mixdowns allows for greater precision under these real world scenarios. The end result is a cleaner mix with less distortion. This makes no difference for some musical styles where distortion is heavy or even desirable (such as rock), but does make an audible difference in music that does not rely a lot on distortion.

One fallacy in the "44Khz should be enough for anyone" arguments is that most people cannot audibly tell the difference between a 96khz and 44khz final recording. I'm not talking about the final product. I'm talking about recording and mixdown. If you mix down 20+ 44Khz tracks and the same 20+ 96khz tracks and apply the same effects all along a 44 or 96Khz signal path, the end result is easily distinguished. One is noisier. It can most easily be proven for skeptics on a high precision digital VU meter comparing the noise floor between both recordings.

The same argument goes for 16-bit versus 24-bit.

There is a reason why all new audio standards for theaters, home theaters, HD, and so on, are based on high sampling rates (or in the case of lossy-style MPEG compression, high bitrates). It's higher quality in the end.

DVD looks great, but Blu-Ray looks fricking amazing. Same in audioland.

However, all this is moot because Cakewalk long ago adopted 96Khz (and well beyond) as supported methods of recording in their products. They advertise it as such. The fact is that Dimension does not work as advertised.

To put it another way, I may never want a Ferrari. I may think Ferarri owners made a bad investment on their vehicle because my much-cheaper car gets me from A to B just fine. But if that Ferarri does not work as advertised, I do not disagree that a Ferarri owner has a gripe.

Personally, I think that Rene and Cakewalk have parted company. Rene's last post here was:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1378500&mpage=1&key=� which was 7th May this year.

If Rene was the only developer working on Dimension Pro/ Rapture, it explains why there hasn't been any updates. There should have been a fix for Rapture for Windows as there is a problem loading the 32bit Rapture in Vista 64 from the installer. This was mentioned in his post here: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1193042&mpage=1&key=�

This and the now missing 'super instrument' that was due to be revealed and then cancelled at the last minute makes me wonder what has happened to him?

Wow, auricle, you may be onto something. I can tell you from experience that sort of thing is not uncommon at software houses. Where I work, we have several old projects which have changed hands dozens of times. They work really well most of the time. However, when a change needs to be made, it can be one of the least cost effective things our company does. We have to bring new developers into poorly documented (and poorly written) code. This can take days or weeks, where the money we are making from the contract does not cover the cost of making the change. It's our fault for not managing the project better, but these projects became forgotten as bigger and better products came up and developers naturally moved onto different jobs. It would not surprise me if Cake was in a similar situation. There are bugs that need to be fixed, but the time and effort required to fix them does is not cost effective. That sucks.

I just finally submitted my BBB complaint too. And I have been holding off on buying my upgrade to Sonar 8.

I find it pretty humorous that Dimension Pro is one of the big selling points of Sonar 8 when they know it doesn't work as advertised and there is no evidence that they are supporting it anymore.

There has been no response yet to my submission to the BBB. I have decided to start writing reviews on all the store websites to make people aware of the problem. I invite anyone else to join me. Maybe they'll grease a chorus of squeaky wheels.

Thanks guys for all your helpful posts. I'm putting in a BBB complaint as well. They really need to fix this!

Here's the response I got from Cakewalk tech support - probably the same message that you guys all got:

"Thank you for contacting Cakewalk Technical Support. We are aware of
this issue and hopefully an update will be available soon. SONAR 8
will not fix the issue unfortunately, sorry for the inconvenience."

Hi guys! I'm back. No good news, I should start out (before anybody gets excited).

I'm glad to see people filing BBB complaints. Cakewalk can ignore them all they want, but it goes on record with the BBB in their region, and that is what is important.

I'm about to send in my quarterly "what's the status" email to Cakewalk and I was pleasantly surprised to see that more people are still bumping this thread. In addition, it is worth nothing that this thread has had over 13,000 pageviews! Wow!

Will Cake ever take this seriously? I think they are. I just think there is another reason for the long delay. This is pure speculation, but maybe source code got deleted or a key developer left that was the only one who understood the app or... who knows! Not an excuse, per say, but maybe a reason.

Cake is usually pretty good with fixes (even if sometimes you have to pay to upgrade to get them).

So let's keep giving them pressure! Keep the BBB complaints going. Write letters to the Office of Consumer Affairs. Keep the pressure up! :-)

puppy38 - Very good point about the sample rate. I don't have hardware which supports 192Khz, but it doesn't surprise me that is affected too. It's worth noting that 88Khz and (I think) even 48Khz suffers this issue, so if it's fixed for 96Khz, all other sample rates should be fixed as well.

I agree, puppy38. However, I must point out that cakewalk is not silent on this issue. They have, and continue to, acknowledge this is a bug. They just refuse to commit to a date for a bug fix.

I'm currently boycotting Cakewalk purchases until this is resolved. I encourage you to file a BBB complaint and/or report them to the Office of Consumer Affairs (earlier in the thread).

They need to make this right. I want to be a fan again.

Hell, I'll sign a NDA and fix the problem myself. lol I'm a programmer. Maybe they just need a fresh set of eyes on the problem.