Issue with playing two Cakewalk Sound Center tracks simultaneously - odd noises are heard

Hi there,

I recently bought Music Creator 5 and I'm pretty much a beginner at using the software. I'm using it on Windows 7 and on a laptop that can handle heavy gaming. As the title says, I'm having issues with playing two Cakewalk Sound Center (CSC) tracks simultaneously. When two tracks are played, odd sounds that were not intended to be heard are heard...really awkward.

Here is a scenario: I open a new blank project. I add two CSC tracks. One of them has a melodic tune recorded from a MIDI keyboard and the notes are then refined by manually editing each note. The other CSC track has a simple rhythm beat consisting of heavy bass sound and some hi hats. Both CSC tracks are using different programs. When I play the project, I hear the melodic tune but I notice that some of the hi hats are missing and some of the heavy bass sound is missing or has the wrong pitch. When each track is played separately, all sounds are fine.

Does anyone here know what the issue is? I have a sense that this issue can be easily solved...at least that's what I'm hoping for!

I am using a 32-bit operating system, with a sound card/audio interface called Realtek High Definition Audio, and MME (32-bit) driver mode. My MC5 wasn't updated with the patch when this issue arose.

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K, I just downloaded and installed the 5.05 patch and another issue seem to have sprung. When I open MC5, I get a VST Plug-in Load Error for CakewalkSoundCenter. "The failure point was reported as: Main Call". There's an issue with reading the cakewalksoundcenter.dll file..

Now, I can't even use CSC...:(

32 bit is good.... I also agree on the soundcard upgrade thing. The soundcard causes many problems if it is a factory card.... so spend what you need to upgrade. I often refer to the sound card as the heart of your recording set up. Almost everyone that gets Cake software (and others as well) and decides they want to record music, will get a better soundcard  that can handle the data flow properly.

Upgrade the interface first... then..... if you still have these issues.

Another thing that might be at play here....especially if you are editing midi by hand. This has happened to me on occasion until I realized what was happening.
Notes and events seemed to disappear even though I could see them on the screen they didn't sound during play back. It was caused by the editing I had done.

Midi notes can not overlap effectively. Each midi note has properties attached to it one of which is note duration. If a different midi note, of the same sound and pitch is moved so that it's starting point is within the previous note's duration envelope, the second note often never receives the "trigger start" of note signal and therefore you don't hear it, even though it is there. Shortening the duration of the previous note solves this issue. IDK if this was the problem, likely not, but remember this in the future when you are editing midi.

Thanks for all the replies!

I already have asio4all driver installed on my laptop and that didn't help.

Beagle, when I said 'programs', I was referring to the many synth sounds in CSC. Apparently, each one is referred to as a program.

Anyway, I tried playing my project on a desktop that has a better sound card than my laptop's and I hear no strange sounds! So the sound card was definitely an issue. I will be looking into getting an external sound card..

Again, thanks for the help everyone! I really appreciated it :)