Hello All, I just bought a new mic and Music creator 3 was with it. So I installed it on my Vista based laptop. I started importing a song done with Cakewalk proaudio. The all tracks are there but nothing plays back ! So I have opened the Audio windows and there are NO drivers installed apparently! Empty window! There are no drivers in the output or input window. Where can I get them? Have you ever experienced this? What should I do? Thanks in advance Roland

What sound card or audio interface are you using with Pro Audio?
Did you run the Wave profiler?
With Vista and Win 7, you may want to right-click the MC 3 icon and the executable file on your hard drive and set to Run As Administrator.
What microphone is it? A USB microphone? If it doesn't have inputs and outputs on the mic, you may have a difficult time using it. USB mics almost always have to use MME driver mode to work, and MME is the slowest driver available. The latency may be intolerable.

Hi Greg, Thanks for your help and reply.I will be trying to answer underneath. I am using the internal Sound card of my laptop which is a CompaQ Presario CQ71. I am running Vista.I bought it 2 years ago. I do not know what is Wave profiler so I cannot answer to this and probably do not use it otherwise I will know I guess! I am using a Samson Q1U USB plugged microphone. It does not show inputs or outputs on the mic but I can tell you it records beautifully on Proaudio once it is plugged in ! I was amazed for such a price.

The wave profiler is a setup procedure that must run at least once. it is how Sonar and MC establish communication with the sound card.
It should have run automatically the first time you opened MC3.
The default driver mode for MC3 was WDM. The sound card in your Compaq may not support WDM, in which case there would be no drivers for MC3 to use.
You will probably need to use MME for MC3 to recognize your sound card as well as the USB mic.
The USB mic must be plugged in before you start MC3
In Options>Audio>Advanced, change your Driver Mode to MME.
Then click on the General tab, and click the Run Wave Profiler button.
It will run some tests, and should profile both the sound card and your mic.
Restart MC3.
You should now have some options available in the Drivers window.

Here is a helpful guide provided by Fog, a fellow forum member.
It will guide you through the setup for a USB mic.
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1618556

Hope that helps.

man... you got it all going against you.... 

USB mics are not a good way to record with MC. And version 3 is really old.  Normally you get one of the LE versions with the USB mics. 

best advice I can offer is to go to this thread and read it carefully and follow the instructions...perhaps it will get you up and running..... 

HERE>>>>   http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1618556

good luck

Hello Robert, I did what you say and all the drivers appeared. Thanks so much. Now I am dealing with another problem; latency. When I record audio I have quite some latency. I have looked around and some people seem to say one has to use ASIO to remove maxium latency. So I tried but then, the software does not see my mic anymore! he only sees ASIO...When I put it back on MME, it sees again my mic. Do you have any ideas how to remove such a latency while using MME? Roland

unfortunately roland, latency is going to be a probelm with your set up.  you're going from a USB mic to your onboard soundcard output, so you're using 2 different soundcards (the usb mic counts as a soundcard) with 2 different clocks.   also, MME is the slowest of all protocols for drivers, but unfortunately it's necessary to use MME with your USB mic because WDM and ASIO won't work.

my BEST advice to you is to ditch the USB mic and get a real interface for about $150 and a traditional condensor mic, for about $100 to $150.  I know that's a lot more than you paid for the USB mic, but the headaches are much less, I promise!  I have soundcard (interface) and mic recommendations on my website.

in the meantime, we can try to "trick" your USB mic and onboard soundcard into thinking it's one device under ASIO (normally ASIO only allows ONE device).  go to www.asio4all.com and download asio4all, unzip it, install it and then go to MC3 OPTIONS>AUDIO>ADVANCED and change the driver mode to ASIO.  you may need to close and restart MC3.

that MIGHT give you lower latency with your current setup.  it might not.  ASIO4ALL is a wrapper to trick the host (MC3) into thinking that the crappy drivers for the USB mic and onboard soundcard are actually good fast drivers, but sometimes tricks don't work.

my best advice is still to get a good USB soundcard and condensor mic when you can afford it even if this does reduce your latency.  you'll be far better off in the end.

Yeah, that's what I meant when I wrote "you may have a difficult time using it". I don't doubt that it records beautifully, just that it will have such extreme latency that it will be rendered unusable.

Hi Robert, I tried your trick but no... does not work... Could have worked but as you said "MIGHT work". THanks anyway you managed to handle my previous problem VERY nicely, "and" smoothly. My problem is that I am in Cape town for 4 months and I have 2 mics home (XLR) so I am not very keen at buying a third one! I thought this would be easier for me to have a USB mic with my laptop to record here in Cape Town on it but... So I am getting a bit suspicious now about USB mics now. I find them very convenient though, but what do you need to make them work properly with no latency (or so little). An external Soundcard on which you plug the USB mic? Roland

Now there is another problem. Since I have installed ASIO4All, I have no outputs. So I removed ASIO4ALL from my laptop but I still have nothing coming out of the output!!! I have 4 audio inputs: Micro intern Micro extern Stereo mix Microphone Samson 2 outputs: Speakers Headset I am on the Speakers' output and nothing comes out! When I plug the earphones, I just have a very little output but this is all! Do you know what is going on? Roland