Been using BMT with both Cakewalk by Bandlab and Cakewalk Sonar for several years now with no issues. Just recently, Sonar is freezing when I select a virtual port for output. Anyone else having this problem?
Thanks
Yes, in many cases it crashes and you have to restart Cakewalk. You should try and open a ticket with them. I also found out that Cakewalk has troubles with certain ASIO drivers. They show up but you can’t select them.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
Anyone know how to contact Cakewalk Sonar support. Their website contact pages do not work and there are no phone numbers listed. I think they don’t like me.
support@cakewalk.com is the only means of trying to get in touch with them.
No phone.
But they never respond, and when they finally do, all they can do is apologize.
No help, no resolutions.
Horrible, non-existent support.
I’m going to go to either Reaper or Fender Pro Studio (formally Presonus).
Fender Studio Pro actually looks very much like Cakewalk.
The lack of support from Cakewalk has me at the end of my patience.
Good luck, but I would consider moving to another DAW.
In the meantime, I would recommend that you contact Steve Caldwell (steven.j.caldwell@gmail.com)
He is the resident expert on Bome, and has been very, very helpful to me setting up the various different features I need, including getting things to work correctly in Sonar.
Book a session with him. You won’t regret it.
In this case, the problem may not be with Cakewalk. It may be a Windows thing. With Windows, only one application or device can access a given port (virtual or otherwise) at a time.
It may be that another application has “hijacked” the port making it unaccessibe to Cakewalk. Make sure that no other MIDI enabled applications that may be open are not using the port. In some cases, the Chrome browser may have opened the port. So shut down all instances of Chrome in your task manager to make sure it hasn’t hijacked the ports in question.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
Thanks, Steve. Once again you nailed it. Turns out there were some recent Windows 11 updates for midi 2.0 causing both startup and port problems. Uninstalling the updates cured the problem. Thanks again.
Interesting, the Windows updates for MIDI are actually designed to allow for multi-client MIDI so I guess they are still getting some of the kinks out. If not, I’ll probably be really busy here helping people work through it. Although I’m not signed up as an early adopter and will be getting the updates as part of the regular rollout schedule.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
Steve
I’ve had enormous problems with virtual ports, Bluetooth devices and visibility under the latest (late January 2026) updates to windows 11. I ended up freezing updates and rolling back to the initial 25h2 release.
I now look at every update and only accept updates that don’t include previews of changes.
I wasted a week of my time when I could have been doing something more useful.
Hope this helps
Yes, I think it is a good idea to not include previews. I don’t think anything MIDI changed in the January update but this month I believe Microsoft will be releasing a major MIDI update which includes MIDI 2.0 and multi-client MIDI ports. Fingers crossed. I know that our developer has been tracking the changes behind the scenes to minimize any negative impact. Everything in the developer release seems to be good so far. The February release will not be a preview release so unless you turn off all updates, you will be getting it. I believe that they roll it out to retailers first (new machines), then to the general public. It is all on a fixed schedule controlled by Microsoft.
Personally, I’m looking forward to having the new functionality and have held on trying to update my systems ahead of time as I want to better understand the user experience by just staying a normal user.
Everything I’ve stated here is public knowledge so there is no insider type or non-disclosure information here. Microsoft recently did a demo at the NAMM show in Anehiem California, USA in January.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz