Sonar and Track artifacts

[Fret]

I use Sonar 1.31 and I have noticed that after working on a project for a while I start to get artifacts in my tracks. It seems that little pops show up in strange places and are actually visible in the track. I usually only use real-time effects and it doesn’t seem to coincide with any edit points. Has anybody else noticed this?

[James Argo]

It would be better if you post your PC spec...

Anyway, many factor can cause track artifact.

Motherboard:
Chipset issue, BIOS setting, Bus architecture, resource (IRQ, DMA)etc.

HD:
HD speed, disk controller (bandwith), cache size, etc.

Soundcard:
Driver, A/D and D/A, latency setting, etc.

Software:
Plugins, etc.

Here you can see, even though Sonar is the best on the market, you need powerfull machine with perfect combination to make it run smooth. My older MIDI DAW has VIA chipset which always start making noise after 10 or more audio (DXi) tracks.

Then what can I do, Jaymz?

First, make sure you install latest -best working tested- driver necessary. Motherboard, soundcard, VGA card, etc.

Defrag your HD at least once in a week if you're extensive PC user.

From Windows control panel, check if your soundcard shares resource (IRQ, DMA, etc) with other devices. Move the soundcard to another available PCI if it does. You must know strength of your machine. I mean, how many audio track it can handle, and how many plugins. Keep your eyes on the CPU and Disk usage meter. If only a few tracks (below 8) then DING! Time to upgrade...

Then what should I get, Jaymz?

Get better soundcard at least from Audiophile 2496 class.

Get better HD (7200RPM) if you didn't have one. Separate OS HD and audio HD physicaly (yes, that means two HD on two different IDE).

Get more power! At least 1,8GigHz Processor and 512RAM...

Lets see if it helps...

Jaymz

[Fret]

The system is a 933Mhz HP Netserver, 2 10,000 RPM SCSI hard drives, 640 MB RAM, Intel chipset, W2k. I have about 15 tracks in the project and it runs fairly smooth.

Just to make sure we are on the same track, the pops aren't because the system is taxed, or so it seems. I can actually see a spike in the signal display on individual tracks. I know that at one time they were not there but then down the road they show up.

For example during the sustain of a guitar the signal display/waveform shows a spike right in the middle. When that part passes it pops. If I turn off all of the plug-ins and archive all of the other tracks this part still pops.

[mixsit]

But you're sure they started out ok? Weird. Clock problems during tracking would look like that -repeatable, viewable.
How about if you bounce them to a fresh track?

[Fret]

That's a good idea; I'll try it in a little bit. I do know that have gone back to backup bundle files and re-imported the track to fix the problem.

[Fret]

Ok I am going to try and post a picture of one I have in a bass track. The ones I was looking at in my guitar track aren’t there today. Usually I see these in dead spots on vocal tracks and I originally thought it was static.

The first track is the original and the second is the bounced track. As you can see it got worse when I bounced it.

[moskus]

It's not supposed to be that way!

What's your soundcard? 'Cause I intend to blame it...

[Fret]

I have the delta 66. I'm using the .27 version of the driver. When I originally tried the .29 I couldn't get any sound out of it but maybe I need to try that again.

[James Argo]

Looks like your soundcard shares same resource (IRQ, etc) with other device (I suspect VGA card)... Have you tried to move the sound card to another available PCI slot?

[Fret]

I have not tried changing slots but going through the different views in device manager, I can not see anything conflicting or sharing.

[moskus]

If you're using Windows XP/2000, finding IRQ conflicts is fairly easy:

1) Open the Device Manager (rightclick My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -tab -> Device Manager button)
2) Go View -> Resources by Type
3) Expand the Interrupt Request (IRQ)-"folder"

And there you go!

It should look something like this. This was my IRQ settings when I had problems. As you see there's no direct conflicts, but when I disabled the "NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller (B1)" on IRQ 18 and then moved the soundcard (INCA88) to another slot, my problems went away. Inca88 was in slot 18 and was happy.

[Fret]

Those not familiar with Server motherboard technology don’t slay me for this but mine looks good.


You will notice the PCI video card and I expect someone to jump on this. Typically PCI video cards are bad because the video card and the sound card fight for the PCI bus. My system is a HP Netserver. It has dual PCI busses. In other words the first 3 slots are one bus and the next 3 are a second bus. I have inserted each card on a separate bus.

Now those familiar with this technology please feel free to jump it. In theory I don’t think this should be the problem, but who knows.

Also I did upgrade my drivers last night. Evidentially the Delta .29 driver I had problems with is no longer available and now they have release a .36 driver. I also upgraded my video and MIDISport drivers. There are no updates available for the motherboard but I still need to check for an update on the USB card. If it was a driver issue I may not know for months.

[Fret]

I got an error and it didn’t get my pic. "Too Many people logged in"

[moskus]

Wow! How did you manage to get the soundcard on IRQ 3?

Are you running ACPI or Standard PC?

[Fret]

Standard PC. In the beginning I had problems and I moved it over to standard.

[moskus]

I'm THIS CLOSE to move over to Standard PC now, but last time I tried that my soundcard didn't work at all...

[James Argo]

Did you open the case, and check if the card is fit all the way into the slot propherly? I mean, in few case, we found these kind of problem when the card is not siting there propherly. Push it, baby...

Another posibility is to check the power suply. FYI, I lost my delta 66 burnt because power suply failure few years ago...

We have nothing to loose to check it, right?

[Fret]

Not a bad idea, I have moved a couple of times.