Sonar 4 is getting bogged down after 20+ tracks

[TravisK]

Ok, so we are finishing up our EP today for my band, and it's sounding really great. But all of a sudden we seem to be running out of resources.

Even with every track frozen, we are still hitting between 40 and 50% CPU usage on a 2.2 GHz Athlon.

Even more interesting is that only about 10 of the tracks are played the entire time. The rest are simply leads or backgrounds or acoustic guitar. So it's kinda odd that they'd be killing the CPU as well if they aren't even touched during the majority of the CD.

Without bouncing tracks, are there any tips for getting more speed from Sonar? (And my dayjob is being a computer tech, so I know all about making Windows as effecient as possible)

I'm looking mainly for Sonar tricks. Hopefully Sonar 5 will help us out as we are using so many tracks because we need different effects on different parts, even if it's only a 20 second section. So with effects within clips, this would be about a 15 track operation.

Thanks again, you guys are always helpful!!!

[Strryder]

What is your soundcard latency set to?

If it's set really low, you could kick it up to 100 ms or so now that you're done tracking.

[K-dub]

This is good advice. In addition, look for a rogue plug-in that might be consuming unfair resource.

Just go through each track, turn each plug on/off, and see if there is improvement in the system. If a plug is consuming beyond its fair share, then you'll know immediately.

The system itself (inc. Sonar) shouldn't max out independently ... so two things likely lay at the base of the problem:

1) Problem w/ the hardware: (ie - latency settings for the sound card)
2) Problem w/ the transient software: (ie - look for problem plugs)

That's my two, hope it helps.

Best,

Kev.

[Qwerty]

I second the "lower the latency" concept of Strryder's -- I normally use one setting to track and another to mix.

So said, that track count sounds really low for you to be running into problems... Is this with the latency set at 4.5msec? Knock it back to 8 or so if that is the case and see if the problem persists.

How much free disk space, have you de-fragged recently or run the Cakewalk Audio Finder tool and cleaned up your hard drive, (backed up first of course...)?

Ciao,

Q.

[DigitalDon]

Also, if you have the same FX running (with the same settings) like reverb, etc on several different tracks then bus them to the FX rather than having the FX assigned to each individual track. This will free up some CPU cycles.

DD

[Pedullist]

Make sure you've cut or slip edit all silences (or people waiting to sing/play) in your tracks. So if you have a guitar solo somewhere in the middle: slip edit until the solo itself is the only part visible. It's a tedious job, but I found out that Sonar likes it better that way. It doesn't like processing lots of tracks with silences, plus it's still unnecessary hard disk activity. And plugins still have to process those silences, so it's a CPU saver as well. In my case at least...

[Thorguitarist]

woh woh woh....How do you change the soundcard latentcy????

[dachay2tnr]

Originally Posted by Pedullist

Make sure you've cut or slip edit all silences (or people waiting to sing/play) in your tracks. So if you have a guitar solo somewhere in the middle: slip edit until the solo itself is the only part visible. It's a tedious job, but I found out that Sonar likes it better that way. It doesn't like processing lots of tracks with silences, plus it's still unnecessary hard disk activity. And plugins still have to process those silences, so it's a CPU saver as well. In my case at least...

Not completely sure about Sonar 4, but in Sonar 3 you have to use the "apply trimming" command to actually get rid of material that has been slip edited. If you just slip edit, the underlying material (silence) will still be there. Essentially it works something like a mute until you use the Apply Trimming command, at which time the material is actually deleted.

You can tell by reversing the slip edit. Initially when you slip edit, if you reverse you will simply get the original material back again. After you apply trimmming, you get nothing back but a solid horizontal line. So be careful.

[dachay2tnr]

Originally Posted by Thorguitarist

woh woh woh....How do you change the soundcard latentcy????

Are you using WDM or ASIO drivers.

If WDM, you can simply adjust the latency slider in the Options > Audio control dialogue.

If ASIO, you have to do it through your sound card's mixing applet.

[Pedullist]

In 4 and 5, when you slip edit the file is still there just like in 3, but it won't process the slip edited parts. I can clearly see the disk and CPU activity drop after doing some proper slip editing...so no need to trim.

It was the same in HS2004, so I assume it's like that in 3 too.

[dachay2tnr]

Originally Posted by Pedullist

In 4 and 5, when you slip edit the file is still there just like in 3, but it won't process the slip edited parts. I can clearly see the disk and CPU activity drop after doing some proper slip editing...so no need to trim.

It was the same in HS2004, so I assume it's like that in 3 too.

Yeah, I may have confused "processing" with "storage." In other words, if you want to reduce the file size by getting rid of all the slip edited parts, you have to Apply Trimming (after which they are gone for good!! ).

You could be right about the processing part - I would need to check.

[Thorguitarist]

I'm guessing this will work in Guitar Tracks also

[acidrock]

Have you archived unused tracks?