SONAR review

[AlChuck]

by Rip Rowan at ProRec:

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/article...256A7400713944

[j]

thanks for the link! good article ...i've been wondering about WINDOWS 2k, and may eventually switch to it. but i have been using SONAR and WDM with WINDOWS ME....the DELTA WDM for WINDOWS 2k will work with ME....but maybe 2000 is the way to go....M-AUDIO says they are working on WDM for ME....but this article doesn't even consider ME or 98 as an option for WDM...

anyone seen any other reviews of SONAR? the only other one i've seen is in the may issue of COMPUTER MUSIC magazine.

[tubedude]

Just wait for windows XP in october.

[j]

that was the plan actually.....things are going pretty good so far with ME and the DELTA WDM 2000 drivers.. the operative phrase here is 'so far'...

[rjt]

AlChuck, thanks for the link. I have a faster computer than the reviewer and I know there are a few things I can't do yet (e.g., seperate drive for audio formatted for larger data chunks). I also hear that Sonar especially dislikes my video card... matrox millenium. However, I have o set my latency to 160 ms and have 2 buffers. Even at that I can't play more than about 16-18 tracks without dropout. The reviewer said he was getting "I could achieve up to 72 tracks of 24-bit / 44.1 KHz audio with rock-bottom latency: 2.9 ms! Bumping up to 35 ms latency took me to 110 tracks of 24/44.1 audio – low enough latency for very responsive mixing. "

Wow!! What are other folks getting? Besides a different video card, upgrading to 2000 when the wdm drivers are available and getting a seperate hard drive, I have done a lot of tweaking to get the computer ready.... but I am pretty impressed with 72 tracks at 2.9 ms latency.

[SBax]

Yeah, I saw those numbers and was surprised. I have a faster computer the him too. I am getting 10 ms. I slowed the acceration on my graphics card and disabled the USB ports. That didn't make it any faster but it did stop pops and clicks on playback (but the clicks didn't record or happen on mixdown, just playback on the multitrack screen). I am using Win ME (real fast bootup and shutdown) and WDM driver. Haven't messed with any other setting to improve latency. Still trying to find info on what to do. Max tracks for me so far is 9 with eq and all kinds on pan and volume automation. Only one dropout so far.