my sonar monitoring latency sucks

[crosstudio]

i say my latency and not sonar in general because i don't know if it's the software or my hardware/pc.

when sonar is setup to monitor the input, the lag time between playing the note and hearing the note is very much noticeable. is it me or the software? i've tried decreasing the mix latency as far to the left as possible to no avail.

my sound card (frontier design wavecenter) has it's own virtual patch bay, and works absolutely perfect with cwpa9, but the patch bay doesn't work at all with sonar.

the thing i was really digging about sonar was the graphic input meters. now, if i have the inkling to record using my sansamp at night while the wife is sleeping, i've got to revert back to cwpa9... unless i have sex with her first. then she's so sound asleep that a train wreck won't wake her

[j]

i doubt there are WDM drivers for this card. how low will the latency slider go under OPTIONS>AUDIO in MS? is the latency slider showing the same as the effective latency? SONAR has something it calls 'effective latency'

[crosstudio]

my soundcard maker (frontier design group) has a beta version of the WDM driver now. there are on release B.3 so it might not be 100% stable.

i've got windows 2000, but i haven't loaded it yet. maybe i'll just update my win98 for now.

[j]

SONAR should work well with WDM drivers...i've never really used it in MME mode....i'm running the M AUDIO windows 2k WDM drivers for SONAR with a DELTA 66 and WINDOWS ME. i get drop outs occasionally and the audio engine stops a lot.....but i am usually using three or four plug ins with live input monitoring. i have been very impressed with the results i've acheived with live plug ins....running at 2ms latency....meters seem very responsive.

good sign if your soundcard manufacturer has WDM support.

[crosstudio]

last night, i bit the bullet and loaded win2k and the drivers for my soundcard, RAID, and other junk along with the win2k version of directX 8.0. i'll find out today how the monitoring works.

thanks for the info

[j]

let us know how it goes. i've stuck with ME so far, have thought about installing win2k.

[gamut1]

I am new to cakewalk , I have sonar. I was having a lot of trouble with latency also. everything I played seemed to have a delay in it... also lots of pops and dropouts. I have an Ark 24/96 card... also soundblaster live. I found that my problem was that I was enabling all the drivers under the (options/audio/monitoring tab... when I UN-checked all the drivers exept for the Ark 5,6, all my problems went away.. and I was able to really cut the latency slider down to near as low as it can go.... not sure what your set up is... but this worked wonders for me....

[SPINSTERWUN]

For people with latency problems in Sonar with Delta soundcards or audiophile 2496 and runnng Win98/98SE, check this out...

http://www.midiman.net/m-audio/html/dr/drdelta.htm

scroll down the page a bit.

[j]

gamut1, how low were able to get the latency slider to go in ms? the slider in sonar will only go as far as it determines your soundcard will handle....i.e., it might go as low as 2ms with one soundcard and driver setup , or only to 30ms, or whatever....your buffer settings will also have an effect on your latency limit.....

i'm curious about the latency you are getting with the aardvark because they haven't released their wdm drivers yet , though i hear they have really nice ASIO support.....since sonar doesn't use ASIO, the aardvark should be running MME for sonar...i have heard of some impressive latency results with MME drivers..

i'm using WDM drivers (2000 drivers with ME) i can get sonar down to 2ms....i don't know what this works out to as an accurate measure of actual latency, which is probably 2 or 3 times this, but it is low enough where it isn't much of an issue as far as what you hear.

[gamut1]

Hi J,
I had my slider down to about 11ms tonight working with some loops and doing about 6 tracks...... added some guitar on top of it all. I wasn't using any effects though, I'm sure I may have to back it off some if I add more tracks or more effects. But so far the latency is not affecting anything on my tracks or in my recording. I'm smiling a lot more this week... I also got the new book "Sonar Power" by Scott Garrigus... and I'm about half way done with it now... trying to do each step and remember all this stuff... but its helping a lot. Its a lil friendlier than the Sonar Manual. Good luck to all..

[j]

hey gamut, have you tried using input monitoring at all?

spinsterwun, thanks for that link. i haven't seen any kind of wdm for 98 or ME in the past few months....i've checked a few times ....i wonder when these 'beta' drivers were posted....there were drivers for 98 and ME on the M Audio site briefly in April...anyway...these drivers appear to have been on their site for a while...i've definitely seen that driver version on their site, though under a different category.....i've been using version 5.12.1.10 since April...when i downloaded them they were wdm for ME, but since then they have only been listed for win2k, which is why i have been referring to my drivers as 'win2k drivers'....

[gamut1]

I'm pretty new to this... forgive me if this sounds dumb... but I do have a set of the drivers selected under the audio/monitor tab... that allows me to hear or.. "monitor" what I'm recording.... I can add effects from the Ark card if I want... and hear them as I record... and either choose to actually record them... or just hear them as I am recording.... depending on the set up outputs I use . I am not sure yet how to ... "hear" the Cakewalk effects as I record....and "not" record them.... can this be done?... and then change the effects later after the recording if you want too? I have been doing so much reading in both books .. the manual and Sonar Power... I'm on info overload.... but I can't recall reading that section right now.... I appreciate all the help from everyone.... I can't wait to finish all these books and get on to doing more recording.... but so far its all helping .... thanks all

[j]

hey gamut, i think that input monitoring requires wdm drivers....however, i should check into this...MME will get you a long way with sonar, but it may not be possible to use plug ins in real time for playback and recording.....from what i understand, wdm bypasses certain layers in windows that introduce latency....when i say real time use of plug ins, i mean like using the aardvark effects, except that you can change the parameters later.....with input monitoring and plug ins using sonar, the effects are not recorded , just the audio input...however, you can use effects to monitor when you record (to acheive that sound) and then mix down using the same effect (which is then recorded to your mix). of course, if you are later displeased with the effect you used to record your track, you can change the parameters or use something else entirely, since only the 'dry' signal in your multitrack project was recorded to HD.....using multiple plug ins in real time requires a fast processor.