Why Mono????

[George Parler]

I loaded SONAR XL onto my new computer that came with SB Live sound card. When I went through setup in Sonar and it recognized the sound card and automatically set the audio output as mono. But the SB Live is supposed to be full duplex. What gives???

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George

[sonnylarsen]

Audio output where? On an individual track or for playback of everything? You should be able to adjust that in track properties if it is on the individual track. For the sblive, I don't recall any place where you selct output for the program as stereo or mono.

[moskus]

I believe that you are using Live!Ware 3? Go back to Live!Ware 2, or remove Creatives drivers all the way. There is some problems with the Creative-Drivers and Sonar.

What OS are you using?

[dachay2tnr]

This apparently has been a common problem with Windows XP and the SB Live. The problem, as moskus said, is with the drivers.

I'm not running XP myself, but I believe there is a driver "roll-back" feature in XP. Rolling back the drivers, I'm told, fixes this problem.

[moskus]

This apparently has been a common problem with Windows XP and the SB Live

I would say not only WinXP, but ANY system that uses WDM-drivers (98SE, Me, 2000 and XP). The thing is that Creative's drivers suck, it's as simple as that...

Even Cakewalk suggest that if you have a Creative card of any kind, use the drivers supplied with your OS.
Cakewalk Open Hardware Guide

[dachay2tnr]

I was specifically referring to the fact of the card appearing as a "mono" card in Sonar. This seems to be an occurance that is common to Win XP.

I have used Creative's WDM drivers in Win ME, and while I had problems with them (static, erratic volume changes, etc.), the SB Live card at least showed up as a stereo card in Cakewalk/Sonar.

[moskus]

Originally posted by dachay2tnr
I was specifically referring to the fact of the card appearing as a "mono" card in Sonar. This seems to be an occurance that is common to Win XP.

...and 98, Me and 2000 IF you're using Live!Ware3. I've emailed Cakewalk about this, and they said: "[...talking about the SB Live!...] We know there are issues with Live!Ware 3, such as you say, the card will show up with mono-output only. [...] The solution is to is to use the WDM-drivers that were supplied with your OS."
Just a minor detail... let's not get picky!

Anywho, as both daychay2tnr and myself have said: Use other drivers, and you'll be fine!

[Major Tom]

Try this, go to Options/Audio/Advanced check the box: "Use MME drivers...", rerun the Wave profiler in Options/Audio/General, then restart Sonar. My SB PCI128 does the same thing when I try to use the WDM drivers- I tried everything, including 3 different versions of drivers for the card, nothing else worked even though my nTrack Studio demo, ACID, Sonic Foundry, and Cool Edit demo work fine with WDM. It apparently is a Cakewalk/SB thing. I keep watching for updates...

[dachay2tnr]

Major Tom -

I think Sonar (and now Neuendo) are the only sound programs that have been designed to use WDM drivers.

You probably didn't have any problems with those other programs because they were already using the MME drivers - since they aren't capable of using the WDM drivers. So it's not a "Cakewalk/SB thing" - except for the fact that Sonar actually uses the WDM drivers.

Your advice to use the MME drivers, btw, will result in higher latencies within Sonar. This may be acceptable - depending on what the user is actually doing in Sonar - but I wouldn't offer it as carte blanc advice. Some people do need the lower latency offered by the WDM drivers.

All of that said, I think the lowest latency the SB Live is capable of (even with WDM drivers) is 10 ms. This is still audible. If you really need "real time" latencies, you need a better card.

[Teacher]

I use XP and Sblive....have absolutely no problem wit my sblive though i only use it for midi and soundfont, but even if i did use it for audio there still prolly would be no problem never had a problem wit my sblive ever...go to windows update there is an updated driver for the sblive and xp that might solve it

[brzilian]

Originally posted by Teacher
I use XP and Sblive....have absolutely no problem wit my sblive though i only use it for midi and soundfont, but even if i did use it for audio there still prolly would be no problem never had a problem wit my sblive ever...go to windows update there is an updated driver for the sblive and xp that might solve it

The drivers that come with XP are enough - they fully support WDM. The only thing missing is SF support in the control panel. That is a non-issue with Sonar because you can load them within Sonar itself. DO NOT install any other drivers from Creative. You are just asking for trouble.

[Major Tom]

I have a demo of ntrack studio 3.0.4 which gives a choice of WDM and MME drivers; I chose WDM and it works fine... I have the updated drivers from Win update, when I use WDM drivers in cakewalk it warns me that the default audio format will be set to mono, it has 2 devices- Soundblaster PCI128 1/2 and Soundblaster PCI128 3/4, and when I playback any audio file it is choppy. I have tried changing every setting for audio to no avail until I chose the MME. Maybe its something else; I would like to get a new card that has an s/pdif input for my J-Station. Does anyone have a recommendation for a low-cost ($50-100) WDM, digital input, WinXP compatible stereo soundcard for casual home recording?

[Major Tom]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that in the above WDM driver scenario, that midi plays back fine...