Problem with Sonar 2.0XL and Delta 44

[esun127]

I just bought an M-Audio Delta 44 today. I've had Sonar running for a month using a cheap Sound Blaster sound card, and it worked fine for the capabilities of the consumer card with 1/8" inserts.

When I installed the Delta 44, it worked fine with music playback from windows media player, winamp, etc. However, when I started recording and playing back in Sonar, I heard a lot of pops and cracks. Even when I played back my old recordings that recorded with the old sound card, there were problems, yet the files were fine when exported to wav or mp3. When I recorded new things and exported them, they sounded crappy, so I'm pretty sure there are some settings that I need to adjust in Sonar, but i don't know what. Any help on this matter is appreciated.

My setup is:
Pentium III 800, 384mb ram
Guitar into Avalon preamp into breakout box
Mics into Behringer MX802 mixer into breakout box
Bass into Demeter preamp into breakout box
etc
Breakout box outputs into power amp

The audio sounds bad with all the instruments and mics. I think the gains are fine and everything's staying in the green/yellow on the delta control panel and in Sonar.

[dachay2tnr]

First, did you reset your Sonar settings to take advantage of the 24-bit ability of the card? Go into Options > Audio and change the driver bit depth and project bit depth to 24 bits. The reprofile the card.

The cracks and pops could be coming from a variety of sources.

You could also try raising your latency settings and/or raising your buffers. If you have your buffers set at 2, try increasing to 3 or 4. Also try moving the slider to the right a little at a time to see if it improves things.

Another thing to try would be changing the I/O Buffer Size on the Advanced tab. My Delta (1010) seems to like 64 the best. However try various different settings (32, 64, 128, 256 etc.) and see if that helps the situation.

What OS are your running? If Win2K or WinXP you might try disabling ACPI and putting your Delta on it's own IRQ.

You could also try disabling your USB ports if you don't use them for anything.

Also, look on the Driver Profiles tab in Options > Audio in Sonar. I recall reading that the 24 bit settings should be divisible by three.

There are probably other things you can do as well, but this should give you a start.

[dachay2tnr]

Oh yeah. One other thing to try that should be pretty easy would be to download and install a different version of the Delta drivers. If they have a newer version than the one you are using, try that. If not, try going back to the previous version.

[esun127]

Hey dachay, it looks like all I needed to do was reprofile the card. At first I thought it would've done it on its own by uninstalling sonar and reinstalling, but I guess now. Thanks! It works great now!