Sonar 2.2/Mysterious Freezes

[bigphil26]

Is anybody using an Audigy 2 card with Sonar 2 and experiencing a freeze in playback every now and then? It's not a dropout (the time ruler is still moving, the sound is gone and the console view freezes) and Sonar doesn't indicate that it is. I've played with buffer sizes and nothing helps. The guys at Cakewalk believe I have an IRQ sharing problem but the Audigy 2 isn't sharing with any other hardware nor are there any other conflicts. I'm running in ACPI mode.
The problem is only minor, it happens every now and again but it's still a bit weird. I'm using WDM drivers with a 10msec latency, 2.4 GHz P4, 768 meg RAM. I have an Nvidia MX440 in the AGP - I'm wondering if this may be creating the glitch. The audigy card is actually working and sounding well on the whole (even with the fixed 48KHz chip and sample rate conversion) but I would appreciate any advice you may have.

Thanks

Phil

[Munchkin]

You are not going crazy...I'm having the same sort of problem...I've been haunting this forum to see if anybody else had it too.

Now I know I am not insane. At least not technically insane...

[moskus]

It's a good bet that it's the Audigy. I remember having this problem when using the Audigy in ACPI-mode. It disappeared more og less when I turned off ACPI, but then I had more problems...

I would say that the best thing you can do is to get an audiocard for recording. Creatives cards are good for what they're designed to do: Gaming. Allthough you can record with an Audigy2, I would go with f.ex. Audiophile 2496 or a Terratec-card...

[bigphil26]

It's nice, in a way, to know that someone else is having the same kind of problem with the Audigy - I did think it was just my setup somehow. Your right about the Audigy 2, though, it is just for gaming but I'm running on a tight budget and it was a step up from the onboard sound I was using. I'm gonna get a better card soon. Thanks for replying!

[bigphil26]

It's nice, in a way, to know that someone else is having the same kind of problem with the Audigy - I did think it was just my setup somehow. Your right about the Audigy 2, though, it is just for gaming but I'm running on a tight budget and it was a step up from the onboard sound I was using. I'm gonna get a better card soon. Thanks for replying!

[Munchkin]

I don't know if it's any help to you, but I recently updated the audio drivers, the video drivers, and stopped using an optical mouse and went back to a good old fashioned mouse...and I have not had one of those freeze ups since. I used to have at least one a day...haven't had one in a week now.

I have not changed anything concerning ACPI.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help...

[moskus]

As long as you're connecting the mouse to the PS/2 connection, it shoudln't matter if you use regular or optical mouse...

Updating drivers is always a good idea!

Glad you solved it Munchkin.

bigphil26, have you tried updating drivers?

[bigphil26]

I've got the latest Audigy 2 drivers but i'll update the graphics card today. It hasn't happened for a couple of days (I've changed the screen resolution and fiddled with Windows settings that were recomended to me) but I'm not confident I'm in the clear yet. Does anyone have any idea what it could be, at a guess? Some kind of weird conflict? Has anybody told Creative about this? I was going to but I've heard bad reports about their technical support and reading some of the stuff about the Audigy on the Creative forum is enough to put you off Creative for life - in fact, it has put me off for life. As soon as I can raise a bit more cash I'm upgrading the card. By the way, this forum is great, nice to hear from so many fellow Sonar users!

Cheers.

Phil.

[moskus]

Originally posted by bigphil26
Has anybody told Creative about this?

Do you really think it matters?


Updating the video-drivers may be the key. We'll just have to wait and see.


Hey! I'm a poet and I don't know it...

[bigphil26]

I've just installed an additional 7,200 rpm drive for audio data only. Since then, no freezes. Looks like it was the slower hard/boot disk (5,400 RPM) I was using originally which was the problem. It's been over a week without a problem - the longest I lasted previous was a couple of days. Happier that I am, I'm still going to get a better sound card.

Phil.