Should I get rid of Sonar???

[PH68]

I am using Sonar 2.2 with the Edirol UA-5 on my HP Laptop (Celeron 900 MHz with 512 Mb Memory).
I use the UA-5 as I mostly record Audio (guitars, keyboards, woodwinds, etc.)

After recording 2 or 3 audio tracks, I start to get drop-outs/glitches. This is VERY annoying when I try to record a new track.

I have the UA-5 using WDM drivers set to a pretty good latency etc. The PC is still running <10%

Basically, the audio quality is good, it's just it won't record and/or playback without some sort of glitch or small "jump".

I am seriously thinking of selling Sonar & the UA-5 and getting a seperate Hard Disc Recorder (Roland/Tascam/Zoom etc.).

Or should I keep Sonar & the UA-5 and upgrade my PC (probably to another Laptop). If so what sort of spec should I be looking for to record mostly audio

[mbuster]

I doubt you'll find too many people in the Cakewalk forum who'll tell you you to dump Sonar. After all, ACKUS, you know? I went from a stand-alone recorder to PC/Sonar and never looked back. There's just so much more flexibility. I'm sure there's someone around here who'll help with yopur problems. James? Dachay? Moskus?

[Jim Y]

I think the skipping audio is more likely because you have yet to do any optimisation of your Windows installation.
Without knowing which version of Windows you have, it's hard to give much guidance.
If you look in the support section on Tascam.com you should find a couple of documents - one for 98/ME and one for 2000/XP.
Another good resource is the PC Music FAQ at sospubs.co.uk

A few things, you have to stop any background programs like virus scanners and ensure DMA is enabled for the machines hard disk. This sort of thing is needed no matter what equipment and software you have, although XP on recent hardware doesn't need much tweaking at all.

Your laptop probably has quite a slow hard disk, so you will probably have to do most of the recommended tweaks to get good multitrack performance. Also, don't expect the very lowest latency to work - you may have to take the ASIO buffer up to 512 samples.

A Celeron 900 isn't particularly powerful, but I've had good performance from Sonar on a Duron750 although this was a desktop pc with fast hard drives and tweaked up to the hilt.

Good luck and no, it isn't Sonars fault.

[James Argo]

Don't dump SONAR !!! It's not the core of the problem...

First, I will suggest to play around with latency and buffer setting in Options --> Audio. My favorite is to play with something extreme (value) just to hear what will happen. Since SONAR (and most PC based DAW) tends to adapts with general setup (not specific hardware setup), we cannot tell exactly which needs to be adjusted. Do experimental to obtain best configuration you can get with your laptop. Sometime updating particular drivers is necessary, but sometime in rare case, downgrading the driver solves the problem. You didn't mention your OS. But if you use WinXP, then you may want to install SP1 to enhance USB capability and perform. Think flexibility, once you solve your configuration problem, the laptop can be used for other regular task (as opposed to stand alone DAW). You can upgrade and expand the capability once you get familiar with it's behaviour. I'm not sure if Celeron is even equal to regular PIII (for 900MHz), but if you're finally will replace the laptop, then make sure you get original Pentium or it's class. You don't mention your HD speed either. Get 7200 will improve your DAW performance. And off course, do defragment your HD regularly...

Dachay, moskus, do you have anything to say...?

ACKUS ROCKS !!!!!

Jaymz

[Paul881]

I have used several laptops with Sonar and after tweaking the latency, didn't have much of a problem on playing back over twenty tracks. Even though your l.top is a slow device by todays standards, you should not get drop-outs on playing back 2 or 3 tracks - unless you have put fx on them?

My feeling is that you should upgrade your l-top, Sonar is fine for l-top work. And never buy anything other than Intel for music unless its a desk top model and you really know what you are doing.

Dedicated hard disk recorders are okay, but lack flexibility.

[PH68]

Thanks for all the info, everyone.
I'm running WinXP Home, but I have no idea how to determine the speed of the HDD. Anyone tell me, please?

I know that Sonar is not the problem - neither is the Edirol UA-5. Dropouts occur very occasionally, but I can deal with this. What I can't deal with is the frequent 'jumps' which occur - as if a CD is skipping ever so slightly.

The latency has been set on everything from min to max, to test the various results. I use WDM drivers, so ASIO is not applicable (I think). I have tried all sorts of combinations of setup options, but still get the same problem. Anti-virus & applications are disabled at the time. The only thing I don't seem to have, based on all the comments, is the SP1. Am I right in thinking this takes the Home version up to the Professional version?

I do like Sonar, and I'm not going to rush to get rid of it ... I just want to be able to record & playback audio, without tearing my hair out!

After other tests, I realise that I get the same 'jumpy' problem just playing standard commercial audio CD's in the CD drive, either through the PC speakers or via the UA-5.
I think I have a problem with the laptop itself - it may be the casualty in all of this.

So, what spec would you recommend, given that it also has to run the full Microsoft Office suite as well?
I'm guessing a minimum of something like Pentium 4 2ghz, 512mb, 40gb HDD @ 7200rpm ... anything else?

Thanks.

[moskus]

Originally posted by James Argo
Dachay, moskus, do you have anything to say...?

Dumping Sonar and get a standalone HD-recorder because of a few crackles, is like selling your Porche and buying a Volkswagen because the Porche had a flat tire...

The annoying sounds can be removed (somehow). Let's find out how.
- Have you updated the drivers for the soundcard
- Have you all the recent drivers for the rest of your computer?
- Have you run Windows Update lately?
- Do you have a Virus Scanner running during recording? (Then turn it off!)
- Have you visited www.musicxp.net ?
- Have you read this?

And some general questions....
- What is your latency in Sonar?
- Can you set the latency for the card in some ASIO Control Panel?


Good luck!

[Jim Y]

The fact that it skips on CD playback too is interesting. Some process is interupting the flow of audio data.
Now that we know you have XP, follow up the tweaks over at musicxp.net as suggested.

One culprit may be CD auto insert notification, it can me turned off easily with the TweakUI powertoy utility you can d/load free from microsoft.

If you have MS Office installed, its fast find utility may well be the cause as it runs in the background looking for new files to index. I can't remember how to turn this off, it tends to re-enable itself at every opportunity. Personally, I wouldn't have Office anywhere near a machine used for music production.

Laptop drives were recently limited to 4200rpm or even only 3600rpm - they have to run on battery. There are faster ones now. I still think you should get 8 tracks+ with what you have and possibly 16. I've seen some recent reviews of audio software and interfaces done with a PII400 IBM thinkpad!

[moskus]

Originally posted by Jim Y
I've seen some recent reviews of audio software and interfaces done with a PII400 IBM thinkpad!

Yey! What software is that? Maybe my PII-300 can be of some use finally...

[Porter]

Jim Y,

Are you still playing around with the 840HD?

Porter

[Jim Y]

Hey Moskus - it was in SoS a few months back, I'll try to find out what it was.

But I was multitracking on an AMD K6-350 a good few years back, though that was before VST.

Porter - its an 840CF now! I got a 3.5" IDE Compact Flash card adapter screwed in the zip drive bay. Loaded up with a 512meg CF card is runs sweet and makes a totally silent recorder for location stuff. Card backs up in XP with a USB card reader too.

[Jim Y]

Well OK. The review using a "low" powered laptop was in July2003 Sound on Sound.
This was the spec.
IBM Thinkpad 600E 366MHz
288MB ram
Windows XP Pro
Echo Indigo and Layla24 interfaces.

The product under review was Making Waves Studio.
This is primarily a loop based production system but with VST fx and instrument support. Loops usually run from RAM so I don't suppose it hits the disk that much. I do wonder how he got 288Meg of ram? I'm more impressed that XP Pro is running on it!

I think it's worth bearing in mind that programs like Cubase VST were born in an era when a 400Mhz cpu and 128meg of RAM was considered a high-end workstation. This kind of spec should still be perfectly functional, although you may have to resort to bouncing FX and Soft synths down to new tracks and archiving out the originals to get a high track count.

[moskus]

Originally posted by Jim Y
I'm more impressed that XP Pro is running on it!

Windows XP will run pretty well on a PII-300 if you have more than 128 MB RAM (one of my older computers). If you have 64 (as my laptop), then just forget about it.

Making Waves, eh? Well, not excatly my kind of program.... Maybe I'll install Fruity Loops 2.5 again.