Sonar 3 uses 100% CPU!?

Uladine

Uladine

New member
I finally got Sonar 3 and I am able to record in 24 bit, but I keep getting dropouts when trying to record even one stereo track.

The CPU meter in Sonar shows almost no activity, but the windows XP performance meter shows the CPU usage at 100% even when I'm just playing back a single stereo wav at 24 bits/44.1khz.

Adjusting the latency had no impact, nor did switching to 16 bit operation. I tried adjusting pretty much every setting in Sonar and my sound card's control panel, but nothing affected the problem at all. No matter what my settings are, simply hitting play makes the CPU usage meter jump to 100%. The Sonar disk meter shows almost no activity either. It's weird. I don't know if I have something set wrong in windows or what.

The really weird thing is that if I open a project I made in Sonar 1 I can record 6 tracks simultaneously while playing one midi track and one audio track with no dropouts. The CPU meter is still at 100% but it doesn't drop out unless I start a new project and try to record. I'm stumped. Any help is greatly appreciated.

oh yea,

My system:

AMD Athlon xp1600 (1.4 ghz)

Cant remember the motherboard although know its an ASUS

512 MB sdram

2 Maxtor 40 GB 7200 rpm hard drives (one dedicated to OS and programs, the other for audio)

ST Audio DSP 2000 Cport
 
Don't worry about the XP meter,that's just showing that Sonar has first dibs on the cpu.
The only meter that matters is the one in Sonar.
 
Uladine,

I think you will find the way that Sonar works is by using up 100% of your CPU in windows so its in reserve. ie, if Sonar needs processor power it won't have to fight for it from other apps, making it run faster/better.

In other words, only worry about the CPU meter in Sonar.

Porter
 
As for the drop outs, if you are using WDM drivers, re-run Wave Profiler and try again.. otherwise, post which drivers you are running and the latency/buffer settings.

Porter
 
I have been watching the CPU usage in taskmanager a lot the last few days. Had a virus (worm, actually), and one of the signs it was in my system was its usage of CPU power. Watching the task manager I have found that a lot of programs will run CPU at 100%. This must mean they are just doing their best when possible. Same probably goes for Sonar, like others here have noticed. What matters is the meter in Sonar itself.

My guess is, Sonar uses 100% when possible for buffering, looking ahead and doing other non-critical jobs. Then if another process shortly demands the attention of the CPU, Sonar is better equipped to resist a drop-out. So the meter in Sonar is an indication of the usage of absolutely necessary resources only.
 
Oh that makes sense. Thanks guys. I'm not at home so I can't mess with my system at the moment, but I definitely will try the dropout prevention methods. I just mainly got freaked out by the XP usage meter and thought something was wrong. I feel much better now. Good news indeed.
 
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