Serious Sonar trouble. PLEASE HELP!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vinnydude
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Vinnydude

Vinnydude

Clunge Monster
Right, so i had a thread last week on here asking for advice and i've now tried pretty much everything. If anyone is having this same problem i'd love to know so i know i'm not alone!!!

Equipment:

Acer Laptop, 2.4ghz athlon x2, 3 gb ram
Lexicon U82S
Sonar 8.3

The Problem I'm having. I've setup my drums and i've got them all miced up and going back to the lexicon interface and i'm recording all 8 channels simultaneously. Everything is fine until about 2 minutes or more into the track. Sonar skips the recording, i get no dropouts, nothing telling me there is an error. The only way i know this has happened is when i play back and i get a stutter in the track.

Please, i've tried so many changes to i/o buffers, latency, recording to external drives, changing dropout settings, etc. etc.

I really need help with this.
 
That happens to me occasionally. Sometimes you just have to give the audio a minute to load all the way. That's just Sonar though... If your actual audio waves drop out, then I don't know what the problem is.
 
Its not the loading, its just not there, i don't even get the luxury of a gap of silence to indicate just how long the piece of audio that isn't there is!!!

Thanks all the same though man! :P
 
First thing I'd suspect is the fact that your trying 8 inputs with USB. :(
 
I think you will find that there isn't much in it between USB 2.0 and firewire.
 
I think i've got it, and the solution was an odd one.

When i was getting errors, i was always going for solutions that would lighten the load on all my equipment. It would appear i was wrong though because on tightening the strings on everything, speeding up, YES, speeding UP, thats LESS ms, It appears to have solved the issue.

So, my question is. Was Sonar tripping itself up because i gave it too much rope to play with?!!!

Thanks to everyone who've tried to hgelp me through this stressful time :D
 
Latency & Timing

I have a HP dv-7 laptop, AMD Turon X2 processor (2.00MGH dual core), 4 gigs ram, two 320 gig (7200rpm) hard drives and the Tascam us-1641 audio interface.

I have been using this system for about 6 months with Vista 64 bit & Sonar 8.3 and have had very limited results (lots of drop outs and latency problems) and sometimes when overdubbing the tracks are out of sync.

I have just updated to Windows 7 64bit, Sonar 8.5.2 (64) and updated the us-1641 with Tascams latest drivers. I will say this system works best with this setup but it still has problems. I can only record and playback multiple tracks without using plugins. In order to do a mix with plugins I have to disable the us-1641 and use the laptops sound card (IDT Hi-def audio codec).

I have tried Vista (32 and 64) and Sonar 8.3 in both 32 and 64 bit installs and the Windows 7 setup I'm now using is the best so far. I would have tried Windows XP but I can't get XP to install on this computer even with the SATA drivers slipstreamed onto the setup disk.

I think Tascam still needs better drivers or I need a better computer.

I guess an Intel I7 quad core processor and 6-8 gig of ram would do it.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
 
To get xp onto your laptop, i'm guessing it was blue screening on install? If this was the case, its a setting your bios to do with your hard drives that needs to be changed to IDE, can't remember exactly what it is! I had to do that with mine though.

As fr mixing and plugins, i have a seperate machine to do that on. I use my laptop to take out to places to record. I have it setup using an exeternal drive so all i do is take it out and whack it in my main pc and its all there!

As far as skipping and things go, what worked for me was setting in sonar, under options/audio/advanced set the read and write i/o's to about 16 then enable the read and write cache. My latency is set to around 15ms using asio.

Let me know if this helps at all. I know how frustrating this can be!!!
 
i expereinced the same thing in sonar.

pissed me off. royally.

i have since switched to reaper and its a little more stable also, you may wanna chekc and see if your using your asio drivers.

i have just lealrend in the last 20 mnis or so that my sound card is able ot use asio drivers, so i am going to try it tonight, and see if i still get that cutout at the 1:45 2:00 marker.
 
This reaper thing keeps cropping up, i'm going to have to check it out!!!

Anyway, to carry on the saga, band practice last night, thought everything was grand, till i came to listen to what i'd got today, FRIGGING GAPS AGAIN!!!! ARGH!!!
 
Vinnydude said:
This reaper thing keeps cropping up, i'm going to have to check it out!!!

Anyway, to carry on the saga, band practice last night, thought everything was grand, till i came to listen to what i'd got today, FRIGGING GAPS AGAIN!!!! ARGH!!!
Click to expand...

I've had a hell of a time gettin Sonar 8 to play nice with Vista. It worked flawlessly with XP. I've got it running nice and stable now, and doing so on a much, much less capable machine than you are using. I suspect the problems you are having are related to the drivers....might try the ASIO4ALL drivers just for grins and see if that helps. Sure helped me.
 
A quick update.

I tried reaper and i'm getting the same thing.

It has been brought to my attention though that as my interface and external drive are both usb, that i may be raping the usb controllers some what. Hmmm.

Any ideas?
 
Vinnydude said:
A quick update.

I tried reaper and i'm getting the same thing.

It has been brought to my attention though that as my interface and external drive are both usb, that i may be raping the usb controllers some what. Hmmm.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...


Like I mentioned above welcome to USB world. :rolleyes:
 
Do you have the laptop optimised for audio?Is there something running in the background?
 
TeyshaBlue said:
I've had a hell of a time gettin Sonar 8 to play nice with Vista. It worked flawlessly with XP. I've got it running nice and stable now, and doing so on a much, much less capable machine than you are using. I suspect the problems you are having are related to the drivers....might try the ASIO4ALL drivers just for grins and see if that helps. Sure helped me.
Click to expand...

strange that...I have vista on one laptop that anything works on...and one where it took days to get any software running on it...both similar spec'd one with no probs the Dell the other a sony??

both eventually run sonar ok....though I think Im breaking my eula having it on three machines...I expect the FBI any minute now lol


sorry cant help the OP...I have sonar 8 studio and it works on anything Ive installed it on, even i little note book, very stable too
 
Yet another update....

I was curious what i could upgrade inside my laptop, and upon investigation *BOOM* i only have a spare SATA hard drive slot in there!!! :D

So....

Ordered, a rather nice nippy drive for it. The drive arrived, and whats this? Oh, acer use a special drive caddy AND a special connector to plug it in with. More waiting for deliveries.

So....

On order with acer are these 2 parts, and i'm waiting, and waiting. Think i'm going to give them another call.

Patience is NOT one of my strong points!!! :P

I'll post again soon and hopefully, the drive will fix all my problems *fingers crossed*
 
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