Getting 24 bit recording with Sonar?

J

JPlush76

New member
I'm pretty new to Sonar and I've done everything in 16 bit mode so far, because when I try to switch to 24 bit everything pretty much freezes up and won't playback

I have a new computer with the right hardware for it:
Pent IV 1.7 GHZ 500+ Meg Ram Soundblaster Platinum Card, Echo Gina 24bit input/output system

Any tricks to getting 24 bit?

Also, does it really make a difference, being cd's are only 16 bit anyway?

thanks all!
 
I see no reason why with your system you shouldn't be able to use 24 bit recording. I'm using 24 bit with a 733 MHz PIII.

What OS? What drivers are you attempting to use (WDM or MME)? Are you using the latest drivers for your sound card? Did you disable the SB from your audio devices in Sonar? Are you trying to use input monitoring? Do you have DMA enabled for your hard drives?

I would suggest that you start by making sure your hard drive(s) have DMA enabled. Next I would disable the SB Live in Sonar. Then I would disable Input Monitoring (if it is enabled). Lastly I would check off the Use Only MME Drivers box in Sonar. Then set your audio to 24 bits, reprofile the sound card and exit and reenter Sonar.

Hopefully that will get you going. If that works, and you want to try going back to WDM drivers, go ahead and see what happens. The other stuff I would probably leave as is.

If it doesn't work, c'mon back and we'll see what else we can think of.

As for whether 24 bits makes a difference, you are getting into most people's religion with this question. Those in favor will say that you get a better signal to noise ratio when recording at 24 bits, and that any subsequent processing (dsp) will be done at the higher quality, and that these two benefits outweigh the degradation that occurs when you finally drop it back to 16 bits (assuming you use a good dithering algorithm for this last step).
 
Oh, I forgot. You can also try increasing your latency setting in Options Audio and/or raising the number of buffers. I think Sonar defaults to 2 buffers, you might try 3 or 4 and see what that gets you.

This last step usually is usually more a fix for dropouts when playing back audio, rather than freezes. But if it's severe enough, I imagine it could cause freez-ups.
 
This is a shot in the dark, but I seem to remember reading on the (Cakewalk) newsgroup that Cakewalk products don't support different maximum bit-rates on muiltiple cards: they default to the highest bit-rate that all cards can peform at. The SBL is only 16-bit, is it not?
 
JPlush76 said:
I'm pretty new to Sonar and I've done everything in 16 bit mode so far, because when I try to switch to 24 bit everything pretty much freezes up and won't playback

I have a new computer with the right hardware for it:
Pent IV 1.7 GHZ 500+ Meg Ram Soundblaster Platinum Card, Echo Gina 24bit input/output system

Any tricks to getting 24 bit?

Also, does it really make a difference, being cd's are only 16 bit anyway?

thanks all!
Click to expand...

Sound Blasters max out at 16bit/48Khz recording. Anybody who says otherwise must be smoking something.

You cannot do 24bit recording with a Sound Blaster.
 
"24 BIT PLAYBACK, 24 BIT PLAYBACK, 24 BIT PLAYBACK"

Why that translates to 24 bit recording is beyond me. It's a great marketing trick because it seems to work pretty well. Like brzilian says, "You cannot do 24bit recording with a Sound Blaster."
 
Teacher is correct on pointing out the fact that if you switch to 24-bit, disable your SB Live. I even had mine disabled for use within Sonar itself, and I still had problems with using Sonar. I actually disabled the card altogether within the Device Manager...then my problems went away.

I use mine with a Frontier Designs Dakota card.
 
hmm so the only way is to disable it all together?

so I can't use the soundblaster for playback?

yea the echo gina says 24 bit right on it, I wasn't planning on recording with the sound blaster
 
That's right...at least through my experience under Windows XP. I was using it in Windows 98SE, but I had my audio set to 16-bit back then, and I was only using the SB Live for it's midi port...which worked great...until I upgraded to Windows XP. I can't use any feature of it within Sonar 1 or 2 and Windows XP, as it causes Sonar to hang....If I disabled the audio portion of the SB Live within Device Manager, the Gameport would no longer be seen as a midi port....so I finally physically removed it altogether...

As for other uses...XP translates any game, etc., that works with an SB card to whatever sound card you have in it...so it's not needed for sound at all. Even my old Dos games work through my Dakota. And since it is my Studio machine, I've disabled system sounds altogether....I don't want to waste CPU on randome clicks and dings...nor do I want to record them!
 
i use my sblive in conjunction wit my delta 66 with no problems...usually sonar will disable ur sblive driver for u by saying "the following cards don't support bit depth" with 2 options "disable or use anyway" doesn't matter which one u pick they still will be disabled and u'll still be able to use the game port as a midi port
 
I am running a SBLive! in the same PC as my Aardvark Digital Pro 2496.

Sonar is configured to record and playback @ 24bit.

When you start Sonar, it tells you that the SBLive does not support recording at 24bit and prompts you to disable it for RECORDING.

This is all you need to do. If you wanted to, you can still use the MIDI features of the card. You do NOT need to disable the card from operation.......... (hell, how else do ya then play Quake?)

My 2 cents,

Q.
 
Qwerty said:


This is all you need to do. If you wanted to, you can still use the MIDI features of the card. You do NOT need to disable the card from operation..........


Click to expand...

That's right. I use the SB Audigy Midi Port II OUT while still keeping my Delta at 24 bit. Just started doing 24 bit myself.
 
My issue might be a bad SB Live card. I had placed it in another one of my systems. The system was dual boot. It was working ok under Windows 98SE, but XP wouldn't play any sounds. After a couple of days, the computer stopped booting at all. I removed it yesterday and the system started working again. Strange....

Anyway, when I had it in my studio system, I had ended up disabling it within Device manager...but only the audio portion. As soon as I did that, though, the midi port would disappear from Sonar or Cakewalk. If I had the audio portion enabled, but disabled from within Sonar, Sonar would come up, and see the midi port, but even if I didn't use any of it, Sonar would start running extremely slow. I didn't have any interrupt issues, so I was confused. Now, at least, I think I know what the issue was. My SB Live must have been going bad all along!
 
Creative cards are dodgy in WinXP: in different hardware setups the soundcard may not work at all, may only play basic soundfiles one-at-a-time and nothing else (no MIDI or recording+monitoring), or may work completely as normal. WinXP is supposed to contain the minimum drivers to play simple sound on all Creative cards.
- In two computers I tried it in running WinXP, the standard SBL retail driver install CD refused to run in normal mode, and compatibility mode doesn't enable the card fully.
- Compaq created an XP Creative driver for their computers shipped with XP; these drivers work in many other PC's running XP also. This driver file download is 386 megs long.
- The KX drivers work for many people, but they eliminate the old Creative interface and supply a different KX one that doesn't have the same features.
- The soundcard driver also handles the MIDI/gameport also... There's no way I've ever seen to disable half the card.
 
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