Sonar 3- VSTi's only sound when song is playing, not idle

[bcmusic76]

Hello all. I am new to this forum, but a longtime Cakewalk user.

I recently upgraded to Sonar 3 (but still use Sonar 2 on a regular basis). I have contacted Cakewalk about this problem but they do not know what it is and suggested I try some forums.

Say I insert a DXi track... for example, my Native Instruments Pro-53 which I love so much. Ok, so it's there, with the audio output track that Sonar 3 graciously inserts automatically (nice feature). I tap on my keyboard, and no sound from the Pro-53. All outputs and inputs are set correctly. But here's the catch.

I can play the Pro-53 when a song is playing (for example, if I drop a drum loop in the song). It plays perfectly. Then, if I press the space bar to stop the song, or if the loop runs out and reaches the end of the track, all of a sudden my Pro-53 will not sound, even though I know MIDI is transmitting because I can see the icon in the bottom right corner of my screen (the little keyboard icon that lights up when MIDI is being transmitted).

Does anyone know what's up? It works perfectly in Sonar 2, I have no idea why it will not let me noodle around with the Pro-53 (or ANY DXi/VST instrument) when the song is idle (stopped).

Thanks for any information!

-Skip

 

[moskus]

It couldt be that your machine is a bit slow for Sonar 3. Hitting play is forcing the audio-engine on. This sounds a bit far out, so let's try a new one...

Is the audio-engine on when Sonar is stopped?

 

[bcmusic76]

yeah it's on

the audio engine is on when sonar 3 is stopped.

it does help, like, after i stop the song... i press the icon to stop the audio engine, and press it again to restart it... then my VSTis make sound. but it's just such a redundant step. it should just sound all the time, without having to reset the audio engine. is there anything i can change in the aud.ini file?


i don't think my computer is too slow for sonar 3.... 2.0 runs perfectly.

specs:
m-audio delta 44 soundcard
windows XP
pentium III, 1ghz processor
512 RAM
two hd's- 40 gig for progs, 80 gig for audio

my system is optimized for music. never had problems before.

any additional help would be appreciated, thanks!


-skip

 

[moskus]

Re: yeah it's on

i don't think my computer is too slow for sonar 3.... 2.0 runs perfectly.

Sorry, but I think you're demanding a bit much from your computer (1 GHz isn't exactly much these days), and Sonar 3 has higher requirements than Sonar 2 . What is happening is this: When you hit stop, there's actually a little dropout. This dropout is somehow to small for Sonar to detect, but it leaves the Audio-Engine halt. So you need to stop it and start it.

I'm betting that raising the latency will fix the issue, but then you won't be able to play the synths in realtime...

 

[moskus]

I just remembered: There is a workaround for this.

You can use Keybindings (Options -> Key Bindings) and bind a keycombination, f.ex. Ctrl + Q, to the Start/Stop AudioEngine. Then when you hit stop, just hit Ctrl + Q twice and it should work.

 

[kgirl72]

Hey all,

does anyone know if that normalizer, or denormalizer, whatever he calls it plug in from www.digitalfishphones.com might actually be something worth looking into? A lot of people seem to be saying that when the audio is stopped, it won't make a sound. I'm afraid to mess with the plug in as it seems over my head, but the description of it seems interesting.

Someone smart go check it out and tell me what it really all means, please. I just noticed the problem with Sonar 3 and these P4 computers I'm using. Sonar 2 didn't do it. My resources should be plenty good to handle most everything I throw at it.

Thanks
-Kirstin