Sonar dropouts!?

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gordholio

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I have a serious problem with Sonar 2.1 and my system. After spending an hour total time on the phone with Cakewalk support, another fifteen minutes with Midiman, and at least 12 hours of solo troubleshooting, it has not been resolved. I am going to return the product this week if I can't find a solution. If anyone here can help, it would be very much appreciated.

I run Sonar (2.1) on a Windows XP system with a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz processor, 512 MB DDR RAM and a Delta 66 sound card with the latest non-beta drivers. I've just completely reformatted all three of my drives (3 80GB drives) and re-installed everything. This system is used ONLY for audio.

Anyway, I'm getting erratic dropouts and CPU spikes when I use Sonar, especially when I add effects to tracks. I don't have any particularly big files - my biggest is 8 tracks. In one particular song, I have just three tracks, and even it is problematic. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when the problems arise. On one song with just 5 audio tracks, the CPU meter spikes about 15 seconds into it (from 3% to 70%). In another song with 7 audio tracks, I can sometimes add twenty-plus effects with no problem (CPU stays below 15% even with these effects active). Yet when I start the song up another time, I can't even add ONE effect without a dropout. There are many other problems just like these, but in the interest of brevity I won't go into them.

I have tried ALL the fixes suggested by Cakewalk. I have tried the fixes suggested by Midiman. Furthermore, I know my way around the computer, and have tried everything I can possibly think of (including reformatting everything for a clean start). BY the way, I have been previously using ntrack and have been
able to record and playback as many as 15 effect-laden tracks with no problems.

Thanks for letting me vent. If ANYONE have a potential solution, I will be forever thankful.

gordo
 
This probably is better suited for the Cakewalk forum. However, here's a couple of thoughts:

1. Can you isolate the problem to a particular effect. Certain effects are much more processor intensive than others. Therefore, it's not really the number of effects you use, but rather type make/model of the effects you are using. Waves Reverb Plugins for example are very processor intensive. So is Ozone.

Open up one of the files that is giving you problems and try bypassing the effects you are using one at a time. See if you can locate one that might be causing the dropout.

If you locate one, and you are using it on more than one track. Try using it on a aux bux instead. Or try using another make/model. The Fx Effects supplied with Sonar seem use very few resources (but, of course, don't sound as good as the Waves :) )

2. Are you using WDM drivers for the Delta? If so, what is your latency setting? Have you tried increasing it? Have you tried raising the # of buffers? Have you tried using different buffer sizes in the Delta control panel? Have you tried switching to MME drivers? Have you tried using an earlier version of the Delta drivers?

3. How is your memory configured. Could you possible have a bad memory module?

4. Are you sure it is the processor that is giving you the problem, and not the HDD's. If it's the HDD's it could lead you down other paths to try.
 
Thanks for the reply. I have already tried all of the paths you've suggested. I have tried this baby in virtually every possible configuration. And yes, I do find that there are certain effects that are definitely more harmful than others. What really bugs me though, is that those same troublesome effects work just peachy in ntrack. Man, I can load twenty or more effects on to a single track in ntrack, no problem.

I am using WDM. I have tried MME. I've tried dozens of latency and buffer options. Memory is good.

I've tried demos of Cool Edit, Cubase, ACID, etc. Everything runs just fine except the one program I need. Grr...

gordo
 
One other thought. Do you have Input Monitoring enabled? Have you tried disabling it, and did it have any impact on your problem?

I'm not sure if N-Track features Input Monitoring. Maybe that's the difference?

Just a thought.
 
you know, i just had that same problem the other night. and i have plenty of horsepower (pIV 2.4gig/533FSB) with the latency set all the way up. i had five tracks going. four of them had the compressor-x running on them and it was weird like you said. it was always the second time i ran through the song that it started happening. the cpu would just steadily march right on up to 100% then dropout. i applied the effects and the problem disappeared but i'm not considering it a solution.
 
Interesting. I just copied my three song files (all of which have various CPU spike/dropout problems) from my P4 computer to my AMD computer in the other room. Same program (Sonar 2.1), same effects, same everything as far as software goes (except many more tasks running in the background), and all of them played just fine. In fact, I was able to add 20-plus effects, no problem.

I've been reading about the "normalization" issue concerning Pentium processors, and I'm really beginning to believe it. I mean, I have tried EVERYTHING to get the Pentium machine to behave with Sonar (and I do mean everything, including disassembling much of it), and NOTHING works. I figure I've put in 30 hours so far and a bunch of money in tech support calls that solved nothing. I have narrowed it down somewhat, however. I took the Delta card completely out, removed the driver, etc., and I still had the problems even through the crappy built-in sound card. By the way, I disabled that too at one time tonite in favor of the Delta card, but that didn't work either.

Still desperately looking for help if there's any help to be found.
 
It sounds like it could be either your CPU, motherboard or memory or connecting cables. If it works
sometimes, and other times not, that could be a temperature sensitivity, which
still points to the above. You might try spraying components with cool spray,
and see if you can narrow it down. If it gets better or worse with the spray,
your getting close.

Generally, for playback, if you get more droputs with more plugins, that points
to memory and/or motherboard. If dropouts get worse with increased track count,
look at hard-drive/motherboard. I think a flaky CPU could affect both.

I had a similar problem when I upgraded from Pro Audio 9 to Sonar. I found in my case, I needed a longer latency time to stop the dropouts. I'm running a PIII 500Mhz.
 
Under:

Options>Global>Audio Data

What folder do you have?

Also:

Options>Global>Folders

Where are you putting Project Files and Wave Files?

Ed
 
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