SONAR XL 2.2 / Dropouts Galore?

[mark4man]

People,

On my machine (Dell Dimension, P4 2.5GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, XP), I can run 50 simultaneous SONAR XL 2.2 16-Bit tracks with absolutely no problem...& probably more.

My guitarist also runs SONAR on almost the exact same machine, but just started recording in 24-Bit...& experiences continuous dropouts. We tried a few things, such as applying effects offline to cloned tracks & archiving the originals...defragging, etc., but to no avail.

My question is...would more memory help? I think he has 256MB capacity (& I may be wrong...he may have 512MB)...but, in either case...would more memory help alleviate the problem?

And...on a more technical point...why? (i.e., wouldn't the extra processing involved with 24-Bit put more of a strain on the CPU?)

Thanks very much,

mark4man

 

[acidrock]

More memory..

XP uses a good bit of memory for itself,by going to even 512 you more than double the amount of memory available to Sonar.
Memory has got to be the cheapest,easiest way to improve performance.

 

[dachay2tnr]

Memory will generally help with some plug-ins. I doubt it will do much for track count. (Although adding more memory is never a bad thing. )

My suspicion is that the problem might be hard drive related. Is he running two hard drives? Are they 7200 RPM drives? Is DMA enabled?

If he is only running a single hd, I would spend the money on a second hd before I'd add more memory. Especially if he is already at 512 MB.

 

[mark4man]

dachay,

Thanks.

He's got two drives (one for OS & apps...one for audio.) They're both 7200 RPM; & I thought DMA was default with drives now.

Just in case though, I couldn't find the info (DMA) in Device Manager. Where is it located?

acidrock,

Thanks.

mark4man

 

[dachay2tnr]

dachay,

I thought DMA was default with drives now.

Just in case though, I couldn't find the info (DMA) in Device Manager. Where is it located?

It probably is defaulted to DMA enabled. Worth checking though. If you running Win Xp go into device manager. Then click the plus sign for IDE/ATA Controllers. Right click on Primary IDE and select Properties/Advanced Settings. The transfer mode should be set to "DMA if available." If it is set that way, you can see what the current transfer mode is.

Repeat for Secondary IDE controller.

Also you want to make sure he has his Picture Cache on the OS drive and not on the audio drive.

BTW, you never said what kind of projects he is getting dropouts with. If it is 50 Track, 24 bit projects with effects, you might simply be bumping up against the capacity of the system. I'm not sure what you can/should expect. My old system (733 MHz w/512 memory and dual hd's) would generally max out around 18-20 tracks (24 bit) with effects. Not sure exactly what these newer systems are capable of.

BTW2, you also never mentioned that you had tried raising the latency. If he is trying to run "large, complex" projects with 2.3ms latency or something like that, you might want to back off a bit.

 

[acidrock]

And...on a more technical point...why? (i.e., wouldn't the extra processing involved with 24-Bit put more of a strain on the CPU?)

Take a look at the properties of the exact same audio file in both 16 and 24 bit depths and you'll find the 24 bit file to be much larger.
The computer does'nt know that it's handling audio,pictures,text or whatever.It just knows that the volume of data,1's and 0's,has gone up dramatically.