Sonar3, Aardvark 24/96, Win XP Just Isn't working.

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stratton

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Hi all, my first post here.

Sonar3, Aardvark 24/96, Win XP on a brand new custom 2.8Ghz P4, 1GB ram. Mackie control surface, too.

I've been recording happily, uh, more or less successfully, with Sonar 1.3 on another machine with Win98 SE. Can't get off the ground with the new rig.

I've done all the XP tweaks I've found, tried different Aardvark drivers, selcted, this and hat, moved sliders around, to no avail. I've done enough to see the potential of this rig, but so far it's not stable enough to make it through a track, let alone a session.

Needless to say, suggestions are welcome. I have emails out to both Aard and Cakewalk.

Thanks,
Ken
 
....at this point it sounds like you may have to do a new "clean install" of XP, the Aardvark drivers (only the ones for your 24/96) and Sonar3....did you disable the soundcard that came with your rig?
 
MAC2 said:
....at this point it sounds like you may have to do a new "clean install" of XP, the Aardvark drivers (only the ones for your 24/96) and Sonar3....did you disable the soundcard that came with your rig?
Click to expand...

I've been thinking the same thing. Yes, I disabled the onboard sound.

I made an image of the C drive before I started all this. Last resort!

Ken
 
I've got a VERY VERY similar rig to yours.

3 gHz P4 (800 mHz fsb)
1 gig dual channel ddr ram
Gigabyte Motherboard (onboard sound disabled)
Mackie Control control surface
Matrox G550 display card with dual monitors
UAD-1 effects card
Dual Aardvark 24/96 interfaces
Sonar 3.0
Windows XP Pro

I had some bad experiences with Sonar 2.2 using some of the web published tweaks - especially the direct regedit changes and service mods, so I went back to a lightly tweaked system. Your system should be PLENTY DARN fast without having to do much in the way of tweaks.

For me - Sonar 3.0 is totally absolutely stable. I've only run a few sessions so far - probably about 20 hours of use - but I haven't had any hiccups, let alone any crashes.

If you can't back out the tweaks manually, I would also suggest you start with a fresh install.

Good luck!
-lee-
 
Relax....

The good news is that I am running a P4-1.8GHz with 1G RAM, Sonar 3.0 and an Aardvark 24/96.

I am using Windows 2000, although this should not be significantly different.

To get the most out of the Aardvark card and Sonar 3.0 you need to decide whether to use ASIO or Aardvark's A|WDM driver - they call it an "Advanced WDM" driver... For "Advanced" you may substitute non-standard, although it seems to work just as good if not better than a truly compliant WDM driver. It just changes what you need to do in Sonar to make it work properly.

Do these steps and then tell me what happens -

First, make sure you have the latest driver for the 24/96 - this should be driver version 7.04 - Open the Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96 control panel, click on Advanced and it will tell you which revision you have. If it isn't 7.04 go to the website, www.aardvarkaudio.com and download it from the Drivers section.

Try to configure using Aardvark's A|WDM driver -

1. Open Sonar go to OPTIONS-AUDIO, click on the Advanced tab and select the dropdown box for DRIVER MODE.
2. Choose MME 32-BIT, (the Aardvark A|WDM driver needs to be addressed like a MME driver to work. If you choose WDM as a driver type performance sux.)
3. Click the GENERAL tab. Make sure that the PLAYBACK and RECORDING TIMING MASTER are set to a matching output on the 24/96
4. In the MIXING LATENCY section slide it over to the left - I am running at 4.4msec with 20+ audio tracks with little drama.

That should get you cooking - there is a configuring Sonar for the 24/96 FAQ and walkthrough available on the Aardvark website, but it is written for Sonar 2.2 and has conflicting information in the FAQ and the walkthrough. Play with settings on that last tab in OPTIONS-AUDIO as per the FAQ etc., to see what gives you the best results.

Now sometimes I find that if I am working with a lot of soft-synths, I get better performance using the ASIO driver. To set Sonar up with the 24/96 like this, do these steps -

1. Close Sonar, open the Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96 Control Panel
2. Click Advanced, click ASIO and DirectX
3. Deselect all checkboxes except for "Turbo mode"
4. Try a ASIO buffer size of 192 which should give a 4msec latency
5. Open Sonar go to OPTIONS-AUDIO, click on the Advanced tab and select the dropdown box for DRIVER MODE.
6. Choose ASIO

Give it a go. If you still have problems, let me know specifically what is happening and we can get you sorted. Also, if you got any Sonar 3.0 information from Aardvark concerning the Direct Pro 24/96 post it on here please!

Thanks,

:) Q.
 
Great advice, Q!

Just a couple more things. What midi interface are you using for the Mackie? I'm using the interface in the Aardvark.

What motherboard are you using?

Exactly what cards do you have in your system?

Is the Aardvark on its own interrupt?

Have you disabled any on-board sound from your motherboard? Do you have any other soundcards in the system?

I'm not using softsynths right now, and I'm doing my monitoring through the Aardvark, so I haven't played with the latency -- I let the wave profiler do that. I've experimented some - with 2.2 on a slower machine, it made a huge stability difference. On my current megabeast, it seems to be stable just about everywhere. What is your latency set to?

-lee-
 
Thanks for responding, guys. For as big a headache as this has been, I'm still excited at the possibilities of this system. Having used the DP 24/96 for a few years now, and doing the rearch again recently for the new system, I feel it's still the best thing going. Or will be!

Lee, my system particulars:

Abit IC7 motherboard (Intel chipset), on board sound, and the Aardvark DP 24/96, so there are the two sound sources. I have disabled the onboard sound, leaving the Aard as the default Windows sound card. I tried disabling that too, but then Aard din't see the card either.

The Aard is on it's own IRQ, 20.

At first I used the Aard for midi as wel, but when I couldn't get things going I added a MidiMan Midisport 2X2 USB. I would need it anyway for synths and drum machines so I decided to to see if it would help. It didn't.


Q,

I've got driver 7.04 installed. I tried 5.22, but the app wouldn't even start in XP.

I tried all the settings recommended by you, Cakewalk, and Aardvark, and nothing works so far. ASIO seems to be the worst as it brings the entire system to it's knees. Sonar doesn't even want to open.

Here's what happens. I'll press play on the control surface or the keyboard and sometimes playback will start, sometimes not. I haven't gotten any sound out of the rig since yesterday, when I was able to do *some* tracking. Many, many reboots, though. The tracks will "play", though the Aard doesn't see any signal, no sound. Then the meters in Sonar will freeze, and Sonar will stop responding. Sometimes a DROPOUT will show, sometimes not.

Another peculiar thing that never happened before is that occasionlly the Aard will start an electronic squealing at a fixed frequency, and nothing will stop it without a reboot. Never heard that one before. I know you have to ask, but it's not acoustic feedback. I'll mute inputs, bring all levels down, bring them up again and the squeal is still there.

I'm using 24bit audio only, no virtual or soft stuff. I'm not monitoring an input in Sonar, only direct monitoring through the Aard.

So what do you think? I'll goof with the DMA setting in the MME32 bit mode a little more, see if that helps. It does seem like a data I/O thing.

Ken
 
I just remembered something. Do you have HyperThreading turned on in your BIOS? I had problems with my system before I turned it off. It didn't make a big performance difference, but it made a HUGE stability difference.

-lee-
 
Yeah, HT is turned in. At least I think it is. HT isn't yet supprted in S3, though Cakewlak says it shoudn't be a problem. I'll turn it off for now.

One other detail.. I have been attempting to work an a project I started in Sonar 1.3 after saving it in S3. I'll try starting a "native" S3 project and see what happens.

Ken
 
Ken, I think this might be it. Sonar 2.2 was crashing all over the place for me with hyperthreading turned on. I think its the Aardvark drivers that are not multithread safe. I believe Sonar is fine - but it doesn't get a big performance boost from it anyway.

Good luck!
-lee-
 
stratton:

I'm no expert on this stuff by any means but a couple things came to mind reading your latest posts...does the 24/96 have a routing dialog box?....I have a Q10 and that tone you said you're hearing reminds me of the test tone included with the Q10 for troubleshooting and to test routing....also, I built my system by purchasing and assembling the individual components....after failing to get things up and running I finally noticed I'd purchased the wrong ram for my motherboard...it was a matter of one letter after the part number....just some thoughts...
 
Well, no dice so far. I turned HT off, started a native S3 project playing very sad little riffs on the acoustic, Sonar froze, Aard squealed while recording the 3rd 20 second track.

I'll check into the RAM thing Mac.

I opened Task Manager to watch CPU usage when the Aard started suealing and CPU usage was 100%. I have monitor routed to the three sets of outputs. I know about the test tone, I didn't have that enabled.

Ken
 
OK - it sounds like that you have upgraded from a previous Sonar version. On some of the newsgroups and knowledge base articles, Cakewalk seem to be experiencing some sort of issue related to upgraded installations.

- Close Sonar
- Make a backup of your AUD.INI and CAKEWALK.INI files.
- Delete the AUD.INI and CAKEWALK.INI files.
- Open Sonar
- Reconfigure everything because you just toasted your settings.

Re-test.

Also - there seem to have been some weird things with the Mackie control surface implementation in Sonar 3.0... Again, weird reports on the newsgroups etc. I don't have one so I can't help you out there.

From a troubleshooting perspective, I would recommend disabling it and getting Sonar working correctly with the 24/96 before then trying to troubleshoot any remaining "Mackie" issues.

The other thing to have a look at is your disk I/O settings in Sonar. I am using Ultra IDE drives which do not have an option for DMA mode. These seem to give the best performance when I set Sonar to use an I/O Buffer size of 1,024 not the default 64. Try fiddling with this under OPTIONS-AUDIO. This applies to Aardvark's A|WDM mode.

As for the squeal you are getting - is it actually the same pitch as the test tone in the Aardvark control panel? If so, this may indicate that the card is failing and the Aardvark driver is having trouble staying bound to the card. Which leads me to -

Do you still have the older version of Sonar installed? Is it still working properly?

Do you have another multitrack sequencer program? A Cubase demo? Try recording with it -- this will at least give you a clue as to whether the card itself is working correctly on a hardware + driver level or whether it is a Sonar issue.

:) Q.

- It sucks now, but will soon work wonderfully. Keep smilin'
- Aardvark recommend NOT setting the Direct Pro as the default Windows card and also recommends AGAINST using the Direct Pro to play Windows sound schemes. When I have had it configured this way I have also had weird stuff happening.

(I now keep an old SB Gold card in for this purpose and games and just route it's output into a spare input set on the Direct Pro...)
 
Q, great ideas.

Before I installed any audio stuff, I created a "clean" ghost image of my C drive and stored it on my D drive. At one time I did have Sonar 1 and 3 both installed (neither worked, BTW). I ran into trouble, restored my C drive with the image I had created, re-installed S3 byitself, along with the Aard drivers.

The squeal is a different pitch (an octave higher) than the Aard test tone, but worth a try.

I installed Cubase SX demo (so THAT'S where Inspector and fonts came from!) and got the same squeal even more quickly.

I adjusted to 1024, no difference.

Thanks for the ideas.

Ken
 
OK - congratulations - looks like you have tracked it down to a hardware level fault.

The question is now whether or not it is some sort of hardware conflict or just faulty hardware.

You said that the 24/96 is using IRQ 20 - this is a 'virtual' IRQ and relies on PCI bridging to be addressed. As such it is possible that there is actually something else in the PC conflicting with this process and thereby stopping the driver from communicating with the card.

What other cards are in the PC? Network? Other sound cards?

Rip 'em all out and retest.

That will tell you whether or not it is a hardware fault or just a conflict.

If you want to be double sure, keep all the cards out of the box, then install a fresh copy of XP, (not just the Ghost image), the Aardvark 7.04 drivers and Sonar 3.0

And test that.

If that still falls over I think it is time to ring Aardvark support and ask for a free Q10 for both of us.

:) Q.

If you have another PC about, try sticking the card in that and see if it does the same thing.
 
Two Q10s to go, please.

I just tried using the onboard sound and noticed similar behavior when monitoring processes in task manager. SONAR will jump immediatley up to 98% of the CPU usage, then increase over a couple of seconds to 100%. That just doesn't seem right.

With the Aard that would have resulted in the squeal. But, from what I read in other posts, the CPU usage is normal behavior.

Ken
 
Last edited:
Yeah - don't worry about CPU thing - it is normal experience for Sonar.

Give Aardvark a call - they seem better at that than answering email.

Good luck,

:) Q.
 
I spoke with Aardvark a couple of times today. The tech I spoke with couldn't figure it out. As far as he could tell, my system is fully supported. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

The chief tech will call me tomorrow. Will keep you posted.

Ken
 
Good!

(I hate to say it but I would have been really pissed off if it had been a simple solution we had overlooked!)

You'll get it cranking - or you shall have a Q10, oh yes, you shall have a Q10...

:) Q.

Did you ever get a chance to throw it in another PC?
 
I did finally put the card in another PC, the one I used it with for about 3 years. It worked fine.

I'm beginning to suspect the mainboard, am Abit IC7. Ya never know. Do I swap it out? Return the Abit as being defective? How do I know it is defective, and not the Aard being marginal?

Ken
 
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