switching to reason

[MrLip]

I'm trying to use Sonar 2.2 rewired with Reason but there's one annoying thing. When I switch to reason (putting sonar in the background) to edit parameters or select patches, there's no sound. It works fine when Sonar is in the foreground, but switching to Reason makes all sound stop.

Is there a setting somewhere or something that fixes this?

Thanks.

 

[moskus]

Yes. Goto Options -> Audio -> Advanced and tick the "Share drivers with other programs" checkbox. At least, that's what I think I did...

 

[MrLip]

I've already got that checked.

If Sonar is playing and I switch to the reason window, all is fine. But if i stop playback in Sonar and switch to Reason, Reason's meters freeze and there is no output (I press keys on my midi controller but no sound comes out of reason) As soon as I switch back to the Sonar window everything works properly.

I had this same problem with Sonar 2.0 and Reason 2.0. (Now using Sonar 2.2 and Reason 2.5 on WinXP)

 

[MrLip]

It seems that Sonar doesn't work when it is not the 'active' program window (ie. right now I'm typing this message and Sonar does not respond to playing on my MIDI controller, but if I make Sonar the 'active' window, it will work fine.)

In CubaseSX there is a check box for "release driver in background" which deals with this exact problem, but I haven't been able to find anything similar in Sonar.

HELP!

 

[MrLip]

Got it.

You have to UN-check the "share drivers with other programs" checkbox.

 

[guitar ed]

What?????!!! That doesn't make any sense! Hey, whatever works, but why would you tell Sonar NOT to share drivers with other programs in order to make it share drivers with other programs??

ed

 

[James Argo]

When you leave Sonar in background, make sure you still run the Audio Engine... Sometime, if playback stopped, and you switch to another apps, it's turned off automaticaly It's there beside panic/reset button... Click it...

Hope it helps,

Jaymz

 

[MrLip]

Thanks James I'll keep that in mind.

guitar ed: I'm not exactly sure either, but here's my guess:

When you're running Sonar and you switch to another program (such as Reason), you're not actually changing output drivers. You may tweak some settings in Reason but the audio output is still being streamed to Sonar (via rewire) and out whatever audio drivers have been asigned to it. By checking "share drivers with other programs" you tell Sonar that you want to free up the drivers for use with other audio applications, therefore when you switch to another window, Sonar releases the driver as to free it. My guess is that the purpose of this is, for example, if you want to play an audio file with Windows Media Player (which also uses WDM drivers -- the same ones as Sonar) while Sonar was running. If Sonar was running with the audio engine engaged, Windows Media Player wouldn't be able to playback audio because Sonar would currently 'own' the audio drivers. By checking "sharing drivers with other programs", Sonar frees up the driver when in background so that it can be used by another program.

That's just my guess though

 

[moskus]

That's just my guess though

Well, that made sense, except for one thing:

Windows Media Player (or whatever) will use WDM-drivers if Windows detects them. WMP doesen't require low latency and therefore the WDM-driver is basically reduced to MME-drivers.



And why shouldn't you be able to tweak Reason while getting the sound from Sonar, when I can. I have no problems with that what so ever, but then again my Audio Engine doesen't pop out when I change programs.

It's like I play a MIDI tune with a Piano soundfont in Sonar, and then click on the Start-menu. I can still play piano.