Dropouts (in Sonar) ALL the time.

[dynomike]

Its really driving me nuts, since I can't finish this song I'm working on.

I've tried bouncing tracks and whatnot and I'm down to around 50 tracks with minimal processing (many with none.. some with comps/eqs, no reverbs or anything). Its still at around 55% CPU and stalling all the time, especially in areas with lots of tracks going at once. My disk meter jumps around but never over 40%.

System details:
amd 64 3200+
512mb ddr3200 ram (perhaps this is the problem?)
win xp
sonar 5 (running on 32 bit engine)
motu 2408 (set to max buffer of 2048 samples)

I'd be so happy to know whats wrong.. I remember on older systems I used to be able to run smoothly up to around 80-90% cpu before it started dropping out.

Mike

[nolan]

50 tracks huh? What are the specs on your hard drive? Are these all audio (not MIDI) tracks? For a machine trying to play back that many tracks at once, the machines I see usually have at least 1GB of memory, or even more. 512MB might be pushing part of it. You could also try doing some of these tips, to squeeze a bit more performance out of the machine:

http://www.pcaudiolabs.com/winxp_tweaks.asp

Are all 50 tracks necessary? Are there things you can consolidate into a submix or aux bus? Do you have any other projects with this many tracks going at once? How do those play?

And of course another option to try is, just start turning off plugins, and archiving tracks until it starts working all the way through. Then add items back in 1 by 1, until you see what is causing the problem.

hope that helps.

[Phiz]

I've gotten about that many tracks going in Sonar 4 with 512MB ram. Have you defragmented your disk lately? I've notice that can make a substantial difference in how many tracks I could play at once.

[Ethan Holdtrue]

don't forget to shut down everything you have running in the background. If your comp is online you may have spyware and other wonderfull piles of shit running hidden too. You mayhave to end the application tree on some of your background stuff.

One of the biggest things I'd ask (as it already was asked) is what are you running for a drive? Also did you set up your comp your self? Are your machine level settings optimal for your processer?

One last thing is if your running any Multi-Ban Compressers, get rid of them and replace them with a basic comp and an EQ. Those things suck up SOOO much CPU usage it's retarted (though they do sound good).

[earl parameter]

i'd say more ram. could also be that there is a problem with your ram. i had this happen not too long ago. try to shut down and re-seat it. or replace it with high quality ram if you don't already have some (it did make a hugh difference for me). and watch out for other cpu hogs running in the back ground.

[cvanwinkle]

I'm assuming you're having the dropouts during playback.
Are you using an ASIO device? If so, what is it's buffer setting?

I've recently been doing some fiddling with Sonar 5 Producer edition and noticed that contrary to any logic I know of, really high buffer sizes aren't performing as well as, say, a median buffer size (e.g. 8192 samples vs 512). To me, this doesn't make sense... I'm looking into it further.

[mpedrummer]

Do you have Nuendo or Cubase installed on the same system, by any chance?

I don't know that this is still an issue, but I've had trouble with a system in the past that was similar to what you're describing. Basically, whichever program (Sonar or Nuendo) was installed first, won, and the other would be weird and gappy.

MPEDrummer

[cvanwinkle]

Do you have Nuendo or Cubase installed on the same system, by any chance?

Actually I do (Cubase SX3). However, Sonar was installed first on this system.