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Sonar audio

Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 4:28 am
by quantum renoir
I have been using Sonar 2.2 with a SBLive card for the last year or more, running Windows 2000 on a Dell, 1.7 gh Pentium, 256 megs of RAM and can never record an audio track without dropouts occurring.. When playing back, if I have more then 2 or 3 audio tracks running, Sonar will actually grind to a halt.. I have also noticed that Sonar seems to be leaking memory by the buckets.. I very rarely see anything on the web that indicates that others are having a frustrating experience attempting to use Sonar... I've altered the buffer sizes, eliminated background processes, defragged, etc. ad nauseum and I still can't believe that Sonar is being used to do anything on a professional-level when it involves audio... any one out there care to respond and share your thoughts on my experiences, your comments, suggestions, etc. are welcome.

Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 9:53 am
by andychap
Some thing definately wrong there. You should be able to get many more tracks than that.

Is Sonar the only application that leaks memory. If so and it is a legit copy try Cakewalk tech support and see if they can help.

The SB Live is not a good card for recording audio but it is possible if you can find some WDM drivers for it. The Creative drivers are pretty poor.

There are a couple of things to try. Optimise your system as best you can. Try some of the links in the Optimisation Thread. Get your buffer sizes as low as they will go, about 512 is probably about the lowest and try the latency slider at about 20 ms.

Use the MME interface drivers, they work best with creative cards. Leave any effects until you have finished recording and any tracks that you don't need for monitoring whilst recording, archive them to release processor power.

Try a small application called Freemem (a Google search should find it) leave it running on the task bar and you will be able to see what memory you have left. When it runs low then you can free up some more.

I used to have a memory leakage problem with Sonar 1.3XL but since upgrading to 2.2XL I have had no problems. But I did do a clean install of 2.2, not just over the top of 1.3.

Make sure you have no conflicts with you soundcard. The usual conflict is with he graphics gard. There is an issue with a certain sort of graphics card Radeon I think that just is no good for audio work. The quickest way to check conflicts with your souncard is to try it in another PCI slot but try and keep it as far away from the graphics card as possible. If you find better drivers to install it might be a good time to take the card out completely and reinstall it from scratch.

Well there are a few things there that you might be able to glean something from. Hope it helps.