Miscellaneous optimizations

SONAR Jamaica Plain (Update 9) includes many optimizations that reduce CPU overhead and make SONAR perform a lot smoother and faster than any prior version. The following are some of the highlights.

Start Screen optimizations

The Start Screen has been redesigned to load much faster. There are also improvements to the logic for how the Start Screen is displayed and dismissed, improvements to the MRU (most recently used projects) logic, and improved language compatibility.

Starting the transport is faster

SONAR now responds faster when you start playback.

Faster project loading

Loading large projects that contain hundreds of tracks is now much faster.

VST scanning optimizations

Scanning VST “shell” plug-ins that contain many sub plug-ins (like Waves) is much faster.

Improved performance when dynamic track arming is enabled

SONAR is able to arm and disarm tracks during playback and recording. This allows you to record to different tracks while the transport is rolling, without first having to stop playback in order to arm a track for recording.

To allow arming during playback, go to Edit > Preferences > Project - Record and select the Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record check box.

When Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record is enabled, SONAR always pre-creates record files for synth inputs so that it can dynamically arm synth tracks on the fly. This can add significant overhead and may lead to lag in starting and stopping the transport in projects that contain many synth tracks.

The new Exclude Synth Inputs option under Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record instructs SONAR to not allow dynamic arming of synth tracks, thereby avoiding the overhead. When enabled, synth tracks can only be armed when the transport is stopped. The Exclude Synth Inputs option is enabled by default.

Reduced CPU load on playback of synth tracks

SONAR now detects when a synth output is silent, and will dynamically activate the output for input monitoring/mixing/recording only when a non-silent buffer is received. For projects/templates with hundreds of synth tracks, the CPU savings can be significant.

Note: VST3 buffers can be explicitly flagged by the synth for silence, but very few synths implement this. In order to detect silent synth outputs, SONAR checks for zero filled buffers on the outputs for both VST2 and VST3 synths. While this works for many synths, there are some that fill outputs with random low level noise by default. In these cases, the silence detection will not work and therefore no CPU savings will take place.

 

See also:

Arming tracks during playback/recording

Project - Record

Soft synth audio recording

Recording

New features