If your SONAR application suddenly stops producing audio while in the midst of recording or playback, you've very likely experienced a "dropout." Sometimes instead of a dropout, you may experience a "stutter" during playback (a small section of audio repeats itself once or twice before normal playback resumes). Or, you may occasionally experience a "glitch" or "pop" during audio playback (a brief interruption or clicking noise is heard, but audio playback then continues normally from that point). It is possible to experience a dropout while working exclusively with MIDI (i.e., no audio data in the project), but this is a different matter and is not covered here.
All of these audio problems are the result of audio information not being sent to or received from your sound card fast enough or reliably enough. During recording, the sound card sends incoming audio data to the sound card driver, which in turn sends audio data to SONAR to store on hard disk. When playing back, SONAR reads audio data from the hard disk and feeds it to the sound card driver, which in turn passes it to the sound card for audible output. If these activities can't be completed fast enough, or if the communication between SONAR and the sound card driver is broken in some way, recording and/or playback will be disturbed.
The exact cause of your audio problem will vary depending on the configuration of your computer and/or the content of the project file you're working with. The majority of audio problems are caused by one of the factors listed here. Read each of the following topics, in the order shown, and follow the recommendations provided:
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Turn off the Microsoft Office FastFind option if present on your system.
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Discontinue use of any networking or communications applications on your computer. For example, don't run email programs (like Microsoft Outlook), Web browsers, or AOL client software while you are running SONAR. These programs send and receive chunks of information over a modem or a network connection; when one of these data chunks is sent or received, your CPU may be unexpectedly interrupted from SONAR audio processing to deal with the modem or network data. That interruption can disrupt the smooth processing of audio data, causing a dropout or glitch. If possible, you should disconnect your computer from a local area network, and/or disconnect from any dial-up telecommunications while recording or playing back audio in SONAR.
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Turn off the Auto-Notification option for your CD-ROM drive. If it is turned on, the insertion of a CD-ROM can interrupt audio processing.
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Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Driver Settings and click the Wave Profiler button.
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Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Sync and Caching and try different values for
Playback I/O Buffer Size and
Record I/O Buffer Size until you find values that works well for your particular hard disk:
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The default value is 64. Try reducing this value, to 32, then 16. After each change, close the dialog box (click OK) and re-test your project's recording/playback behavior.
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SONAR tries to send and receive audio data to/from your sound card with very a minimal delay (so that any real-time adjustments you make to a track's volume, pan, or other settings will take effect rapidly). If the latency setting is set too low, the sound card driver may not be able to keep up with the SONAR, and audio will be disrupted.
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Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Driver Settings . Move the Mixing Latency Buffer Size slider control to the right in small increments until you see the value to the right of the slider increase; close the dialog box (click OK) and re-test your project after each increment.
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Audio data can be processed most efficiently if it is arranged in consecutive physical locations on your hard drive. Over time, the chunks become distributed at various discontiguous locations on your disk, which makes it more time consuming for SONAR to access the chunks. This extra access time can interfere with smooth audio recording and/or playback.
Audio data can be processed most efficiently if it is arranged in consecutive physical locations on your hard drive. During normal SONAR usage, a project's audio data can become fragmented into chunks stored at discontiguous locations on your disk. Accessing these discontiguous chunks can consume extra processing time, which can lead to dropouts.
Some video drivers contain bugs which can interfere with SONAR's operation. Or, the driver may be "stealing" excessive CPU time away from SONAR (some video card vendors, in an attempt to make their cards operate faster, supply drivers that tie up the computer's bus for relatively long intervals (so-called “PCI bus contention”). This can interrupt the smooth flow of audio data between SONAR and the sound card's driver.)
To disable the hardware acceleration on your graphics card: Launch Control panel (Start > Settings > Control panel). Double-click the
Display icon. Select the
Settings tab. Click on the
Advanced Properties button. Select the
Performance tab. Move the slider for
Hardware Acceleration one notch at a time toward ‘none’ and re-test your recording/playback after each such adjustment. If problem(s) persist, leave the slider at ‘none’ and proceed with the next step.
Open the System.ini file in Notepad (or any text editor). In the section called
[Hercules], check to ensure that this line is present:
Open the System.ini file in Notepad (or any text editor). In the section called
[mga.drv], add the following line:
(Start > Settings > Control panel > Display > MGA Settings > Advanced > Performance)
(Start > Settings > Control panel > Display > Settings > PowerDesk button)
Open the System.ini file in Notepad (or any text editor). In the section called
[display], make sure the following line is present:
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Ensure that your sound card is not sharing IRQs with any other device. Although some sound cards claim that they work properly on a shared IRQ, this is usually not the case and it is advisable to avoid such sharing. To do this, right click on My Computer and select Properties from the pop-up menu. In the System Properties dialog box, click on the Device Manager tab, then double-click on the Computer icon at the top of the list. This allows you to look at all the devices on your system and which IRQs they are using. Scroll through the list until you see your sound card. Check the IRQ setting to the left of the icon. If there are other devices (such as a video card) that are assigned to the same IRQ, you should try moving your sound card to a different slot in your computer. Note that entries which say something like "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering" do not indicate conflicting devices, and can be ignored.
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Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Devices and make sure that only your sound card's input and output drivers are highlighted in both menus. (If you have more than one sound card installed in your system, try using only a single sound card and deselecting the other(s). If you can get audio to record/playback properly on a single sound card, but you encounter problems using two sound cards simultaneously, there may be a conflict between the two sound cards. Contact Cakewalk Technical Support for assistance in this event.)
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To disable these other device(s), in Windows go to the Control Panel, and double-click the Multimedia icon. Click the
Advanced tab, and click the plus sign next to
Audio Devices. Double-click any audio devices listed there that AREN'T the sound card, and choose
Do Not Use Audio Features on This Device. Click
OK, and repeat this step for any non-sound card device, including voicemodems, 'virtual audio devices' or 'game-compatible devices'. Once the sound card is the only device left, click
OK, and restart the computer. After restarting, delete the file
cw9auddx.ini from your Cakewalk folder. Once you've deleted those files, launch Cakewalk, and let it profile your audio hardware. When it's done, try playing your audio again.
If your project makes extensive use of real-time effects (plug-ins), you should consider upgrading to a faster CPU. If your primary concern is playing or recording a large number of tracks, a faster CPU will help, but you may find that adding more RAM, a faster hard disk, and/or an improved hard disk controller may help even more.
Audio problems are often caused by a hard disk which is transferring data too slowly. The disk could simply be physically incapable of reading and writing data fast enough, or the disk controller could be causing too much CPU time to be consumed when transferring audio data to/from the disk.
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Ensure that your hard drive controller is NOT configured to operate in “compatibility mode” which can greatly slow data transfer to/from your hard disk and make it almost impossible to record/play audio in Cakewalk reliably. To do this, go to the Control Panel and double-click on the System icon. Click the Performance tab. At the top of the Performance screen read the entries across from File Systems and Virtual Memory. They both need to say 32-bit. If they mention MS-DOS Compatibility Mode, then your computer has a serious problem, beyond the scope of what a Cakewalk technician can fix. Your computer is processing the audio data very slowly and Cakewalk will not work properly until the MS-DOS Compatibility Mode problem is eliminated. Help is available on the Microsoft Technical Support Web page at www.microsoft.com/Support. Click on the Support Online link and search for the phrase Troubleshooting MS-DOS Compatibility Mode on Hard Disks. This problem can arise when installing a new hard disk in your computer; if Windows cannot find a suitable driver for the disk, it installs a generic driver and operates in Compatibility Mode.
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If you're using a hard disk controller that employs "programmed I/O", upgrade to a disk controller that uses "bus mastering" instead. (This is sometimes also known as an UltraDMA IDE Controller). The former technique relies on the CPU to transfer the data to/from the hard disk, stealing cycles which the CPU could be sending audio data to/from the sound card. With the latter technique, the hard disk controller itself is primarily responsible for transferring the data to/from the hard disk, relieving the CPU of much of that burden.
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