The honeymoon over?? (re:Sonar 3)

[Shazbot]

Anyway, I tried the Sonar 3 demo and loved it and bought it recently. So now I've got it and am trying to actually record a piece with GPO with it, and it works fine but when I export this happens - http://www.endresnet.com/GPO080704.mp3

Instruments cutting out. This same thing happened sometimes with Cubasis and it would drive me crazy, but it's actually much worse and more frequent in Sonar. And whereas in Cubasis I could get three instances and 24 instruments going together (albeit sometimes with instruments cutting out here and there), with Sonar I'm getting "dropouts" after only about a dozen instruments. Yikes. Dropouts are worse than the instruments cutting out in Cubasis thing, because everything stops and you can't go any further.

I guess I didn't test drive the demo hard enough, but I hate it when demos of programs won't let you do everything the program should do, as in exporting. Let me see what it can do, completely, and then I'll know if it's really going to work for me the way I need it to.

Okay, I'm done venting. Now, out of the problem and into the solution. Any of you Sonar 3 users have any idea what is causing this and how to remedy it?

Thanks much,
Shaz

[Garritan]

Shaz,


Something is strange. Many are getting 8+ instances with Sonar and great performance. There's no reason why performance would be worse with Sonar. It could be your configuration or other variables. Give me a call or email and we'll troubleshoot this and get you much better performance

Gary Garritan

[Brian2112]

Hi Shazbot!



This is very fixable but there are a lot of variables. I use Sonar 3 and can load the whole sucker in memory plus more plugins and effects and have no dropouts. There are a few things to check into.

Does it drop out only when you bounce or when you play back as well? If only during bounce, then untick the check box called “fast bounce” when you bounce to audio. If it does this even during midi playback, you probably have a latency issue. If you are using ASIO, kick the buffers higher. If not ASIO, then move the latency slider to the right. It will work! A lot depends on your system though, but it shouldn’t take that many horses to get it all going well. Keep playing with it... you will get it going.:)

Brian

[Brian2112]

...or you could call or email Gary...LOL:D (we posted at the same time)

[Shazbot]

The dropouts were happening during playback, but actually, I just got up to 16 instruments and only had the CPU going at about 50%, and the difference was that I used one of the included Cakewalk reverbs as opposed to Ambience. So I'm probably fine in terms of the # of instruments, but I'm still having the instruments cutting out really badly on export. Obviously, this is not an issue of the software, because I had the same thing going on (though not nearly as bad) when using Cubasis. The thing is, with Cubasis even during playback I would have instruments drop out in funny ways, but that wasn't happening in the Sonar demo so I thought it would be better on export, too. But not being able to export in the demo... :mad:

Is there a more ideal way to export everything than to just use File > Export? I've read through the entire manual (and the included Sonar 3 Power book) over the past few days and I seem to recall something particular about converting MIDI to audio, but now I can't seem to find anything. Back to the Help files...

I'm loading GPO as a DXi through the Synth Rack. Not sure if there's a better way than that.

Ah, another peculiarity is where is my controller data? I saw the mod wheel info being recorded, but can't seem to find it to edit. I recall something about this on the forum a while back, so I'll check the archives on that one.

Gary, if I can't figure it out any better, I'll give you a call tomorrow. Actually, I will anyway... I want to know if your refrigerator is running. :p

[Joseph Burrell]

Yeah, there is a better way. You need to wrap GPO as a VST in Sonar. Cakewalk has a VST wrapper available. I seem to recall some issues with the DXI version.

[Shazbot]

Yeah, there is a better way. You need to wrap GPO as a VST in Sonar. Cakewalk has a VST wrapper available. I seem to recall some issues with the DXI version.
Yeah, but as far as I could tell, all the VST adaptor does is make it so a VSTi can be used as a DXi, so in essence it's the same thing, no? I ran the VST adaptor upon installing Sonar, and GPO was included in that.

Anyway, I tried the various different ways of using and exporting GPO as a DXi, and still got the same problem, but I did get it to export alright when I changed the ASIO driver to the default driver (WDM, I assume) and raise the buffer from 64 to 256. It worked fine for a while, then I added some more instruments and then it didn't work again, so I changed all the settings around again, eventually coming back to the 256 and now it works again. So, I'm not sure if it'll keep working... At this point, that is the question.

[billp]

Shazbot,
Post your system specs, particularly memory, CPU, sound card.

Did you try re-profiling your sound card in SONAR?

I use SONAR 3.1.1 PE and am able to load it quite heavily without problems, but read on...

When I first got GPO, I installed it on my older system (admittedly a loaded machine, 'cause it's my software dev machine). It is a Dell Intel 2.0 GHz w/ 512MB, SBLive!, MME drivers. I experienced dropouts similar to what your piece exhibits, even though the CPU meter in SONAR was not peaking. This was a memory issue which was resolved to some degree by bumping up the latency to 70 or more as Brian of the Golden Ratio suggested.

On my new machine, an AMD 3200+ w/ 2GB, EMU 1820 w/ ASIO drivers at 5.8 ms, no dropouts related to memory but in some ensemble passages (approx 30-40 simultaneous voices/5 instances of GPO as VST) the CPU utilization spikes and causes dropouts.

So...combination of memory, CPU, and latency.

I know you're a SONAR forum member. Try posting there.

[Haydn]

I would also recommend using the VST version as the DXi has a tempo change bug. This screws up note lengths. Are you notes cutting out or are the lengths being changed by this bug?

I always bounce GPO tracks to an audio track inside Sonar first. You may need to do a couple passes if you have high polyphony instruments such as piano, harp or celeste. Then export the audio tracks.

If you're beta testing the latest version with DFD, make sure you've upped the amount of reserved voices as it defaults to 64. Raise it up to something like 248.

[Shazbot]

I would also recommend using the VST version as the DXi has a tempo change bug. This screws up note lengths. Are you notes cutting out or are the lengths being changed by this bug?Notes are cutting out. But please explain what the difference is of using GPO as a VST as opposed to a DXi in Sonar. The only thing I've found about using VSTi in Sonar says that it can convert VSTi to DXi to use. So how do I know if I'm using the VST or DXi version??


I always bounce GPO tracks to an audio track inside Sonar first. You may need to do a couple passes if you have high polyphony instruments such as piano, harp or celeste. Then export the audio tracks.What do you mean by "a couple passes"?


If you're beta testing the latest version with DFD, make sure you've upped the amount of reserved voices as it defaults to 64. Raise it up to something like 248.It was already set higher than that.

Tried another piece today. 10 instruments, 15 seconds long. Every time I try to either export to WAV or bounce to a track it gets to 54% and then I get one of those "Don't Send" errors and Sonar shuts down. Arrrgh.

Yes, my system is only 1.7 gHz (P4, WinXP Home, 768 RAM) and that probably has a lot to do with these issues, but I was still getting much better output with Cubasis, so this is frustrating.

[Shazbot]

Okay, I finally realized the difference of using GPO as a VST or DXi. Go to the Synth Rack, but select GPO down under the VST heading instead of in the main list. Such a simple difference.

But still, no difference at all using it that way. Still getting the same shut down at 54% on either Export>Audio or Bounce to Track. Perhaps this does have something to do with the DFD, though, as someone else had mentioned something about that in conjunction with exporting, so I'll check it out later.

[mschiff]

Shazbot,

What kind of sound card do you have? Are you using WDM?

What is the configuration of your computer?

This sounds more like a sound card driver issue than anything else. You might try deleting the aud.ini file in Sonar and let it re-profile your sound card. That may help.

I always use the VST version of GPO in Sonar. It does work better.

-- Martin

[Shazbot]

I'm using an Echo Mia, and yes I've got the latest drivers installed. I was using the ASIO driver, but changed that to the default (WDM, I believe) when trying to get the 'instruments cutting out in export' thing resolved. Changing that, in conjunction with raising the buffer to 256, helped that to export alright, but now I've got this shut down thing happening. I've already run the audio profiler again a couple times now. Would changing the .ini make any further difference?

Computer specs again are Dell 8200, P4, 1.7 gHz, 768 RAM, XP Home). Upgrading to a stronger computer is not an option now, but that shouldn't necessarily be an issue with this, as I tried recording and exporting the exact same pieces in Cubasis last night, and no problems at all. And I've successfully recorded and exported many more instruments and much longer pieces in Cubasis before. So obviously my system should be able to handle this. But I really prefer using Sonar to Cubasis, so I hope this can be resolved. :(

And as I said, using GPO as either a VST or DXi made no difference, though now that I know where to select it as a VST, I'll be sure to do that in the future.

I don't know if anyone can open this or make any sense of it, but here is the dump file (http://www.endresnet.com/Mini080904-01.dmp) for the error that I keep getting when it shuts down at 54% of export.

Thanks,
Shaz

[Styxx]

Hey Ralphie boy,
One of these days Norton...Bang - Zoom - TO THE MOON!

The Big C le is waiting for you, maestro! Just leave the Vikings home. The last time they were here they left some blond big lady singing sudo soprano in my livingk room all night ... darlink. :D :eek:

[Shazbot]

Gotcha, bro!

Weren't her pigtails pretty, though?? :p

[Styxx]

Oh yeah! Pigtails....aaaaaaaahhhh! Piiiigggggtaaaiiiillllssss.......

[mschiff]

Shaz,

Sometimes reprofiling the card is not enough. Deleting aud.ini is the preferred method for getting everything back to square one.

I have a Dell Precision workstation 330 at work, 1.8Ghz P4 which started life with 512 megs of ram, and an Echo Mia, and it ran Sonar just fine with the WDM drivers. Your machine should be more than capable of running it.

You should be able to export even if you are exceeding the limits of what can be played back without stuttering on your machine. I did a GPO piece on this machine with 36 instruments, and it worked great. I couldn't play all the instruments at once with 512 megs of ram, but I was able to bounce tracks and get it to work. Exporting was no problem. Have you tried calling Cakewalk support?

You should check your hard drives, and defragment them. Perhaps one is going bad. I had that problem on my DAW at home. The drive was going bad, and the only symptom was that it was very slow. I was getting stuttering and gaps on even very small projects. I found the problem by running diskbench by Jose Catena. Do a search on the web to find it.

-- Martin

[sfiks]

Ah, another peculiarity is where is my controller data? I saw the mod wheel info being recorded, but can't seem to find it to edit. I recall something about this on the forum a while back, so I'll check the archives on that one.
Select "All Channels" from the Channel dropdown list in the piano roll window in the controllers pane.

[Shazbot]

Okay, hold the phone... Apparently this may have something to do with the beta, as I just checked the beta forum and some others have mentioned this kind of issue. So for now, I'll expect that if there is any issue, that everything will be worked out as the beta is finished up (and I think I'm allowed to say that it should be done very soon and will be worth the wait!).

Thanks for all the help, though. I'm especially glad to hear of your performance with a very similar system, Martin, as I'm sure I can look forward to that once I get everything tweaked right.

[Haydn]

Here's the results of your dumpfile below. It just shows the kernel crashing and not a specific driver.

The only time I've had a crash like this was when DFD was turned on and the CPU hit 100%.

"Multiple passes" would be recording just some of the parts and then doing another pass recording the remainder of the parts. Highlight the tracks you want to record and Archive the other tracks. This helps free up resources. Archive is different than mute in Sonar. Tracks still play and use system resources when muted. Archived tracks do not play or use system resources.

What kind of instruments are you using in your pieces with issues?

__________________________________________________ __________

Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.2.0013.1
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


Loading Dump File [C:\Client\Mini080904-01.dmp]
Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available

Symbol search path is: C:\WINNT\SYMBOLS
Executable search path is:
Unable to load image ntoskrnl.exe, Win32 error 2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ntoskrnl.exe
Windows XP Kernel Version 2600 (Service Pack 1) UP Free x86 compatible
Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Personal
Kernel base = 0x804d4000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0x8054be30
Debug session time: Mon Aug 09 05:40:08 2004
System Uptime: 0 days 11:12:17.183
Unable to load image ntoskrnl.exe, Win32 error 2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ntoskrnl.exe
Loading Kernel Symbols
.................................................. .................................................. ...........................
Loading unloaded module list
..........
Loading User Symbols
************************************************** *****************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
************************************************** *****************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 76, {0, 81b41020, 3, 0}

Probably caused by : ntoskrnl.exe ( nt!MmCleanProcessAddressSpace+33e )

Followup: MachineOwner
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