SONAR HomeStudio6/XL & GPO

[mlord]

Hi all - this is my first post here and I hope you can help me.
What has experience been with the combination of SONAR HomeStudio6/XL & GPO?
I ask because I have SONAR HS6/XL installed and have GPO on order ,but am currrently using Dimension LE and the Garritan sounds available with it.
I experience dropouts - see my post at http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1262042
It may well be that my system is not powerful enough but I not fully convinced that this is the whole story.
My question to this forum is therefore what PC specs are being used with SONAR HomeStudio6/XL & GPO and with what sort of success?
I would be very gratefull for any info as this will guide me to a decision on what system to upgrade to.

I am not concerned about mid input as I only use staff/piano roll input or export
from my ancient PersonalComposer (16bit version 1!) notation programme.
___________________________________________
My current system is:
Dell Dimension 4400, Pentium 4/1.6Ghz,512+256MB ram (another 512Mb module on order
to bring it up to 1GB - the max possible)
80GB system disk - about 40Gb free. Second internal 80Gb disk used as backup. 320GB
USB drive
Sound card : Turtle Beach Aureal Audio 8660 - using MME (WDM doesn't seem to work -
looking for WDM driver updates)
Windows XP/SP2 + auto-updates

[snorlax]

Hi all - this is my first post here and I hope you can help me.
What has experience been with the combination of SONAR HomeStudio6/XL & GPO?
I ask because I have SONAR HS6/XL installed and have GPO on order ,but am currrently using Dimension LE and the Garritan sounds available with it.
I experience dropouts - see my post at http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1262042
It may well be that my system is not powerful enough but I not fully convinced that this is the whole story.
My question to this forum is therefore what PC specs are being used with SONAR HomeStudio6/XL & GPO and with what sort of success?
I would be very gratefull for any info as this will guide me to a decision on what system to upgrade to.

I am not concerned about mid input as I only use staff/piano roll input or export
from my ancient PersonalComposer (16bit version 1!) notation programme.
___________________________________________
My current system is:
Dell Dimension 4400, Pentium 4/1.6Ghz,512+256MB ram (another 512Mb module on order
to bring it up to 1GB - the max possible)
80GB system disk - about 40Gb free. Second internal 80Gb disk used as backup. 320GB
USB drive
Sound card : Turtle Beach Aureal Audio 8660 - using MME (WDM doesn't seem to work -
looking for WDM driver updates)
Windows XP/SP2 + auto-updates

Hi...
You're not exactly in the right area, but I saw it here & might offer a suggestion.
Download and install ASIO4ALL. It is a better audio driver than either MME or WDM. Use ASIO4ALL as your audio driver and you should see a marked improvement. There are settings you can manipulate to improve matters, but I'll bet you hear marked improvement if you go through ASIO4ALL.

A better place to post would be in the notation/sequencing area, but I bet you won't need to if you go for ASIO4ALL

Jim

[mlord]

Thanks Snorlax for your interest.

I have actually got IASIO4ALL but not yet installed it - also WDM driver updates to install. I got the impression rightly or wrongly that ASIO4ALL would be an ASIO interface simulation going through one of the other drivermodes. Any way I shall be trying it soon.

I am actually considering a replacement for our second PC(used by my wife) which is a 10yr plus 100MHz machine (yes I do mean 100 MEGA hertz!). I would like to ensure that it would be powerful enough for the SONAR/Garritan combination with a bit to spare.Hence the interest in user comments.

Thanks for the tip re appropriate forum -is there a way to simply transfer threads from forum to forum?

Thanks again for your suggestion.

[Sharkbat]

Hi mlord,

I use Sonar Home Studio 6 (not XL) with GPO and the other Garritan Libraries, and I am running a 2.56 GHz Machine with 1.5 GB ram using ASIO4ALL. With Sonar Home Studio I only experienced dropouts when I tried playing every instrument at once in my massive orchestra template (which is 4 of all the woodwind, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 1 tuba, lots of percussion, piano, harp and strings all simultaneously). When I use it for most work, it doesn't give me any trouble. I have slightly more trouble with Sibelius 5, but not much (and I'm not using ASIO4ALL there either).

Once again, the specs are:
2.56 GHz Single-Core Pentium processor, 1.5 GB ram, two hard-drives, 1 40 GB system drive, 1 250 GB external drive (where my samples are, and also for back up), I don't remember what sound card I have, I don't think it's one of the more well known brands, using ASIO4ALL with Sonar HS 6.

Hope this helps,

Richard

[mlord]

Hi,Sharkbat thanks very much for your info.

Your processor is 50% faster than mine - suggests I shouldn't be getting dropouts with just 4/5 tracks . It may be that the one instrument per DimensionLE instance is not efficient. It will be interesting to see how performance is with GPO when it arrives.

Your info will help me in determining a replacement for our PC No2.

Off to try ASIO4ALL now.

Regards

[mlord]

Re ASIO4ALL

Installed ASIO4ALL and now dropsout all the time!

Much worse than before!

Tried changing all the parameters = one by one and together - no improvement. On some settings SONAR's
dropout indicator is permanently on and playback freezes.

Disappointing.