ASIO drivers and Sonar 8.5

i am having am having an issue getting ASIO drvers to work ing Sonar 8.5.... Sonar seems to work better with my WDM driver...  what am i missing  I would like to use my ASIO drivers. When i use my ASIO driver i so many drop-outs....please advise Russell

can you actually select ASIO ? just curious..

if not ,take a look in audio / drivers and untick anything that isn't the card you wanna use.. normally things like a realtek will be listed.. to get asio mode on your other device that needs to be unticked / applied.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlWAAbQ4Ync

would be worth a watch for you :)

ASIO is great but WDM is great so use what works. One good reason to use Sonar it supports both.

i am having am having an issue getting ASIO drvers to work ing Sonar 8.5.... Sonar seems to work better with my WDM driver... what am i missing I would like to use my ASIO drivers. When i use my ASIO driver i so many drop-outs....please advise Russell

Russell, I doubt there'll be much advice forthcoming on your issue unless you explain what that issue is. "An issue" doesn't give us much to go on.

You say you can't get ASIO to work, but you get fewer dropouts with it. How do you know that?

You say you get fewer dropouts with ASIO, but WDM "seems to work better". Better in what way?

It sounds like you're a little confused about why you might want ASIO. I know I am. Without knowing anything else about your setup or situation, my default advice would be to just use WDM and move on.

I am using the Focusrite Sapphire 6 USB interface, SONAR 8.5 Producer, Win 7 (32 bit) and fairly stout computer.
When I try to use the ASIO 24 bit drivers (which Focusrite recommends) the get the "driver in use by another device or incompatable drivers" error. I checked the share drivers and still...nothing.
The WDM drivers will only work in 16 bit so going to the ASIOS is preferred.
 
I have 5 projects in progress with imported waves. Is the fact that I imported these with the 16 bit WDM an issue?
 
Although I read CDs are 16 bit (which is what I'm working on) it's better to process everything 24 bit so perhaps one of you guys have a suggestion for me??

Thanks, how do I do that?

Personally I hate ASIO, but I have to use it because it's all my sound card supports.

WDM means that you can minimize Sonar and and still do something else that makes sound... Media Player, etc.

ASIO insist that only one program can make sound at a time (at least that's been my experience).  I would gladly use WDM if it was offered.

Thanks Brian, your reply got me testing stuff out...

I found that when all is said and done.  Sonar doesn't want to play AT THE SAME TIME as other software even-though I was able to get Sonar & "The Amazing Slow Downer" to play separately.  When I looked into Sonar's help file I found out that clicking the "Share Drivers" button allows other programs to use the drivers "WHEN SONAR DOES NOT HAVE FOCUS".  When I read that, a lot of what I was experiencing made sense.

Since I use VSTi's in Sonar and want to play along with ASDowner AT THE SAME TIME to learn songs, I tried enabling my cheapo built-in motherboard audio in bios.  I set that as my default audio card in Windows, Pointed ASD to use it, and all is working perfectly!!!!

Sonar seems to be happy using my M-Audio in ASIO mode right along with it!!!!

Why ASIO ?

ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from the user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software, so that the application connects directly to the sound card hardware. Each layer that is bypassed means a reduction in latency (the delay between an application sending audio information and it being reproduced by the sound card, or input signals from the sound card being available to the application). In this way ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple audio inputs and outputs independently. Its main strength lies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency and poor-quality mixing and sample rate conversion of Windows audio mixing kernels (KMixer), allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware. Unlike KMixer, an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical" or "bit transparent", that is, the bits sent to the sound card are identical to those of the original source, thus having higher audio fidelity.