Anyone seen this potentially dangerous max output bug?

I have never ever seen anything like that. Not in Sonar or any other DAW. 

Anderton
I've seen this with certain plug-ins. Which effects are inserted when this happens? I used to have this happen a lot with the VX-64 in particular. I haven't done any scientific testing but it seems to happen only if I load older projects that had it.
 
If I close SONAR, unplug USB from the audio interface, plug back in, then open SONAR, the problem goes away seemingly every time.

According to the screen capture, no plugin is inserted.

I was starting to suspect Ozone 6 (64 bit), since that is in all my projects, and disabling it stops the problem - but re-enabling starts it again. That stripped-down project in the graphic has no plugins at all, although it started out having Ozone. I've also seen this happen on a Send bus with Sonitus reverb.

DC? Direct Connect or Direct Current?
 
 
To remove DC offset from existing audio
1. Select the audio data and choose Process > Apply Effect > Remove DC Offset. This launches the Remove
DC Offset dialog box.
2. Choose from the following options, and click OK:
DC Offset Threshold (dB). You can set a minimum dB threshold. If the analyzed DC offset is below this
value, no removal takes place.
Analyze Left Channel (dB) and Right Channel (dB). This field displays the DC offset separately for the
left and right channels. Press the Audition button to update the display.
Compute DC Offset from first 5 seconds only. To speed processing, select the Compute DC offset from
first 5 seconds only check box. Only the first five seconds of a sound file will be analyzed when measuring
the DC offset. The only time that five seconds is not sufficient is if a long fade-in or mute has been applied at
the beginning of the file.

I use Ozone 6 adv. sitting on my master bus permanently once I get past the mixing stage and have never seen anything like this with it. I dont know what I can suggest but when I've had odd occurrences it's always ended up being some out of the way weird thing like a windows setting. I've usually only found a solution by accident.

I run full 64 bit. I did have some display issues around that time. That's what I was referring to in my previous post.

It was only happening in Sonar but it was caused by a Windows display enhancement I had set. That is something like Mouse hover activates window. Once I switched that off all my weird Sonar display issues went away completely and have not come back since.

I'm not in front of Sonar at the moment.

Having a view of a bus at+9db isn't much help without seeing the tracks that feed it. The master bus is showing -0.1 so there must be something bring the level down.

It sounds to me like your audio interface was hit by a power surge. Do you have it plugged into a UPS?
 
I used to use surge protectors until I lived in a small town where frequent lightning storms and power outages taught me to use a UPS. Damage to gear is random, too. Sometimes things will still work, but do odd things from time to time... like what's happening with you.
 
I'd try a few things:
- another USB port,
- another AI,
- another computer (with your AI).

Yes, you're right, that's a great observation. If Sonar is not the foreground app, the meters don't max out. However, I exported audio and swapped apps in the middle of doing this. The resulting audio was maxed out the entire time, so I suspect what you are noticing is a visual thing rather than an audio thing. You gave me another idea - check the CPU when Sonar is foreground and background. About 10% foreground, 1% background. Very strange.

Are you sharing your audio interface drivers with windows? In the Windows sound card settings there is also "give programs exclusive control" to check... if windows is trying to reset sample rate to another application, that will cause serious nonsense.

[EDIT: I was typing this reply at the same time that panup was typing his post above, so what follows may have been negated by panup's report.]
 
You're right, we can be 99.9% sure it's a software problem. I think we can eliminate SONAR itself as the culprit, since nobody else has experienced the exact same symptoms. 
 
That leaves third-party components and external dependencies (plugins, drivers, C++ runtime libraries and Windows libraries) and possibly even unrelated programs or services.
 
The big question: when it happens, does it go away when you globally bypass effects?
 
 
If not:
- Try turning off the "share drivers with other programs" option.
- When it happens, pull up Task Manager and note any processes other than SONAR showing > 0% CPU usage.
- Think about any software you've added since you last remember this problem not being there, and not necessarily just audio-related apps. Anything that could have replaced MSVC DLLs. It might be worthwhile to download the latest C++ redist package from Microsoft and re-install it.

As an experiment disable intel speedstep.

I've had this with ozone too.

If I read the OP's post correctly he has an asymmetrical wave with only clipped negative values. There are many instruments including the human voice that record as asymmetrical waves but not to this degree. I would suspect a plugin or sonar's interaction with a plugin as the culprit.

ampfixer
If this was all hardware I'd say you're getting a feedback loop that feeds on itself. I wish I could give a more educated answer, but is there any chance that one of the signal processors could be doing just that? Routing an out to an in?
 
I'm really curious how you can get direct current on your outputs. If it really is DC then you will melt the voice coils in your monitors.

 
Artistic licence - sorry. I mean digital DC, that is, the exported audio file consists solely of the maximum negative 16 bit integer. Hopefully my audio interface doesn't actually play this as an electrical DC signal. They should be smart enough to filter DC. In any event, I haven't blown up speakers or headphones yet :)
I did check for feedback loops. The problem happens even with the Master out set to "none". This is definitely a software problem.
 
Cheers, Peter.