Audio Engine / Processors Still Running After Playback Stopped?

Hi all, hope you can help.

I've had an annoying bug for a little while, which I thought the X1B update might resolve but no joy alas. I can't find anything online so thought I would try posting here, would really appreciate any help on this one.

I've had a stable sonar install working nicely for a fair while now (couple of years), but all of a sudden around 2 weeks ago, it seems that something is confused within the start / stop functionality, which means that the audio engine is always running at full pelt (processors busy) even after I've pressed stop. I have to manually turn the audio engine on and off to stop the processors humming along. This is seriously slowing down my editing and non-playback work stream. In addition, sometimes the metronome randomly starts when I haven't turned it on. It's like the play / stop / metronome / engine functionality is just a bit broken in general.

I'm using a RME fireface 400 which has working amazingly in the past, and haven't changed any playback / recording settings. This just seemed to randomly started happening. I thought that maybe I had input monitoring on and so sonar was trying to apply effects to the input or something, even whilst not in playback, but I've tried all the settings I can find and it has no effect.

Has anyone else seen this? It happens for all my projects btw.

Running X1b producer in windows vista 32.

Sam

I've encountered this as well just last night. I loaded a project, hit play and the music starts but the counter stays at zero. If I click to stop playback, the screen goes white and I have to reboot while the music plays on.

sharpy


Hi guys, sorry to hear your frustration too. Hope you can find a solution to your issue.

Just to be clear on what I'm seeing - I can actually start and stop projects fine, i.e. I'm not having a crash or having playback continue until I kill sonar like your problems.

It's just that after I press stop the processors in the CPU meter (and in task manager) are still whirring away, which massively slows down the rest of my work flow. It's like the effects and plugins are still running or something, despite having pressed stop.

ps - tyacko - love the look of those UAD plugins, would love to know how they sound!

Sam

so can i sam..i dont know whats going on..my performance module is lighting up with 4 bars even after i stop playback..the starnge thing ive just noticed is in the control bar where the automation features are  my W-for write has a slash through it.but i have no automation happening..i tried opening a new project and still..my W in the control bar for automation has a slash through it..what is going on..these two problems just reared there ugly heads together

It's just that after I press stop the processors in the CPU meter (and in task manager) are still whirring away, which massively slows down the rest of my work flow.

That's normal behavior for Sonar. How is it slowing down your workflow?

If you need Sonar to stop its audio engine when you move to another program, go to Preferences->Audio->Playback and Recording then check the "Share Drivers With Other Programs" box.

It's just that after I press stop the processors in the CPU meter (and in task manager) are still whirring away, which massively slows down the rest of my work flow. It's like the effects and plugins are still running or something, despite having pressed stop.

Usually the load after stopping playback will drop significantly to a sort of "fast idle", but not all the way down down to the "idle" level that you see immediately after loading a project or toggling the audio engine off and on in a project that's been played. If the load is not dropping down at all from the playback state, that's a little unusual, but might be a function of what plug-ins you're using.


But even the "fast-idle" mode can run your processors pretty hard in big project. For this reason, and others, I like to to have a keybinding set up to toggle the audio engine. Unfortunately X1 no longer offers this function for binding (unless it's been restored in X1b), but fortunately the binding can be established in an earlier version, and will import just fine along with other custom bindings.

Thanks for your contributions peeps.

As I'm running a lot of plugins and (runs like a dog!) pro channel stuff, my processor usage is high. Thus when I press stop, the processors are still highly active, meaning even basic scrolling / editing / saving tasks take ages. I'm on a laptop setup and have always run close to the edge of performance, but it's always been usable. Not anymore.

Brundlefly - There is absoultely no difference between running normally and the "fast idle", in fact sometimes they jump up to even more activity after stopping!

Oddmesiter - tried effects tails, made no difference I'm afraid.

Tarsier - I've been using sonar for a number of years now and I've never seen high processor levels after playback, this is a new issue I'm only just seeing.


In general the new pro channel stuff, whilst sounding great, is running very poorly on my machine.

My creativity is stifled, might be cubase / protools time, I've lost nearly 3 months of stable studio duo to X1, my loyality is waning here.