Yep, can't go wrong with a JR pc! Glad you decided to get one. Don't let the 48 sample thing get you down. That's not a setting everyone can use. I know you were just testing things out, but it's nice to have a few rules of thumb when doing this stuff. Here are mine in case they are helpful to you.
1. When you first start to record a project, you should be able to get down to 32 samples or at the least, 64 samples on a JR box with a good soundcard without a hitch. You won't be able to keep this setting as you add tracks and plugins. And, it will depend on what plugs you add. 15 Cake plugs and Dimension pro may not even give you clicks or pops at 32 samples...but a full instance of Kontakt most definitely will.
Pros: at 32 sample buffers, you're looking at about 0.7 ms latency which is real time to me. At 64, 1.3 ms which is still real time to me. 128 and 256 bring on ever so slight latency that I can feel more than hear and will depend on what you are using at the time as far as synths etc.
Cons: Lower latency settings will be useless in a large project. So say you started mixing and decided you needed to record other instruments, if you freeze tracks or disable plugs/synths you can use lower latency sizes. But most times we really don't want to do this...so you'll need a 128 or a 256 if possible. Even there, some synths may behave strange when you try to record with them in real time.
2. When not recording, I like to keep my buffers as high as possible. My cards go to 2048 and 4096 so I leave them there unless I have to record a soft synth or something. I use a mixing console, so I really don't need to lower buffers for recording. What I hear is what I hear without latency. But, if I use V-Drums or a keyboard player wants to use a synth library, I try to get down as low as I can buffer wise. This will depend on how deep into the project I am with mixing and plugs. If the project is already 40-50 tracks in size with various plugs/VSTi's etc, and the keyboard player is adding textures, I will not be able to get down to a 64 sample buffer. I'll end up at 128 or 256.
Pros: the larger the buffer size (no higher than 4096 as the others make 0 difference) the less cpu used. You will also be able to run more plugs and other things.
Cons: If you do any real time automation with controllers or by hand, your moves will be a bit sluggish and not in real time. So the latency you pick up at 2048 or 4096 that doesn't show up when your mixing, WILL show up with fader moves, pans, sends etc. It's nothing bad, you'll just notice a bit of a lag if you're doing real time "while the song is playing" automation.
3. Sometimes your hard drive may be the culprit with performance. Ther is a setting in your Sonar preferences under sync and caching. Look for playback I/O and Record I/O. By default, I believe Sonar is set to 256 which usually works well for most Sonar users. However, I run quite a bit of large audio here so increasing the 256 in both boxes to 512, gave me a nice performance boost and my hard drives barely even register a % of use. Pressing space bar is not instant at that setting (it takes about 1/4 of a second or so) but I never have to worry about my hard drives being taxed at 512. The check marks in those I/O boxes are best left unchecked but have been helpful to me when a laptop has an older hard drive or a drive speed of 5400 RPM.
Pros: Less stress on your hard drive, more tracks possible, less of a chance of the hard drive being the reason for a drop out.
Cons: the higher the I/O, the more of a lag in playback. You won't notice much at 512, but at 1024, playback takes almost 1 second to start. I have had to do that with super large track counts and video stuff. But no one should need more than 512 in my opinion. 256 is great...but I prefer 512.
Anyway, the above is just my personal experience with Sonar. Everyone has their own way of using it with their own reasons as to why they may or may not do something. I just figured I'd share that with you just in case it may have been helpful to you. Congrats on your new pc and best of luck.
-Danny
post edited by Danny Danzi - 2013/07/21 18:50:57