Export audio does not use CPU fully

Hi

I have just set up a new system - see basic specs below. The problem I have is that when I export audio it is a lot slower than I would have expected and when I check the pc performance in task manager all processor cores are running at approx 40%. It is a fesh install and everything (both Windows and Sonar) is at default settings apart from the power options which is set to high performance. Any idea why my processors are not getting maxed out? I didn't spend a load of money upgrading my system to run it at 40%! Is there a setting somewhere I need to change to allow Sonar to hog all the pcs resources?

Core i5 760 CPU
4GB DDR3 RAM
Asus P7P55-M Motherboard
Windows 7 x64
Sonar 8.5 x64 with latest patches

It depends heavily on the nature of the project. A pure audio project with effects frozen will slam your hard drives, and hardly touch the CPU, while a pure soft-synth project with active effects should hit your CPUs pretty hard. 

As a reference point, try loading up the Dark European Space Adventures demo and exporting that.

On my Q9550, it will average 75% on all cores, with Core1 running at 85%+. If I freeze all the tracks, my CPU averages less than 5%, and my disks run at 85%.

My guess is it's not possible to utilize 100% of the available CPU cycles on all cores, but 80-90% on the most heavily loaded core seems reasonable to me.

Regardless of what level your CPUs are running, you might be able to shorten the time it takes bounce/export/freeze by setting a higher value for BounceBufSizeMsec=0 in AUD.INI.

With the default setting of 0, SONAR uses your real-time buffer size for offline processing as well. Increasing this parameter let's SONAR process audio in larger "chunks" offline, which can be more efficient. Values up to 200 or so are reasonable. The higher you go, the more RAM is needed, and you can get in trouble going too high. I have mine at 20.