Help / Advise Needed - Serious Audio / Playback issues

Forum members,

Having some serious show stopping issues around audio recording and playback and need some advise and thoughts on what you think the problem may be. I have reviewed previous posts on this forum and others, so will attempt to provide as much information as possible on the issue, and the steps I have taken to try to correct it (without success so far). Please excuse the length of the post………..

Short summary of the issue would be: When playing back any audio in Sonar X1 I have recorded (or playing back the demo/tutorial file), audio stops playing after around 40 seconds (red line in track view). Sonar appears to continue playing the track - but without sound. When I stop playing - Sonar will freeze and will require a complete shutdown to start again. This happens with just one short audio track - no plugins etc.

System data. Recording to new laptop. Intel i5 450m  processor, 4gb RAM, 500gb Hard Drive. Windows 7 64 bit.
Audio interface - Lexicon Omega with windows 7 drivers downloaded from Lexicon website.

Initial recordings were made with computer settings 'out of the box'. After researching the issue and discovering that windows 7 requires some tweaking for DAW work - I made the following changes, took the following actions.

On the laptop, made the windows tweaks, ie switch to high performance, prioritise background applications, set to best performance (over best visuals), disable wi-fi, disable windows sounds etc.

I downloaded the x1 A and X1b patches.

I tested latency with the DRC latency checker. With wi-fi on, I have yellow and red bars all over the place. With wi-fi off it runs green bars at acceptable latency almost exclusively. An occasional red bar may appear.

I ran latency mon to try and identify any process that may be interfering with the audio. With wi-fi off it always runs fine. Reports zero errors and no hard page faults. According to this program - system should handle audio without issue. I can't see any one process eating up CPU resources, nothing over 1ms overall latency - nor a total comined summing of processes ms latency that would suggest an issue.

I reviewed and actioned the help file data from Sonar - adjusting buffers, latency etc etc in the preferences settings.

All of this - with no real improvement. If I manage to record one track of audio. Problem will arise either during direct playback, or playback plus recording a second track.

As a comparison - I installed a copy of Traktion that I had been using on an XP machine (via the lexicon) which always ran fine with zero dropouts.

Audio quality was awful - crackles and pops - followed by white noise. It didn't cause Traktion to freeze - but the program offered up some error messages which seemed to point the blame at the Lexicon. Whilst I tried to record to Traktion - it would tell me that the audio source stopped responding. When I started Traktion again - I was told the Lexicons drivers failed to load correctly. I asked Traktion to reload them - and again it found them - but said the failed to load correctly.

From everything I have tried, I beginning to lean towards my Lexicon as the problem (have downloaded the drivers a couple of times) . I know these interfaces don't get much love  - do you think it's the likely culprit here ? Is there anything else I should be trying, or anything I have missed ? I have big doubts whether it's the laptop. This is just one track of audio that causes the problem……..

Any advise would be welcome. It's hugely frustrating - I just want to get recording!!

Thanks

tlw - thanks for the feedback.

Am running the tutorial file through the on board sound card as I write. It's played through a couple of times with no audio dropouts.

Have not completely disabled the on board card whilst using the Lexicon - but will try that and see if it makes any difference.

In terms of CPU usage - with the demo file playing and wi-fi on so I can write this - it's between 5 and 9 %

Although only programs open are Firefox and Sonar - there are 74 processes running in the task manager - none of them seem to be eating up resources though.

In relation to the drivers - the Lexicon only supports ASIO which I'm using, and WDM. ASIO is recommended by Lexicon - but I'll try the WDM and check status.

That's 5 full playthroughs of the demo file through the onboard card with no problems as I am writing. Does this suggest an issue communicating with the Lexicon ?

Thanks again......

That's 5 full playthroughs of the demo file

Saintom

prioritise background applications,

Dont do this change it back, see this thread http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2303789

HTH

Tom


I caught that thread today - change made - thanks

tlw - don't want to count any chickens etc - but looks like some of the advice you've given has fixed the problem.

WDM drivers made no difference, so reverted back to ASIO (a reinstall) - and disabled the on board sound card. This one seemed to be the key  - as soon as that was disabled I was able to record three tracks of audio as a test, with no latency issues, no dropouts, snaps, crackles or pops.........

Only other changes were using a different USB port, and different leads into the Lexicon. No spikes on the DLC latencty checker either.

All seems well! Really appreciate the help here.

Hopefully my next post will be a link to decent song......

Cheers

You'd be better off starting a new thread to describe your problem.

When you do so, make sure you list all relevant information, including system specs/interface etc.