Newly recorded audio tracks are distorted to the point of being unrecognizable

I have a number of mixes that I have been working on for a project lately. One mix was recorded in Pro Tools, which I exported to use in Sonar. All of the tracks imported into Sonar play beautifully, but last night I discovered that I cannot record new audio tracks - all I get is extreme distortion to the point that whatever is recorded is barely recognizable. It doesn't matter if I'm recording through a mic or recording audio from playback of the existing tracks in the mix.
 
I exported the tracks from Pro Tools at 24 bit with a sample rate of 44100. My Sonar Global Audio Options has the default sample rate for new projects set at 44100, and the audio driver bit depth is 24, although the button is greyed out. I have not discovered how to change these settings for an individual project. Is there something related to sample rate and bit depth that I've missed, or is this problem related to something else?
 
This is a new issue that I had not had before. We had to cancel today's session as a result. It would be nice to get this fixed so that we can record on Monday. We have recorded many great-sounding mixes out of this Sonar Producer 8.5 setup. I'm using XP Pro SP3 and M-Audio ProFire 2626.
 
Thanks in advance for any help in resolving this.
 

If the bit depth setting is greyed out you are probably in ASIO mode. Do as beagle suggests to see if there is a mismatch between hardware and project settings. You can also change to WDM/KS driver mode and run the wave profiler. It should tell you if your audio device won't support current project audio settings.

You don't mention buffer sizes. Severe dropouts will sound like extreme distortion.

256 samples is not particularly aggressive and should work fine for tracking. When it comes time to add in heavyweight effects you'll probably want to increase it to 1024 or 2048, but assuming you're working with dry audio exclusively, 256 should not cause dropouts at all, let alone dropouts severe enough to sound like distortion.

Next step is to look at the interface. I assume the Profire offers "zero latency" headphone monitoring. First question: is the audio distorted in the headphones when they're plugged directly into the interface? If so, then you've either got the input gain set too high or the interface is broken. If not, then you can assume that the analog portion of the interface is working correctly.

Guitarman1


I had this problem a few times a couple of years ago... Sonar support had me do something but I do not remember exactly what it was, but it did clear it up...

Well, thanks everyone. I finally called Cakewalk tech support, and they had me go to Options / Audio /Advanced tab and hit the button that says Reset Config To Defaults, then close and reopen Sonar. That did the trick. They said that something had probably gotten changed in the config file.