X2 seems to have lasted a single playback

Oh, the new laptop is Windows 7 so there shouldn't be any Windows 8 style issues

It's not downloadable for me - I guess it's because bought the boxed product :-(

Ah pooh, it's the Expanded Edition which is just a patch. I'll try to get hold of an earlier one via customer service I guess if a fix can't be found.

Right-click the SONAR icon and make sure to run as administrator. Verify your driver settings in Preferences, for example, the correct interface is selected, the correct mode, the Playback Timing Master points to the interface outs etc.

To the original poster:

Please understand that whatever is happening is caused by some local condition on your computer or with the installation, as there would be scads of folks complaining about this kind of issue, if it were anything else but that.

So, for anybody here in the forum to be able to help you, and we collectively do a lot of assisting folks who are trying to install and configure, we need to know more information about your setup - meaning your computer specs as well as your interface, and the settings you are using both in Sonar and for the interface.

So, with that in mind, please provide the following information:

1.  Please list your system specifications - you can look at the bottom of my post or anybody else's who posts their specs in their forum profile's 'signature', for an example.  We need to know the OS version, memory, laptop brand, interface brand, that sort of thing - again look in the specs I post at the bottom of this for an example.

2.  What is the default sound device you have specified for Windows?  It should be your audio interface for best results.  To set this, go to Control Panel, and under Hardware and Sound you should see a link for Manage Audio Devices and be able to set the default device to your laptop.

3.  If you open the audio interface control software, what Sample Rate is specified, and what ASIO Buffer Size is specified?

4.  In Sonar, under Edit>Preferences>Playback and Recording, what is the Driver Mode set to?  (For best results, most folks use ASIO)

5.  In Sonar, in Preferences>Audio>Driver Settings, what Sample Rate is specified there, and also at the bottom of that screen what is the Total Roundtrip value listed as?  Please note that the Sample Rate must match whatever you have set in the audio interface control software.  Also, please list the Playback Timing Master and Record Timing Master settings - also found on that same screen.

6.  Is your audio interface USB for Fire Wire?  If USB, try making sure it is plugged into a USB 2.0 port, as some interfaces freak out and do weird things if they are plugged into a USB 3.0 port.  If the audio interface is Fire Wire, some folks have flaky results with their interfaces due to the manufacturer of the Fire Wire chips used on the computer.

7.  Do you get sound output through your audio interface if you play a song file (MP3 or WMA) through the Windows Media Player?  Just to make sure that this is working properly outside of Sonar.

8.  There is a freeware product called DPC Latency Checker that you can download and run (no install required, just download and double-click on the application in its folder to start it).  If you just let this run for a bit, you will see detected latency over time as it scrolls along.  There is a threshold there, and it will tell you your current latency, the maximum detected latency for this running of the program, and it will also tell you if anything in your system is causing enough of a latency issue to disrupt the ability to do audio processing on your laptop.  Great little utility - (unless they fixed it since I checked, for Windows 8 the internals of Windows changed so that the latency values are not shown correctly, but that is ONLY if you run the Latency Checker on Windows 8 - for Windows 7 it works just fine).

I again cannot emphasize enough that your situation is almost certainly caused by either a configuration issue or an errant install.  PLEASE do not throw in the towel on Sonar so soon into it, as it is extremely likely that working through this with the help of us forum folks will lead to things starting to work for you.  Sonar X2 is a great product, and running on a lot of folks computers without having these issues that you are.  So, please, hang in there.

I will look for your reply with the requested information - and look forward to helping you to get this configured and installed and working properly.  Others here in the forum will jump in too, once you have listed the above information.

Bob Bone

ed97643


Can you play WAV files outside of Sonar? Verify that windows "sees" the soundcard and can talk to it first. If it can, create a new song, no busses, just one mono audio track. Can it record? Can it play back to the soundcard? Start simple, work from there. Best of luck, ed

If songs play outside of Sonar, I would maybe import an MP3 to an audio track and see if that plays - that's pretty benign, and then move on to attempt recording.


Bob Bone

Completed the installation and ran manually 

C:\Windows\system32>regsvr32.exe "C:\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\NullProxy.dll"

OK - it's back in the default install state, and things are playing happily. So the things I did last time that may be an issue were the soundcard itself (Tascam US-144Mk2) being plugged into a USB 3.0 port (though that shouldn't have been quite so catastrophic) or changing the MIDI values to cope with missed notes during playback. Might make a backup of the drive and settings first though before progressing with these changes. All the program files are in their own C:\Cakewalk folder so should not need to have any administrator issues.

A couple of queries though:
Are there any issues with Sonar being run off a flash disk?
What are safe settings for MIDI buffers/channels?

scook


If you are dropping MIDI notes on playback try 500ms buffers.

...that is: " MIDI buffers - Prepare using xxx ms buffers"

karmadillo


OK - it's back in the default install state, and things are playing happily. So the things I did last time that may be an issue were the soundcard itself (Tascam US-144Mk2) being plugged into a USB 3.0 port (though that shouldn't have been quite so catastrophic) or changing the MIDI values to cope with missed notes during playback. Might make a backup of the drive and settings first though before progressing with these changes. All the program files are in their own C:\Cakewalk folder so should not need to have any administrator issues.

A couple of queries though:
Are there any issues with Sonar being run off a flash disk?
What are safe settings for MIDI buffers/channels?

If things are working now, yu might consider updating the subject line of your thread to add something like: 'Resolved' - that lets folks know everything get fixed and can save folks from reading all of the posts only to find out at the end that it's all working. :)


Bob Bone