Thought I dodged a Windows 8 bullet

Well,I finally moved to Windows 8 and amazingly it's been pretty painless in terms of compatibility issues with my aging hardware. Until today! I have noticed that Sonar doesn't respond as quickly when I hit play but figured I could live with that. But today I tried to record and it won't. All I get is static. Sonar loads faster and playback is fine other than the sluggish starts. I've adjusted and tweaked to the best of my ability, (which I confess is somewhat limited). I've swapped ASIO to WMD and back (WMD is the preferred). I've reinstalled drivers. I've re-profiled more than the IRS and nothing seems to help. Just loud static. Also the track meter doesn't show activity even though mic is audible but it will record the static... I just assumed that it was a driver compatibility issue because I'm running Windows 7 drivers for this ol Wami Rack. But I was told by others they work fine for them. Then I decided to reinstall Studio One Artist and lo and behold it's snappy and record works fine. Having narrowed it to a Sonar issue I figured it was time to consult the experts. Any ideas (besides upgrading to S2:)?

Glen thanks for the help. I took a closer look at playback and recording timing master and they are both set on 'wami rack 192 audio 1 and 2. Bit depths and sample rates all match with hardware. A few minutes before noticing the record problem I noticed that in the piano roll only one midi note would play. Even if there were many there just the first would play. I lowered buffer settings and it seemed to correct the problem but was concerned because the problem came out of nowhere. Then when I went to record I had this problem. I'm considering re-installing Sonar.

Yeah Synkrotron, that's what I'm thinking, that it's likely that Sonar doesn't play nicely with the ESI Windows 7 drivers. ESI is still in business but to call their support, support would be overly gracious. Particularly for the older stuff. Some time ago I asked on their forum if they intended to release Win 8 drivers. The company didn't respond but one owner did. He was the one that said Win 7 works great for him. Having said all that, when I first installed X1 after installing Win 8, it worked. Sonar was sluggish but the midi playback worked fine. But I hadn't tested record. Then midi playback failed and I tried to record and it was all downhill. That initial functioning and rapid decline in performance is the reason for considering the reinstall.

I've been lucky with Windows 8 thus far, although I've not pushed at any boundaries as of yet so there is still chance for things to fall over. As Robert says, we need to do our homework before upgraded our OS, and I was fortunate that Roland updated their drivers for the QUAD-CAPTURE otherwise I don't think I would have bothered.

I would understand your feelings if you were miffed about your WaMi card not working with Win8, nice looking card that and I've just had a look at the SOS review of it and it gets a reasonable write-up.

May be that you will either need to stick with Win7, or, as you've said, try another DAW, providing the price is right of course...

Synkrotron, yeah that is the problem because though the card is older it's served me well and has decent specs. I really didn't have much choice with exiting XP, probably should have gone with Windows 7 though but man that 40 bucks was hard to pass up!. I suppose I should consider windows 7. It would be cheaper than Studio One and less involved in changing over..Bob, I failed to mention that I have the Windows 7 compatibility mode checked.

Daveny5 I tried it. It does record but has pops in the playback. In the past it never performed well with ASIO either. But, it does record mic sound as opposed to the WDM static.

I haven't upgraded to Win 8 cause drivers for Win 8 aren't out for my sound interface.  Seen lots of issues with that.

Maarkr, can't say I blame you!! I wouldn't have either but was told these drivers are working for others. Most likely they weren't using Sonar...Hey Bob no problem at all, I'll give you a call today. The latest is I contacted Cakewalk support and they walked me thru some steps but they were ones I had already walked. He gave it a good try though. He mentioned that X1 wasn't optimized for Windows 8 but X2 was, so I downloaded the demo and it had the same record problems. I want to stress that my interface works perfectly with Studio One artist Version 1 so I can only conclude that the problem has something to do with either a Sonar setting that's been overlooked or Sonar and these interface drivers just don't get along.