Recording Audio with S4PE and Delta 44

I've recently re-set up my home studio but something isn't quite working out right and I am getting horrible results recording audio through the D44 in Sonar. I'm not sure if the problem is how I have Sonar set up or the Delta.

All my synths are patched into a Mackie CR1604. Through the head phones, the sound is nice and clean, at good levels, all peaking at 0 on the meter.

I have the Main outs on the 1604 going into the 1 and 2 ins on the breakout box. Inside the M Audio control panel, I have the 1 and 2 outs patched through the motion mixer and my speakers (Event PS6's) plugged into the 1 and 2 outs on the breakout box. When I play sound and listend to it through the speakers, it sounds just as clean as the headphones.

The hardware settings in the Delta Control Panel are as follows:
Codec Sample Rate: 44,100
DMA Buffer Size: 512
Outputs: -10dBV
In 1 and 2: +4 dBu
Disable Audio app use of monitor and patchbay/router: checked

I set up an audio track in Sonar, input is Stereo M-Audio D44 Multi 1/2, output is bus A

I'm using the WDM/KS driver, no dithering
Share drivers, multiprocessor, effect tails, always open all devices are all checked
Sample rate is 44,100 and audio driver bit depth is 16

When I record audio, it is all muddy and garbled. level is only about half of what is it comming out of the CR1604, so I need to crank up the volume to really hear anything.

I'm thinking it's a sonar issue since when sonar isn't in the equation, things seem to sound fine, and the problem is on recording audio, not just during playback.

It wasn't like this the last time I had things set up and I'm not sure where to look for the missing piece of the puzzle. I've done a quick search of the forums but I cant seem to see anything that is related to this issue. If there is please point me in the right direction.

If anyone can offer any advice, I'd much appreciate it.

Thx :-)

Which Delta drivers are you using?
Any version under .47 is mainly useless. The latest version is 5.10
Make sure that in your Delta Panel the following items are ticked
Internal Xtal
Single and In-Sync
All the +4's (and that your mixer inputs are also set the same

Delete aud.ini and restart SONAR.

Let the wave profile do its job and then go to \Options\Audio

General Screen, check these:
Playback timing master should be M-Audio Delta 44 1/2
Record Timing Master should be M-Audio Delta 44 1/2
Audio Driver Bit Depth: 24
Sampling Rate (whatever you want, min 44.1, max 96KHZ)
Buffers in Playback Queue: 4
Latency: around 11-25msec


Advanced Screen:
make sure that Enable Read Caching and Write Caching are OFF, unticked.
Set I/O buffers size to 1024
Driver Mode WDM/KS
Share Drivers With Other Programs, tick
Sync: Trigger & Freewheel,ticked ON
Timing Offset (msec): 0:00
The rest are more or less optional.

Drivers
Make sure that only the M-Audio Delta 44 1/2 and 3/4 I/O's are highlighted. The multis are red herrings.

Driver Profiles
Should say 32bit PCM, left justified
All the DMA buffer sizes should read whatever your card is set to, probably 512

HTH

Any version under .47 is mainly useless.

Paul,
with all due respect many of us still find the .27 drivers to be very usable. I have a 44 with .27 on a Barton 2500 machine that performs flawlessly. That being said, I don't see any reason not to use the latesr drivers, I have an Audiophile 192 with .48 and another with .51 drivers on Intel machines and they also work great. No UAD or other problematic plugs (unless one considers Waves a problem, I don't) but good solid 24/96 performance. Perhaps i'm doing something wrong since the multis also seem to work just fine.

Best,
jb

Here's my thread from last year on the Delta / Drivers / Word Length

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=458972&mpage=1&key=DElta񰃜

-D