Audio distortion in Sonar, but not outside of it
I'm getting bad audio distortion during playback. No dropouts, just distortion. Audio is set to 44.1K, 16 bit. Meters stay well in the green during recording and playback. The distortion is sporadic, meaning it happens at different spots each time I play back the audio. On average, 20-40% of the audio track comes out distorted; the rest is clean (i.e., it's not solid distortion start to end).
Not just my project - I also get playback distortion from the Cakewalk's sample "SONAR Audio and MIDI DEMO2.cwb".
Environment: Windows 2000 Pro SP 4, Sonar 4.0.4, Emu 0404 sound card (no other sound cards).
A (sort of) brief history:
Three days ago, the DEMO2 sample played flawlessly. I tried for the first time to record audio in Sonar, but no signal was getting in. Also could not record in Windows Sound Recorder - no signal. Concluded it must be a driver issue. Upgraded the Emu 0404 driver and digital audio system software (PatchMix DSP) to the latest. Audio recording then started working, both in Sonar and Windows Sound Recorder. One problem solved.
But - audio playback of what I recorded in Sonar was distorting. Same with DEMO2. Record/playback was clean in Windows Sound Recorder, as long as CD quality format was used.
Googled around and saw a suggestion to upgrade to the latest DirectX. Did so - now at 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) (don't know what it was before).
Distortion still there in Sonar playback of DEMO2. Was DirectX to blame somehow? Ran "dxdiag" and all audio was flawless, so doesn't look that way. MP3 playback in Win Media Player also flawless.
The problems seemed to start when I upgraded the Emu driver and software, so I rolled back both to what they were. Distortion still occurred playing DEMO2! (Plus, I couldn't record again, so leaving the old Emu driver/software in place was a non-starter. I've since re-applied the latest upgrades.)
Multiple reboots and multiple resets of AUD.INI along the way were unfruitful.
Bottom line - audio playback is perfect outside of Sonar (dxdiag, Win Media Player, etc.), sporadically distorted inside it. Suggestions?
GD