Focusrite issue

You need to check share driver in preferences. Also if your using 48 in Sonar you'll have to close it to use other apps which all use 44.1 

It's probably not an interface issue, more likely it's a driver issue. Try switching to WASAPI for SONAR and see if that doesn't take care of the problem. I have essentially the same interface (the Firewire version vs. USB) and don't have this issue.

Thanks for the replies. Matching the bit rate was the solution. However, it seems it must 44.1 in order to make it work. Sonar was set to 48 and windows at 44.1. I had to drop Sonar down for it work. setting both to 48 was a no go. Windows said it wasn't supported.
 
Seems odd. Is that right or is something else possibly going on?

I have not had any more problems since setting everything on my system to 44.1.
 
A while back I tried setting both Windows and Sonar to 48, but something here did not like Windows running at that rate.  Don't recall now exactly what it was, but I ended up switching it all back.  Might be worth a try...
 
I have heard others make comments about dedicating their audio interface to the DAW at a higher sample rate, and then using the on-board sound chip for Windows at the lower rate.  Need another set of speakers for Windows audio that way though.

I just did an experiment to see if I could play a DVD and a YouTube video at the same time. To my surprise, I could. The Focusrite showed its sample rate as 44.1 KHz (my normal rate for everything, and the Windows default). Given that the DVD audio is 48 KHz, that tells me Windows is quietly doing a sample rate conversion behind the scenes. I'm guessing that if I had designated 48 KHz as the default, Windows would have done the conversion for the YouTube video instead of the DVD and all would still be well.
 
Note that Windows explicitly labels this setting as "the sample rate and bit depth to be used when running in shared mode", an acknowledgement of the fact that any interface can only handle one SR and bit depth at a time.
 
So back to the OP's question: why doesn't this always work? My guess is it's because of ASIO, which bypasses much of the Windows audio subsystem and therefore cannot benefit from this automatic SRC.
 
 
 

Last night when I was on that PC I tried switching the driver to WASAPI and Sonar wasn't happy about it. I can't remember the exact message, but it wouldn't work. It may have actually been a Focusrite error.
 
The only time I had the problem was when Sonar was open. Otherwise, I could use media player, youtube, Guitar Pro, PowerDVD, etc. all simultaneously (not that I would).
 
Just dropping Sonar down to 44.1 using ASIO works like a champ.

It is one of the reasons I stay 44.1, makes life easy and none of my recordings are worth uping the quality for. They sound as good as they're gunna be and a higher sample rate ain't going to make them better. 
Also my 01v only runs at 44.1,, and it makes burning CD's that much easier.