Helpful hints for using Roland Octa-Capture(s) with Sonar
I just spent several hours of time integrating my new Roland Octa-Capture into a system that previously had a single Octa-Capture and a MOTU 828 MKII. The new setup has the MOTU removed and a second Octa-Capture in it's place. Along the way I learned a lot about what works and what does not and figured I could create a post to save others some grief so more time can be spent making music and less being a hardware engineer.
For the record I run my Octa-Captures at 96Khz sample rate and 24 bit sample depth. Fantastic so far.
Do NOT select WDM mode for the Octa-Capture. Only use ASIO. I found the quickest way to crash Sonar was to accidentally select WDM driver mode. I then had the SONARPRD process that would not go away. Bad news.
Biggest issue I had....Make absolutely sure that you put the Octa-Capture on a native USB 2.0 port. My PC has USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. The USB 3.0 ports are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports and if you hook the Octa-Capture up to the USB 3.0 port at first you won't think there is any problem. Sonar can see the interfaces fine. You can open the Octa-Capture control panel and configure it with no issues. When you try to stream audio in or out of it though you get nothing but god awful crackling and popping typical of a system with completely screwed up digital clocking. If you put them on a USB 2.0 port all of these problems disappear and you get pristine audio. Remember that if you are using two Octa-Captures that EACH of them has to be on it's own USB 2.0 port if you want Sonar to see all the ports.
The documentation is pretty good about hooking two Octa-Captures together but it is missing some useful details. You have to make sure that both interfaces have the digital interface in auto mode. You have to make sure that the unit you want to use as the clock master has the "VS Ext" setting turned to off. This is very important. The clock slave (or EXT unit as it will show up in Sonar) has to have "VS Ext" set to on. You need to put an S/PDIF cable from the S/PDIF output of the clock master to the S/PDIF input of the clock slave. You CANNOT connect the master S/PDIF input to the slave S/PDIF output in a misguided attempt to be clever and provide more I/O options. It will make sure you get NO I/O from either unit. The VSExt option basically disables the S/PDIF ports for normal operation and makes them used ONLY for strapping Octa-Captures together. In Sonar, when the two Octa-Capture units are used you will see the ports associated with the slave unit labeled with an EXT suffix. It will be pretty obvious. If you are not sure which unit has the EXT ports you can look on the front panel of the Octa-Capture. The master will have the clock set as "int" and the slave will have it set as "ext."
Make absolutely sure that BOTH units have the same sample clock rate and that it matches what you are going to use in Sonar.
If you use two units you need to put your main outs on output ports 1 and 2 of the clock slave unit. If you don't you won't get any of the audio from the master unit. Sort of obvious when you think about it since there is only a single S/PDIF connector between the units and it goes from the master to the slave. By default, Mix Bus A goes to the digital output ports. Make sure if you get a unit that is not new that this has not been changed for some reason. Also, out of the box, port 1 is set to be a high impedance input and port 8 has the compressor enabled. Maybe this works for you but be aware this may not be what you want. I use keyboards so it was not what I wanted by default.
If for some reason you want to have your sample clock run at 192Khz then you are going to have some problems because you CANNOT strap two Octa-Captures together and use that clock rate and even if you just use a single Octa-Capture it will only run ports 1-4. This may be strange if you have devices on other ports and change the clock rate and then all of a sudden you get no output from those devices. I can't imagine running at this sample rate but that is just me.
For the record, I was able to strap my MOTU 828 MKII to my first Octa-Capture by setting the Octa-Capture in "VSExt" mode and making the MOTU the clock master. It doesn't allow you to see all the individual interfaces in Sonar like the two Octa-Capture solution so it is less optimal but it at least allows you to use them together in a pinch. Remember, ASIO only allows a single audio device type.
PC Audio Labs mobile i7 MC, 3.46 Ghz i7 990X, 12 Gb RAM, 3 750 Gb 7200 RPM drives, 3 USB2, 2 USB 3 ports, firewire, Windows 7 64 bit Pro, Sonar X3e Producer 64 bit,