How to choose audio inputs 3 and 4?

SONAR 5 TASCAM US-600 Here are my settings: http://popstrip.com/misc/sonar-woes.png How do I make SONAR see inputs 3/4, so I can select them?

You could also try switching to WDM.

Thanks guys. Sorry for not replying sooner. I didn't think anyone replied. Yeah, I tried installed the correct drivers again. They installed fine, but it still won't let me select the US-600 inputs are still greyed out. If I switch to WDM drivers, then I get the extra inputs, but I was told WDM drivers are bad. I guess the only reason I was given was they they are slow, but the ASIO is slow too (I have to manually move every take by 30ms to line it back up), so I guess everything is slow. I do wonder how other people get around these delays though.

You didn't disable your on board sound card,, that's most likely your problem. 

Sonar is still using your on board. 

Disable on board
Go to windows audio devices and make sure Tascam is your default. 
Always turn on the interface before booting. If it's USB powered then fine. 

I bet if you look under audio options drivers you see tascam unchecked and the real tech is checked. 

swb909


@Kalle Rantaaho Hey, I'm not sure what you mean by buffer dropdown, but the latency on the Tascam is still set to lowest. Now that I'm in WDM, the only buffer settings I see are in Sonar (General tab), where buffer size is set close to the fast side at 17.4 msec. The lowest it goes is 5.8 - but if that was the delay time, I would still have to to slide everything over 5.8ms. Hmm. @Cactus Music: In WDM mode, I don't even have the option for the Realtek stuff. Plus, the mic / headphones are working, which are hooked up to the Tascam. So I don't see how it could be using any Realtek drivers. edit: Not sure why the forum keeps removing my paragraph breaks...

5.8 ms is an extremely low latency. Many of us can never get that low. I work with 7 ms input/ about 20 ms roundtrip latency and can't see/hear any problems. 5.8 ms is like standing 5-6 feet from the guitar cabinet. A total roundtrip latency of about 20 ms (or even more)  is in most cases still quite workable. That requires no dragging of clips to anywhere. Think about it, 20 ms is 0,02 seconds (=50 beats in a second). No musician plays with that kind of accuracy. Worlds fastest guitarists can play 10-12 plucks per second.
(FireFox is the cause of your paragraph problems. This forum software doesn't like it).

Okay, thanks for the info. Yeah, nothing I try seems to affect the audio delay. None of the latency settings change anything. The tracks are always fraction of a second too slow whether it's WDM or ASIO and I can't seem to even affect the fraction. However, I will stick with WDM because at least I can access the ports 3/4 that way. I will try the higher latency settings if that might help - seems counter intuitive, but I guess I don't understand what the setting means. My CPU is a quad-core Intel i5 3.3GHz with 16MB RAM - not the fastest PC in the world, but I'd think that should be good enough not to have to slide every track over. Thanks.

daveny5


Deselect the Generic driver
Select the 3 US600 Drivers: US600 Driver 1, US 600 Driver 3 and US600 Driver 5.

The way it works is Driver 1 will give you the following inputs: 
1 - Left
2 - Right 
1/2 - Stereo

Driver 3 will give you:
3 - Left
4 - Right
3/4 - Stereo 

Driver 5 will give you
5 - Left
6 - Right
5/6 - Stereo

That's how most soundcards pair up the inputs so that you can record mono and stereo tracks. Keep in mind, mono inputs, like a microphone or a guitar, should be recorded onto a mono track or you won't be able to pan them left or right. 

I wonder if it also dont have something to do with the Mono Stereo switches on the rear as well.  Ive never messed with a card with that set up

Your computer should be smoking along without any issues. That is 4x more a machine than I have. 

I think if you mess with the setting that things get buggered up. 

I have never adjusted the latency settings or buffers so cannot comment on which is best, I just let Sonar set this up and it has always worked perfectly for me. 

There is nothing wrong with using the WDM drivers. As a matter of fact I did a little reading and came to the conclusion that for some PC configuration ASIO drivers, which are not native to MS systems, might not work as well as the native WDM drivers. We are even told by Cakewalk themselves to try both and use which ever seems the most stable. 

Just a note on the 3/4 inputs. Under ASIO on some they will share drivers with the SPDIF and you have to select either SPDIF or 3/4 as an input in the Tascam control panel. 

Try setting the Tascam control panel to the second lowest setting, not the lowest. 

There is a test to see if SOnar is not adjusting for latency offset. 

Use a midi kick or snare drum track.
Bounce it to an audio track 
Or use a real snare or anything with a super obvious transient spike. Hit your guitar PU's. anything. 
Patch your output of the Tascam back to a input and re- record to a new audio track. 
Put them side by side and see zoom in to see if the transients line up. 
There is a way to adjust the offset manually. 
But I think there's something gone wrong when you have to do this as Sonar is normally dead on. 
Are your monitoring from the Tascam and with input echo off?