I've not used SPLAT for some months but yesterday updated to 2016.09 (v2) and loaded some of my latest projects. It was not a pleasant experience at first as I noted tons of dropouts were there were none before. I was rather expecting the opposite now when the bakers are working on load balancing:
 
When at idle (not playing) core 1 (the one to the left) is almost constantly maximizing. When playback starts it goes down to about half but it maximizes frequently causing dropouts.
 
However, after a few hours of testing I was surprised to find the following:
 
When opening the interfaces to the plugins and either leaving them open or minimizing them dramatically improves performance, especially for UVI Falcon. It seems some plugins "want to be visible" to perform at peak.
 
Anyone else noticing this? Could it be a bug in Sonar or perhaps the plugins? This is new to me at least.
 
Btw, I found the new Load Balancing to cause even more dropouts, so that one went back to off quickly.
/Mats

have you updated your system since the previous time you used Sonar? graphic card driver for example could make a huge difference in terms of more/less dropouts ... how is the disk doing? has it become a lot fuller?
 
system specs and recent changes to system would help to give more detail hints on what to check.
 
load balancing is not the one and only solution to etter performance ... it only help in certain situations (see documentation)

And if you have windows 10 and it has updated, it definitely reset some stuff that can affect audio (like USB power settings, etc.)  Also, some people have had to re-install their interface drivers after the updates.

No, I haven't changed anything in the meantime. I think however Windows 10 has made an update since. But I haven't changed anything in the driver or USB settings either now or before.
 
I use a Behringer ASIO interface that has worked without trouble. I'll however try to reinstall the driver, just in case.
 
CPU is an I7 4(8)-core which rarely have caused any dropouts before. All installed on SSD.
 
Very strange behaviour, even stranger that it can be "fixed" as I wrote above.
 
/Mats
 

Cakewalk CTO Noel Borthwick clarified recently that Load Balancing is not applicable to synth plugins. To confirm or rule out changes in SONAR as a cause or contributing factor, I suggest you roll back a version or two (or to whatever the last verison was that you were using) to see if the problem persists.

I now rolled back to 2016.08 and the dropouts are gone. Something happened in 2016.09 that made the performance worse for me.
 
I still get even better performance when especially Falcon is visible. I guess it always has been that way and it's a "feature/bug" of that plugin that I haven't noticed before. Sorry if that confused anyone.
 
Thanks all, now I know it's not something here that is broken.
 

you might want to make a note of settings in 2016.08.
then re install 2016.09 and see if they are the same. (buffer size, audio interface card settings,exc)
this might help you narrow down the culprit.

No, nothings changed in the driver settings. It's the same as before I rolled back. I don't think updates from Cakewalk change in the driver settings, at least not what I've seen so far.
 
 

chuckebaby
you might want to make a note of settings in 2016.08.
then re install 2016.09 and see if they are the same. (buffer size, audio interface card settings,exc)
this might help you narrow down the culprit.

I haven't had any Sonar updates change any of my audio / MIDI settings (at least I never noticed so far) ...
 
If there has been a long time since last serious Sonar use, I suspect the #1607 anniversary update, which is basically a win10 reinstall and installs all drivers again (not necessarily the same as before), to cause some differences.
 
Still strange if it works in 2016.08.
 
 

I don't know if there would be any connection between Windows and Sonar from this, but literally yesterday I was answering someone's question about Power Management Advanced Options in Windows, and I wanted to accurately supply the name of the parameter I was referring to, so I went into MY system to grab the correct name for it - and discovered that Windows had RESET the Power Plan from High Performance back to Balanced, - which ROYALLY aggravated me.
 
If I get some time later today, I will go back into my settings to see if any others were changed/reset by Windows Update.
 
All I am suggesting is that you might want to review your settings to make sure some stellar decision by a Microsoft engineer hasn't changed something that could affect the current Sonar and not a prior version.
 
I believe the above is not particularly likely, but if you are in there looking for potential issues, it might be worth just keeping this in the back of your head as you look, just in case.
 
Bob Bone