I'm working on an orchestral piece using Sonar 8 Studio Edition and an older version of the EWQL Symphonic Orchestra.  In the very last measure, both the cellos and the contrabasses just disappear or drop out. 
 
Both instruments should be playing a sustained, three-beat note (dotted half-note).  But what happens is, the notes sound for a second at the beginning of the measure, and again at the end, with silence in between.
 
I thought at first that this might be caused by too many samples at once, even though no extra voices are added in the last measure.  I also thought it might have something to do with overlaping pitches -- a lot of voices resolve to E in the final cadence.
 
The dropout still occurs if I solo the two problem tracks, or if I mute all of the other tracks.  To reduce the processing load, I've tried archiving tracks, deleting tracks, and even deleting an instance of EWQL, but the dropout is still there.  I still think it might be a resource issue, but I haven't been able to nail it down.
 
I also tried re-sequencing the last few measures of the cello and bass parts, and copying the sequences into new MIDI tracks -- same problem.
 
I'm stumped.  Any ideas why this might be happening?  Any more troubleshooting suggestions?
 
As always, your help is greatly appreciated. 

Man I hate those kinds of MIDI glitches.

1.  Might be some controller cut-off data got injected somewhere and it doesn't show up visually.

2.  "Play effect tails" check box in settings.

3.  Try deleting the bad section then play a longer (by a few measures) part in its place, then selectively erase those new notes in the clip and overdub your intended part.

3b. Actually have some notes recorded in that long new clip that are like 6 measures past the end of the song. That might shift the glitch to them, and then you can just edit that portion off your final mix.


I feel your pain - I HAAAATE that kind of stuff. Seen it for 25 years.

~DPS

But what happens is, the notes sound for a second at the beginning of the measure, and again at the end, with silence in between.

That can only be the synth audio dropping out, not MIDI. If the note starts, that means the note-on was sent and received. And if it were a "MIDI dropout", the sound would not restart without another note-on being sent. So it must be the audio output of the synth dropping out. To test this, try a different synth.

I don't know anything about EWQL, except that I see a fair number of posts about mysterious problems with it. I don't know if this is because it's so popular, or because its buggy.

Try this test:

Put the Now time a measure before the problematic notes. Play through the notes and notice where they drop out. Now experiment with putting the Now time at various other location before the notes (like 1/2 measure, 2 measures, etc) and notice where it drops out.

If the dropout occurs at different locations depending on how far ahead you start playback, then is probably related to a strange MIDI bug that I also ran into a few times. Unfortunately, I don't have a work-around for this. This bug is particularly annoying because you never know when the dropout would occur. Even if you freeze the track, the dropout might occur during the freeze operation.

As I have said on other posts, Sonar's MIDI implementation is a mess. For all I know, you might be running into an issue caused by Sonar's MIDI buffers that are not thread-safe. This is especially true if you have any soft synths that have the "Enable MIDI Output" feature enabled (and they are sending MIDI data out). Then you will run into horrific MIDI problems.

A few things you might want to check.
    In PRV in the little purple box above the keyboard(show/hide midi events box)  click on show all continuous  events to see if there are any controller events on the track that might trigger this. 
    Check for note overlap.  Just click on one of the notes and drag it up or down to see if there is another note hidden behind it. 
    In EW I sometimes get strange behaviours when using the the legato function.  If it is on try the last measure with it unchecked to see if that is involved.
    In EW, if you are using multiple instruments in one instance of the plug in, if any of the tracks has a CC11 or CC7 that may be acting as a global function for all the instrument tracks.  For example if you recorded 1 of the instruments to fade out over the 1st measure of the ending it may be fading all the tracks in that instance.  Because EW doesn't show any visual fader response to the CC's it is sometimes harder to find the culprit causing the problem. 
    Sometimes deleting the offending note in the track and then inserting a note above or below where you want it and dragging it to the correct spot can solve some anomalies.

Thanks for the help everyone.
 
Lorneyb2, good suggestions.  Overlap was one of the first things I thought of, I checked it and even deleted and resequenced that last few measures of the bass and cello parts, but that doesn't seem to be it.  I'm not much of a MIDI guru and don't understand much about continuous controllers, but I will do as you say check out the CC commands.  If that is the problem, I only hope I can figure out how to fix it!
 
It occured to me that the bass part was originally copied and pasted from the cello part.  So I think it's no coincidence that the problem occurs only on those two tracks.  That makes think that there may be data or instructions contained within those two tracks that is causing the problem.
 
It would be relatively simple to just create new tracks and re-sequence them from scratch, except I've done some fine editing to the note durations and velocities that I don't want to loose.  But I may have to resort to that after all. 
 
Anyway, thanks all.  Any further suggestions are welcome.

Well you can always create new tracks from scratch, then drag-drop the midi clips over. Then look at the Events List view to make sure the only thing you have in the MIDI clips are Note events.

lorneyb2
   Sometimes deleting the offending note in the track and then inserting a note above or below where you want it and dragging it to the correct spot can solve some anomalies.

That did it! Bless you! 
 
It's too weird, though.  Deleting the note in staff view or PRV, and then re-inputting the SAME note didn't work.  But inputting the WRONG note and dragging it did.  Go figure.
 
Thank you so much.
 
 

Your welcome.  I discovered that one by accident and have no idea why it works and just replacing in the same spot does not.  Most definitely weird I know.
 Lorne

I've been shopping for a new DAW and have been evaluating Sonar Pro and  Z3TA+ 2, and hearing random audio dropouts. At first I thought I just didn't have my MIDI keyboard configured properly. But after doing some more experiments,  Brundlefly's description of the issue is correct for what I am seeing. This is not MIDI data getting dropped, but rather an issue with Z3TA+ 2 or with how Sonar is handling VST3 plugins. I don't get the issue using older VST soft synths with Sonar. As an experiment, I took the MIDI keyboard out of the equation and simply hand drew 4 or 5 sequential notes in the Sonar track, ensuring there was no overlap of MIDI start/stop events. Each note is held for a second or two. When I play that track back the middle of a note will drop out and then come back in.  I can see it's not MIDI data dropping by monitoring the MIDI indicator and viewing the MIDI events window. I know the MIDI event reached the soft synth because the note started. There's no additional MIDI event at the point where the audio drops out and comes back in. The position/timing of the dropouts is completely random each time I play back the track. This is with just two tracks in the project. (The other track is an older VST synth that never drops out.) It's really too bad, because I was totally jazzed about Sonar and Z3TA+ 2 until now.