I have never had issues with Sonar dropping out that I couldn't solve. Usually it's with audio and freezing or mixdown solves it. I'm running Windows 8.1 on an ASUS transformer laptop, 6G RAM, 64-bit, 1.90 GHz processors. I have a new project that I started and it is running 2 softsynths, Session Drummer 2, and one instance of Roland TTS-1. Also running one instance of Cakewalk reverb and 2 Sonitus Eq's. This is a FAR cry from anything that would potentially tax my machine.

When I play both of my MIDI tracks, the playback drops out EVERY TIME. I have upped my buffers, MIDI playback milliseconds, the CPU shows around 4%, the disk is at 0%. If I archive one and play the other, in both cases, it plays normally. But everytime I play them both, it's guaranteed to drop out.

I've tried everything I could find in the forums and online. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you,
 
Tim Curry (No, not "that" Tim Curry) 

By "dropout" do you mean tracks go silent as the transport continues to run, or the audio engine actually drops out with a Toast notification and the transport stops?
 
If the former, and your MIDI Prepare Using Buffer is already 700ms or more (500ms is usually sufficient), try changing the tempo of the project very slightly or moving hard-quantized MIDI slightly off the grid.
 
If the latter, download the free LatencyMon, and check your Deferred Procedure Call Latency. The most common cause of dropouts related to DPC spikes is WiFi drivers; they should be disabled when running SONAR.
 
 

Also, try "Save As" to a new project. This will recreate the project and give you an indication of whether there is something going on with access to the midi files and instruments.

Yes, by "dropout" I mean that the playback stops completely and the red "DROPOUT" flag is lit at the bottom of the project window. I had already upped my MIDI prepare buffer from 500ms to 750ms. I've never had an issue using 500, with many, many, more MIDI tracks running, so this had no effect.

I have also disabled any background services that I don't need in case they were interrupting, and that didn't change anything.

I downloaded Latencymon and it gives me no indication that anything is wrong. The one thing that is strange though is that it shows my page faults are really high. I've looked in the task manager and performance monitor, but can't see anything unusual.

My swap space on my disk, which I've also never had to worry about, was set to about 2GB, so I upped it to 4GB and that had no effect.

I tried "save as," closed Sonar, reopened it, and opened the new project. It played though once fine, then ran it again and it dropped out.

I'm having a hard time understanding what could be causing this. With so little going on in the project, it shouldn't be an issue.

Platinum_Dragon
I have also disabled any background services that I don't need in case they were interrupting, and that didn't change anything.

You don't by any chance have Windows performance options set to give priority to background services instead of applications, do you? Just wondering since you mentioned background services. This an oft-promoted system tweak that was long-ago debunked by Cakewalk CTO, Noel Borthwick, himself. My own experience with it was something like what you're describing here; SONAR would barely run.
 
Also, what version if SONAR is this, and is the problem affecting only this one project or all projects?

Yes, I do have it set for background perfomance. I'm using an Edirol UA-25 and that's what the manual said to do. I have been running it this way for about 7 years with no problems, but if it's not doing anything, I can change it back. I'm running on Sonar 8.3.1

I did manage to narrow the problem down to the instance of Sonitus Reverb. When I turn the reverb off, things go fine, when it's on they go awry. I upped my ASIO buffer from 6 to 9 and the problem seems to have disappeared. Still strange because I'm only running this one effect, although I'm new to using the ASIO drivers.

This is  somewhat disconcerting. I use the basic reverb presumably because it doesn't place a lot of load on the machine and I play live through Guitar Rig with my backing tracks rolling and want to my buffer to be set low to get the least latency possible.

I'm going to try changing to "program priority" and see if I can get any further improvement.

Thank you all for your help so far!

Tim

I never used the Sonitus Reverb much but don't recall anyone ever reporting issues with it. IIRC, Pantheon LE was being bundled with S8 already. That's been my go-to, lightweight reverb for a long time.
 
Definitely switch priority to applications and see how that goes. You might also try disabling 64-bit Double Precision Engine which is sometimes implicated in bad plugin behavior, though anything Sonitus should be okay.
 
 

Well, I changed the priority which on its own didn't do anything, but I switched to WDM drivers and then back to ASIO, and I think I unplugged the Edirol and rebooted somewhere in there and the problem seems to have gone.

I don't have the double-precision switch on.

Is the Lexicon Reverb lighter than the Sonitus? I like that one better, but I assumed it would be heavier on the CPU.

I've not compared the two, but one instance of Pantheon used as a send FX on a bus should not add noticeable load.
 
Glad to hear you whipped the dropout problem BTW.