Kylotan
In fact it seems to be a lot worse when I am moving the mouse around over the Sonar window or performing actions within Sonar such as minimizing plugins etc. In fact I remember having similar problems with 8.5 but don't remember how they were fixed

what kind of mouse? some proprietary mouse drivers can cause such symtoms (logitech was it?)
what video card? x-ray feature has been known to cause similar issues, some plugin specific
hth

Is your audio on a dedicated drive? I/O shouldn't need changing but of course a change to the drive where it is getting audio from such as greater file fragmentation would make a difference.
 
If that isn't an answer I would suggest that something such as an update has affected something somewhere. A system that has ran okay doesn't suddenly become a problem for no reason (obviously).

Kylotan

robert_e_bone
You mention these happening in playback.
 
So you are in the mixing stage of this particular project?

 
I don't have separate a mixing stage. :)
 

If so, then if you have certain types of effects loaded into the project, you may well need to adjust your ASIO Buffer Size up to as high as 1024, or even 2048 - if it goes that high.

No, there are no effects (in my setup) that should require that sort of latency. I've never needed it before.
 

Thanks for clarifying.
 
Can you please list all the plugins this particular project happens to have loaded?  I just want to double-check them, as a second set of eyes, for potential for inducing latency.  Thanks.
 
Bob Bone
 

"dropoutmsec.... all three come with a setting of 250, and they don't make many computers that will not drop out at that setting with all the real time f/x going on .     750 is where I keep it and the drop outs and crashes have stopped with this one setting."
 
What?
 
Is anyone else going to add to this?

I put mine back to what used to be the default setting of 500, and don't seem to have issues.
 
Bob Bone
 

robert_e_bone
Can you please list all the plugins this particular project happens to have loaded?  I just want to double-check them, as a second set of eyes, for potential for inducing latency.  Thanks.

Bob, even if plugins do cause latency, as I understand it this should have no relation to the sort of ASIO latency you need. Latency within plugins is something that is handled within the engine so that all the outputs line up - but that's done before the audio hits the ASIO buffer.
 
Other questions: I have no 'dedicated' drives as such but the disk most of my audio is on is nearly full. However fragmentation is supposedly at 0%.
 
I have an unusual mouse (MadcAt/Saitek RAT 5) but I've had it for a long time without it causing any problems up to now.
 
Graphics card is just an AMD Radeon HD 6850. I'll look into driver updates.

Kylotan
....
Other questions: I have no 'dedicated' drives as such but the disk most of my audio is on is nearly full. However fragmentation is supposedly at 0%.
 ....

Aha!  Drives nearing full capacity can exhibit all manner of strange behavior.   I'd fully expect dropouts, etc. with a nearly full drive in a recording rig.

My ATI Radeon has been a never-ending source of amusement. Sometimes it works fine, then there's a driver update and it sucks, so I roll back, then I try a later driver update and it works great. However, this is also the card that installed the HD Audio driver that totally screwed up my system, and I've mentioned that enough and wrote a tip of the week about it, so you probably already know about this particular issue.
 
There's a chance the nearly full drive could also be a problem, although that tends to be an issue more with system drives.
 
Definitely look into a graphics card update. The current update works okay in my system - not as bad as some updates, not as good as others. The CCC control program crashes regularly but doesn't seem to make much difference.

Kylotan

robert_e_bone
Can you please list all the plugins this particular project happens to have loaded?  I just want to double-check them, as a second set of eyes, for potential for inducing latency.  Thanks.

Bob, even if plugins do cause latency, as I understand it this should have no relation to the sort of ASIO latency you need. Latency within plugins is something that is handled within the engine so that all the outputs line up - but that's done before the audio hits the ASIO buffer.
 
Other questions: I have no 'dedicated' drives as such but the disk most of my audio is on is nearly full. However fragmentation is supposedly at 0%.
 
I have an unusual mouse (MadcAt/Saitek RAT 5) but I've had it for a long time without it causing any problems up to now.
 
Graphics card is just an AMD Radeon HD 6850. I'll look into driver updates.

Some kinds of plugins can DEFINITELY add enough latency to be a problem - if they are loaded and used during tracking/recording but are actually meant to be used in mixing/mastering instead.  This is actually a fairly common problem.
 
This would include effects that either chew up a lot of CPU or those that deliberately scan audio data ahead, in order to know how to process the signal through the effect - this is known as 'look-ahead' processing, and can add quite a bit of latency.
 
Since I do not know what effects you have loaded, I cannot look into that aspect on your behalf.   Good luck.
 
Bob Bone
 

I respectfully disagree - a plugin can have a high CPU requirement (which could cause dropouts), and it could have a high latency too, but they aren't intrinsically linked. eg. A linear phase EQ could have a large latency because it needs more of the signal available in order to perform the phase correction. Conversely, a zero-latency convolution reverb requires higher CPU because it can't use the FFT tricks available to a plugin that accepts some latency.
 
If CPU load is low enough, the latency should be irrelevant (except when trying to play along with real-time monitoring), and anything else is a bug.
 
The plugins I am using are a variety of synths (Absynth, Dimension Pro, Play, Superior Drummer), lots of instances of Sonitus Equalizer, plus ValhallaRoom, Lexicon Pantheon, Sonitus Compressor, and Voxengo OvertoneEQ.
 
The stuttering still happens with all effect bins bypassed.