I dumped several tracks of BGVs I wasn't planning to use, and it plays without stopping now.
But I'm going to have to add more tracks.
 
The only thing I can think of offhand is a bit of an inconvenient workaround, and I'm not sure it will work:
 
Stagger the recording start times, say every three takes/ tracks, so there aren't a large number of tracks starting at precisely the same time.
 
I don't think that should be necessary, though. Kind of interrupts the mojo, you know, Joe?

Is there a dedicated drive for audio in the PC or is everything running on one drive? Any info about internal storage might be helpful.

scook

jonnewyork
As I mentioned before, I can't do either. AFAIK I can only access the number of buffers in playback queue and buffer size from preferences/ audio/ driver settings, and the slider is stuck on fast and greyed out, the # of buffers set to 2 and not changeable.

The mixing latency slider is disabled when running in ASIO recording mode. Software supplied by the interface vendor must be used to set latency when running in ASIO recording mode.

Thanks, Scook.
 
That raises another question: The ASIO panel allows you to chose buffers that range from 32 samples to 1024.
It was stopping while set to 256. Not particularly fast, is it?

By itself, 256 is not an extreme setting.

scook
Is there a dedicated drive for audio in the PC or is everything running on one drive? Any info about internal storage might be helpful.

I downloaded Sonar X3 to C:
It seems that whenever I start a new project, Sonar initially saves it to the C: drive by default and will only allow it to be subsequently saved to external HDs.
 
After work has been done I routinely save any changes to E: and F:

scook
By itself, 256 is not an extreme setting.

That's what I'm thinking, and it really shouldn't be too fast, should it?

I suspect the problem is related to working on the system hard drive. Is the system drive a spinning hard drive or an SSD?
 
It sounds like there is one internal drive and external drives are used for backup. Is this the case?

Yes, except I'm always loading the project from one of the external HDs.
HDD, not SDD
I'll try defragging and disc test it. I have an older iteration of the song with all the vox still on it that I can use to see if that makes any difference. 
 

I have got to believe the problem is related to 96K audio I/O on an external drive. How is the external drive attached, USB2, USB3, firewire...? What is the rotation speed of the external drive? Really ought to consider adding a dedicated internal drive (either a 7200RPM or SSD) for audio projects or reduce the sample rate. Even at a lower sample rate an external drive can significantly reduce the number a audio tracks a project can support.
WRT

jonnewyork
Sonar initially saves it to the C: drive by default

This can be altered in Preferences and/or by using per-project audio folders and specifying the project folder at project creation. The problem with specifying an external drive as the default audio drive in SONAR is should the drive be unreachable when SONAR starts, the config will default to the C: drive.

Discs are 0% fragmented and status Healthy. I forgot I set it to automatically defrag once a week.
 

scook
I have got to believe the problem is related to 96K audio I/O on an external drive. How is the external drive attached, USB2, USB3, firewire...?

USB3

What is the rotation speed of the external drive?

 
One is 7200, the other is 5400

Really ought to consider adding a dedicated internal drive (either a 7200RPM or SSD) for audio projects or reduce the sample rate. Even at a lower sample rate an external drive can significantly reduce the number a audio tracks a project can support.

I may have to do that. I really don't want to abandon using 96K on new projects. As it is, this project is using a grand total of 7 plugins, two tracks with automated mutes and one external insert. It doesn't seem like a lot to bog down the system, but maybe it's enough.