I expect 2 tracks would not be a problem. I thought in post 11 the two track project worked. The original post mentioned 18 tracks. Muted tracks still have to be read, so from a disk I/O perspective there is no difference between muted and un-muted tracks. Archived tracks, on the other hand, are completely ignored by the DAW and are not read from disk. I would still recommend installing another internal drive. So much has been invested in an interface, seems a shame to waste it by saving the $100 the real fix would cost.

Thanks, Scook. That sounds like good advice.
Again, I won't be able to archive tracks that I want to use and I guess freezing tracks probably wouldn't really help since most of the fx processing is done on sub-groups rather than individual tracks.

Freezing a synth would make the problem worse because it will increase disk load. Freezing an audio track may reduce CPU load because plug-ins on the track will no longer be loaded and processed but the frozen track will still need to be read from disk.

After having had a similar play back issue my problem was driver/service pack related although this is probably not the same issue you are having.
 
I have noticed that playback may 'stutter' when it reaches the chorus as additional tracks/instruments come into play however it only happens the first time it reaches the chorus... after that if the track is played from the beginning then no stuttering occurs
 
Computers eh !!!!

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.
 
Anyone know  why that is?
 

Another thing you can experiment with is enabling read caching in the same page.

How do you do that?
 

 
You are misunderstanding my post. I asked you to change the Playback I/O buffer size which is completely different from audio latency. The latency slider is grayed out in ASIO mode since that is set from the ASIO control panel. The one I want you to change is the I/O buffer size settings which affects how sonar reads audio data from the disk. These settings are in the Sync and Caching page. Make sure you have selected Advanced at the bottom of the dialog or you wont see it. Read caching setting is also in that same page.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR%20X3&language=3&help=Dialogs2.056.html
 
As Noel mentioned, be sure that "Advanced" is checked at the very bottom of that window or "Sync and Caching" will not be visible on the left edge.
 
However, the suggestion of an internal drive is highly recommended (7200rpm or better), since many USB3 external drives I tested (especially early on) did not come anywhere near USB3 speeds. And if you are plugging a USB3 drive into a USB2 port, you are only going to see USB2 speeds from it.

Thanks for the help, people!
You've sold me on the idea of a dedicated internal drive.
 
For right now, the playback I/O buffer was set at 256 KB. I set it to 512 and playback no longer stops.

If playback I/O buffer fixes the problem, you are done. I would expect an internal drive would use a similar setting.

 
 
I'm not sure if this is related -- you can point me to another thread if it isn't.
I just recorded the first MIDI/ soft synth track and on playback, it's way in front of the rest of the music, timing wise, like maybe a third of a second. What should I be looking at?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Maybe this will help http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/2731416