If I am working on a project, a track on just a soft synth eg, Omnisphere, and I bounce that track down to audio within Sonar - is the soundcard doing that processing or is it all done within the DAW?
 
Then if I export the entire mix as a .WAV, then I presume then the soundcard is converting from digital to analog?

convertors as such are the endstage for output to speakers. the cpu is doing the work.. load up a few instance of Diva etc :) and watch the cpu work hard.
 
the soundcard is being used for input and output in the main. so the faster the cpu / memory in a pc the better.
 
as for bouncing, when it's bounced it takes far less cpu as it's not generating the sounds , just playing a wav. years ago some synths you'd get 30-50% cpu usage.. but bouncing down to audio would make the track 3% cpu or something like that.
 
 
 

But when I bounce or freeze a soft synth track --------- is that processing a Sonar-thing, or a soundcard-thing?

ULTRABRA
If I am working on a project, a track on just a soft synth eg, Omnisphere, and I bounce that track down to audio within Sonar - is the soundcard doing that processing or is it all done within the DAW?
 
Then if I export the entire mix as a .WAV, then I presume then the soundcard is converting from digital to analog?

A wav-file is just as digital as any audio inside your machine. There's nothing analog inside a computer. (AFAIK) The converters only matter when the audiodata is sent "out" from the machine to the speakers, or when you record audio.
Any audio you listen with your PC is converted at output. There's no way to record/save anything as analog audio, D-to-A conversion is just an output feature, and A-to-D is just for recording.
 

ULTRABRA
But when I bounce or freeze a soft synth track --------- is that processing a Sonar-thing, or a soundcard-thing?

Sonar.

The sound card converters come into play when something is being passed through it in either direction.  In the computer, everything is digital bits.... the sound card converters work when something goes from digital bits to analog sound waves or vice versa.

Thanks guys.
 
So the bounce/freeze within a project is handled by Sonar (so whatever soundcard I'm using has no affect on that).
 
When I export complete song to .WAV, the process in making that .WAV, that's the soundcard right?
 
 

When I export complete song to .WAV, the process in making that .WAV, that's the soundcard right?
 
As the late John McLaughin used to say, "Wrong."  I can't think of a single SONAR function any of my various soundcards have done.  You use the soundcard/interface (soundcard implies a built-in cheap card, although Lynx PCI cards obviously fall under that definition and are expensive and professional) for ADDA and output routing from SONAR.  SONAR and your CPU do all the SONAR work and send a track, buss or mixdown to your sound interface which squirts it out in analog.

Ha ha - I tested it, and I can both bounce a track within the project, and export the complete project, all without any audio interface connected.
 
So if I'm working inside the box only, whatever audio interface I have has absolutely no affect on the sound quality of the rendered file, as all the processing is done internally within the DAW?
 
So if I was to make a song in Sonar, and upload to eg Soundcloud or make an MP3 and send it to someone - I cuod have a $50 interface, or a $5000 interface and it wouldn't make any difference?

ULTRABRA
So if I was to make a song in Sonar, and upload to eg Soundcloud or make an MP3 and send it to someone - I cuod have a $50 interface, or a $5000 interface and it wouldn't make any difference?

theoretically - as long as you do not capture any analog source - once you do that (AD conversion), you will certainly spot a difference between "a $50 interface, or a $5000 interface"
 
also, you will mix differently depending on what your hear - so your mix will be different (yet a $5000 interface does not make the mix better by itself) ... however, the monitors, the room and your skills will have a much bigger impact than the DA converters ...