I think I'm having the same problem... You can check my latest post further down labelled Sonar Recording Static. I get problems with my MOTU 828x, connected with USB or with Thunderbolt. My old Roland UA25-EX records fine with Sonar and the MOTU 828x records fine with Harrison MixBus, but the MOTU and Sonar seem to have major problems randomly from time to time. I am considering getting a RME interface and scrapping the MOTU to see if that runs more stable. I don't really want to scrap Sonar because I like it and have two albums in the go right now.
-Mark.

ryecatchermark
I think I'm having the same problem... You can check my latest post further down labelled Sonar Recording Static. I get problems with my MOTU 828x, connected with USB or with Thunderbolt. My old Roland UA25-EX records fine with Sonar and the MOTU 828x records fine with Harrison MixBus, but the MOTU and Sonar seem to have major problems randomly from time to time. I am considering getting a RME interface and scrapping the MOTU to see if that runs more stable. I don't really want to scrap Sonar because I like it and have two albums in the go right now.
-Mark.

now that's an interesting post.
 
did you get MOTU support involved? I think I will, although I know the first reply will be that this doesn't happen anywhere else ... but last time with audio driver not being recognized at reboot we could find 3 users with identical problems and MOTU eventually fixed it.
 
do you have a small project where this happens? on my end the random playback glitches only happen in high track count projects (which would be several GB to submit), the audio recording corruption happens also on small projects but so random I have not found the pattern yet.
 
will try the "DC offset" setting. never messed with it, so I assume it is "on".
will try MixBus for recording and playback of these heavy load projects (need to bounce all tracks and import there but should be worth the test).
 
so a few things left on my list to check, but it looks like opening an support ticket with MOTU (will PM you if I do).  I don't have much hope that Cakewalk will look into this, not sure they have the latest MOTU AVBs plus they will probably just blame the audio driver first if it works fine with other interfaces ...
 
BTW, I tried rolling Sonar back, but maybe not far enough ... may try some earlier Sonar builds if I get a chance.
 

Hi Again,
 
Cakewalk support confirmed with me that the "DC offset" is a bug that is not fixed yet... make sure it is Un-Checked... that fixed my recording on input 1 and 2 to two separate tracks problem. 
 
Now my problem is random with just a simple mono track... I even encountered it on the most basic session with only one audio track routed straight to the master bus with no plugins at all.  A few restarts and re-trys got the same session and track to start recording fine again... no other changes were made to my session or the rest of the computer/hardware.  Very frustrating... I can't fully trust Sonar for tracking at the moment.
 
I have contacted MOTU, but because the problem doesn't happen on Harrsion MixBus (or Digital Performer, for that matter) they say it is Sonar's fault and they can't do anything about it.
 
I love Sonar Platinum, but I really don't want to have to record a bunch of tracks in one piece of software, and then import everything into Sonar for mixing, and then back again for possibly adding more tracks... and so on.
 
A couple of times I even had a blue screen crash where the error message included the MOTU driver as the problem (right in the middle of playing 2 different 64 bit soft synths). MOTU said it wasn't the driver's fault and had me contact Microsoft... Microsoft said it wasn't their problem and had me contact ASUS... the best ASUS could do was have me do a disk check... the disks were fine.  I am pretty fed up with contacting Tech support now.
 
I have setup my computer with all of the audio optimizations I could find out there and still can't reach 100% stability.  I don't mind the odd bug that I can work around, but recording tracks with random crackles is not acceptable.  The best I can come up with is that Sonar Platinum and MOTU drivers do not play nicely together.  I have even tried switching from ASIO to WDM... no improvement.  My Computer has been running rock solid otherwise and LatencyMon shows no problems when run for long periods... even with Sonar playing a big session with lots of plugins in the background - I don't run LatencyMon when recording or doing real work ;-)
 
My old Cakewalk UA25-EX interface did have the same "DC offset" problem as the MOTU, but once that was unchecked, the old UA25-EX has been totally solid for playback and recording... I can even get it to run at smaller buffer sizes than the MOTU without glitches, although I am running more than 16 outputs out of the MOTU and just stereo out of the UA25-EX.
 
So, for me, it might come to either replacing the MOTU, or replacing Sonar... don't really want to do either.  PLEASE HELP Cakewalk ;-)
 
Thanks,
Mark

Just an update... I think the use of MOTU's CueMix software (and possibly the MOTU Audio Console software as well) can trigger the crackles to start in Sonar, especially when opening the MOTU software AFTER Sonar is already open.  If you get your buffer settings and monitor mix set before opening Sonar, it might help.  When I contacted MOTU and asked why their 828x drivers for Windows haven't been updated for over a year, they said it's because they were working perfectly, but more recent updates of Windows 10 may be causing some problems???
 
Mark.

Hi
 
I tried a few more things.
 
Playback glitching also happens when using X3, so definitely not something that Platinum introduced.
 

ryecatchermark
Cakewalk support confirmed with me that the "DC offset" is a bug that is not fixed yet... make sure it is Un-Checked... that fixed my recording on input 1 and 2 to two separate tracks problem. 

 
It turned out that I have never used this opton. I checked all my systems. Hence, this cannot be the reason for the record corruptions I had.
 

ryecatchermark 
Just an update... I think the use of MOTU's CueMix software (and possibly the MOTU Audio Console software as well) can trigger the crackles to start in Sonar, especially when opening the MOTU software AFTER Sonar is already open.  If you get your buffer settings and monitor mix set before opening Sonar, it might help.  When I contacted MOTU and asked why their 828x drivers for Windows haven't been updated for over a year, they said it's because they were working perfectly, but more recent updates of Windows 10 may be causing some problems???

Well, I had this suspicion myself but so far could not prove anything. The replacement of CueMix for the AVBs now runs in a web interface; it tried many things but could not deliberately reproduce any glitches ...
 
 
I started checking Sonar's audio options by toggling on/off each one to see whether any may have any impact. Interestingly, the playback seems to be better when unchecking "Use MMCSS" i.e. when checked I can get the project to produce an audible glitch at least once in the 3 min playback (of that one particular project!), if unchecked, I so far could not get that ... so I need to keep observing this and read up on MMCSS ... unfortunately, documentation is very sparse, like
 
Use MMCSS. This option gives real-time applications such as SONAR higher priority for resource scheduling (thread scheduling) under Windows 7 and later (leave it checked).
 
I love these non-descriptions that basically say "you wouldn't understand anyway, so just do it" ...
 
Mark, could you try whether this "MMCSS" makes any difference in your case?

Hi again,
 
I tried some recording today with MMCSS un-checked... Everything seems to be running OK so far.  Hopefully that will do the trick, but yes "Use MMCSS. This option gives real-time applications such as SONAR higher priority for resource scheduling (thread scheduling) under Windows 7 and later (leave it checked)." definitely made me think I should leave MMCSS ON ;-)
 
Mark

Never mind... the same crackle/static problem came back, even with MMCSS un-checked.  This time I think it may be when using the MOTU with other applications and then coming back to Sonar.  I completely closed Sonar down, went on the web and played audio through YouTube, then closed the web browser and played a couple of songs on iTunes, then closed iTunes and went back to Sonar... as soon as I put Sonar in input mode to record, the static started.  I closed Sonar and re-opened it and the static was gone.  I tried re-creating the process again... I couldn't re-create the problem.  So I tried it again and this time disabled my wi-fi before opening Sonar... the problem came back.  I put wi-fi back on and opened and closed Sonar a couple of times and the problem went away again??? 
 
Problem not solved yet, although maybe I can work around it???
 
Mark

Hi Rob and Mark,
I'm a bit hesistant to quote recommendations from a different manufacturer of audio interfaces than yours because it is arguable how helpful that could be.
 
So, see it more like a FWIW:
 
"(audio interface)...should not be the Preferred Device for playback, as this could cause loss of synchronization and unwanted noises. If you feel you cannot do without system sounds, you should consider
using the on-board sound device or buying a cheap Blaster clone and select this as Preferred
Device in >Control Panel /Multimedia /Audio< or >Control Panel /Sound /Playback<.

Enable MMCSS for ASIO activates support with higher priority for the ASIO driver. Note: At this
time, activating this option seems to be useful only with the latest Cubase/Nuendo at higher
load. With other software this option can decrease performance. The change becomes active
after an ASIO reset. Therefore it is easy to quickly check which setting works better.

This is what the manufacturer of my audio interface recommends (the original text is not in bold, I did that).
 
I hope you get your problems sorted.
 
Best,
Klaus

Hi Klaus,
 
Thanks for your input. I came across this information today when doing a web research and was surprised that the top audio interface manufacturer in the Sonar world gives these recommendations.  Unfortunately the info dates back to 2013 and I could not find anything similar more recent or directly related to our brand of interfaces. Neither do I know whether any of this MMCSS stuff was updated with win10 (as it dates back to the Vista days)
 
Anyway, the problem at hand is clearly an unusual issue in which software and driver developer will point the finger at the other one ... so any straw to cling onto is worthwhile (so pls keep the suggestions coming) ...
 
My first "MMCSS off" tests were OK, but the recording corruption issues are so infrequent that it will take days before I can tell whether they are gone or not ...
 

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
Unfortunately the info dates back to 2013 and I could not find anything similar more recent or directly related to our brand of interfaces. Neither do I know whether any of this MMCSS stuff was updated with win10 (as it dates back to the Vista days)

True, the info is quite old and therefore questionable, absolutely. 3 years are ages when it's about software.
 
So, I too would see it only as an indication that it could be still valid because they didn't remove this recommendation even from the manuals of their newest interfaces.
 
Infrequent issues are the worst, I feel your pain!