Hi guys,

I just bought Cakewalk Pro Suite and I'm having a whole host of problems with Sonar 7 Producer Edition. Let's start with a really odd one. I have a variety of projects that all load and play but I have this one project that has NOTHING in it (creating a project for single track audio recording) and the Audio Engine won't start for it. It starts fine for every other project I have (some are much bigger). I tried every latency option I have (as suggested in another thread) but no go.

What is unique about this project? Is it just fried? What can I do to prevent fry-age in the future? I'd hate to have this happen a large important project. Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks,
Blair

have a variety of projects that all load and play but I have this one project that has NOTHING in it (creating a project for single track audio recording) and the Audio Engine won't start for it. It starts fine for every other project I have (some are much bigger). I tried every latency option I have (as suggested in another thread) but no go.

Well thats normal. What do you expect to play if you have nothing recorded. Record something first before trying to playback what is not there.

What is unique about this project? Is it just fried? What can I do to prevent fry-age in the future? I'd hate to have this happen a large important project. Is there anything else I can try?

No, its empty like you said above. (nothing to play back)
You also should be backing up every session and every project to an external hard drive and/or dvd.

Cj

There is one case that's been noted periodically where Sonar's audio engine doesn't work the way some/many/I'd expect it to:
Say you have a project with midi tracks only... no audio... no soft synths/plugins.
For this project, you want to use Sonar's midi sequencer to sequence external hardware.
You also want to input monitor the hardware while playing/editing the midi.
So... you have your midi tracks, and your routing is all ready to go... hit play and hear: nothing. The midi is going, but the audio engine light goes off.
Like CJ said, the audio engine will disingage, because it thinks there isn't anything to play.

The first few times this happened to me, I thought it was a bug, and I still think it's an oddity (to me, input monitoring counts as audio in a project).
But, for one reason or another, this is not how Sonar works.

However, there's an EASY cure!!!
ANY audio within a project, or a virtual instrument, will cause the audio engine to stay engaged.
All you need to do is one of the following, and it will work as expected:
- engage the audio metronome... if you don't want to use it, turn the volume all the way down... it'll still keep the audio engine going.
- insert a soft synth to the synth rack... again, you don't have to actually play it... it just has to be there.
- hardware monitor/director monitor (this is what I do now)

There might be something else, but I can't remember.
This comes up periodically, and if you're trying to do something similar to the above project, give one of these a try.

Take care,
- zevo

Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to respond.

I'm not trying to play anything and I've verified that isn't a prequisite to starting the Audio Engine. Infact, the original reason I noticed the Audio Engine had failed to start is because the recording meter on my track wasn't moving when I was making noise on the microphone. (In otherwords, if the Audio Engine won't start, I can't record and thus I can't get the audio into the project that would be required to start the Audio Engine - chicken and egg problem :P)

I've verified with other test projects that I don't need to have any audio in the project to get the Audio Engine to start (i.e turn green). Infact, I made the exact same project (one empty audio track) under a different name and it works fine.

However, zevo - one of your tricks fixes the problem. When I inserted a softsynth it caused the Audio Engine to repair its state. I then deleted the soft synth, resaved the project and it now works fine. Its a bit annoying and way too voodoo for me, but atleast I know there is a way to fix up corrupt projects.

Thanks,
Blair

ORIGINAL: bfraser

...I have this one project that has NOTHING in it (creating a project for single track audio recording)...

Just curious... How much NOTHING does this project have? I mean, other than just no MIDI events and no audio clips. Does it have any tracks or busses, or does it really (honestly) have NOTHING?

Well I encounter this problem sometimes too. Sometimes when the audio engine won't come on, the play button is purple and has some sort of symbol on it that I can't remember.
However in my case it usually has something to do with softsynths. One time it was in instance Morphology in DXI. When I removed it, the audio engine came on again. Just now I had the problem with Artis Drums. I still needed to register it, and after that was done the problem dissapeared.

It is strange porblem, but in my case I always suspect my softsynhts first!

One time it was in instance Morphology in DXI. When I removed it, the audio engine came on again. Just now I had the problem with Artis Drums. I still needed to register it, and after that was done the problem dissapeared.

These arer all configuration errors. Its not a bug or anything like that. Its most likely due to not having proper settings for your sound card or your pc is not good enough to take the task anymore
Cj

I couldn’t hear sound when adding for example Cakewalk TTS-1 (DXi). Audio engine remained greyed.
After I changed  Sampling Rate from 22050 to 44100 (Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings > Default Settings for New Projects) everything worked again normal.

This thread is from 2008.