My final shot at X2 before I depart

I am wondering if someone could help me trouble shoot to understand whether my issues are caused by Sonar or my computer.  Right now, Sonar can hardly play a verse before it crashes causing me to restart my computer.  It has been this way since the last version of X2.  It is unusable and I have made no music since the last update.  My specs are:

Windows 7 home premium service pack 1
i7CPU with 16GB RAM, 2.6 GHz
64 bit

Could someone push me off in the right direction.  I don't want to have to learn a new DAW.  So I want to make sure that my set up is not the cause.

it sounds like its probably a soundcard issue(im only guessing here)
because your computer seems to exceed the requirments.
what is your soundcard?

can you give me a little bit more info on this?

sorry to hear about this man,hopefully we will get you back to creating/loving music as soon as we can,hang in there buddy.

RAM is often the cause of instability.
Test your RAM to make sure all is well.

Jim Roseberry


RAM is often the cause of instability.
Test your RAM to make sure all is well.

Someone here  taught me that the brand of RAM can matter too.


If it were me I'd find a DAW maker that consults and buy an hour of troubleshooting over the phone. I did that once and it simply solved my issue. Best < $100US I ever spent on my DAW. 

M-Audio 2496

munmun


I am wondering if someone could help me trouble shoot to understand whether my issues are caused by Sonar or my computer.  Right now, Sonar can hardly play a verse before it crashes causing me to restart my computer.  It has been this way since the last version of X2.  It is unusable and I have made no music since the last update.  My specs are:

Windows 7 home premium service pack 1
i7CPU with 16GB RAM, 2.6 GHz
64 bit

Could someone push me off in the right direction.  I don't want to have to learn a new DAW.  So I want to make sure that my set up is not the cause.

Sorry for your situation.

1.  What driver mode are you using in Sonar? (WDM, ASIO)


2.  What Sample Rate is specified in Sonar?  (Must match setting for interface)


3.  What ASIO Buffer size is specified for the audio interface?


4.  Are your motherboard device drivers up to date?  (chipset, audio, lan, etc.)  Note - I am not referring to doing any sort of BIOS update at this point in time.



5.  Assuming your Windows default audio is set to the M-Audio 2496, do tunes (wma, mp3) play OK outside of Sonar? 


6.  You only mention X2 - the X2a maintenance patch addresses something like 250 bugs and such.  If you have not applied the X2a patch, please make sure you apply it and then test again.  If you had done anything operationally to the X2 installation, you might consider removal and re-install of X2


I would suggest specifying ASIO as the driver mode, with a 44.1 Sample Rate and an ASIO Buffer Size of 128.  (It is a reasonable starting point, and some folks run at these settings)


It certainly sounds like there is some bad blood between the audio interface, Windows, and/or Sonar.  It appears that they have working drivers for Windows 7 x64, so it is more likely to be something like a Windows device driver or a motherboard update issue for the PCI slots.


I DO recommend that for diagnostic purposes you specifically temporarily disable any anti-virus software, making sure not to access the web until you turn it back on after finishing your Sonar session. (some number of folks leave the internet disconnected for long periods of time, only connecting once in a while to pick up any Windows updates or new Sonar versions and such.  I happen to leave mine connected all the time).
 
I wish I had a better idea of where to send you - the above is some grasping at the moment.


Bob Bone

tomixornot


How about downloading and running Rea*** and see if it runs and record ok on your computer ? 

This enables you to verify if it's your PC / Audio interface / drivers fault.

This untrue statement lends nothing to the conversation, but could make this thread entertaining.  : )
 
Brian

Stone House Studios

tomixornot


How about downloading and running Rea*** and see if it runs and record ok on your computer ? 

This enables you to verify if it's your PC / Audio interface / drivers fault.

This untrue statement lends nothing to the conversation, but could make this thread entertaining.  : )
 
Brian

Actually I think it's a good idea.
I did this last week and was able to trace my problems to my interface firmware.
Not that X2 is stable. We all know that it could use a few tweaks.
But my main issue was my interface.


You could also use Audicity but in case it was X2 I wanted something to record with while Cakewalk irons out the beta version of X2. 


Mike

Thank you everyone.  I have figured out that the issue is not Sonar so I am climbing in back off the ledge.  I tried X1 and still had issues.  So that confirms everything.  I will be taking these suggestions from everyone and trying them out tomorrow night.  Will let you know how it goes.

One thing.  Sonar is a great product.  One of the things that makes it great is this community.  I don't know if other DAWs have the same.  Doesn't matter.  There is a great sense of camaraderie here.

Cheers

First step should be to submit a crash dump to CW for analysis. That will tell you what's instigating the crash, which is a pretty important thing to know before you start troubleshooting.

Damn, Bit.


Diagnosis before treatment? What kind of radical intellectual bovine feces are you trying to peddle here?


Everyone know the answer is always buy a new whatsit.

munmun


Thank you everyone.  I have figured out that the issue is not Sonar so I am climbing in back off the ledge.  I tried X1 and still had issues.  So that confirms everything.  I will be taking these suggestions from everyone and trying them out tomorrow night.  Will let you know how it goes.

I would have tried using a competitor's product for that test, because there is a good chance that any code causing problems for you in X2 might have been there in X1 as well.


I highly recommend using one of the latency checkers out there.  That should determine if there is a problem in your system.


If there is a problem with your system, the first thing I would recommend is disabling any network adapter you have.  Especially wi-fi.


Also, don't forget to check your motherboard drivers and BIOS.  I recently had a bad dpc latency problem which was fixed in a BIOS update.  I was especially annoyed because I had just purchased it and it was already several revisions behind.

Jim Roseberry


RAM is often the cause of instability.
Test your RAM to make sure all is well.

Just for the record, I used to routinely ignore this troubleshooting step because I'd never had RAM go bad in 30-odd years of personal computing.


Then my DAW started acting up a few months ago, and after exhaustive testing to eliminate every possible cause I could think of other than hardware failure, I finally got around to running Memtest, and it didn't even pass the initialization phase!


I pulled sticks one at a time until I found the culprit, tried it in a different slot to be sure it wasn't the board, then replaced it, and I was back in business!


It still isn't the first thing I would suspect (drivers and O/S or software updates are still  more likely culprits in most cases), but it should be on the short list of things to check for an issue like this.

munmun

Muziekschuur at home


Are you recording to a second disk?

Yes.

Internal or Externa?l
Laptop or Desktop?
7200 rpm?


Hope fully it's not a "green" drive

It still isn't the first thing I would suspect (drivers and O/S or software updates are still  more likely culprits in most cases), but it should be on the short list of things to check for an issue like this.

FWIW, DDR2 was far less prone to failure.


If you're experiencing stability issues, boot related issues, etc... DDR3 is a very likely culprit.
Some brands have a particularly high failure rate (Corsair).