Notes dropping out after exporting songs. (Resolved)

Hello there.

I've just finished a song and tried to export it. It sounds perfect within sonar 8, but if I play the WAV file that I exported, then some notes drop out, as in cut out all together whilst playing other instruments fine.

I thought it might be the buffer or something, so I raised it but it didn't make a difference.

The notes that drop out are ONLY from a VST (Eastwest's Symphonic orchestra - violins patch) I have an audio file which I imported into sonar to begin with, and that never cuts randomly, whereas the VST violins do, just random notes here and there, they won't play in some parts of the song on the exported WAV file.

I don't really understand what's happening.

I'm semi-new to Sonar 8 Studio, so any help given would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

System:

Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
ASUS P5B Deluxe Motherboard
Creative X-fi Xtreme Audio Platinum Fatal1ty Soundcard (latest drivers)
2GB RAM

Running within the project:

Sonar 8 Studio
Eastwest Symphonic Orchestra Gold PLAY Edition.
Boost 11
TRacks EQ plug in

ORIGINAL: Large Style

1) Alter fast-bounce option to whatever it's currently not set to (preferably disabled)
2) Check that the PLAY VST output is actually highlighted to be mixed with the rest of project (and not set to a bus or similar that's not highlighted within mixdown)
3) Adjust mixdown preset option to "what you hear"
4) Make sure Sonar and PLAY are using latest patches - 8.02 for Sonar and 1.1.6. for PLAY.
5) Maybe increase latency speed slightly (?)
6) Is your CPU performance being pushed close to the limit?
7) Have you adjusted VST performance options within PLAY
8) Have you adjusted other options within PLAY (like increasing polyphony)


FYI: I'm using PLAY Platinum Orchestra over 2 pc's and I've never had notes play in playback but not in mixdown - therefor all my suggestions above are complete random guesses just in case I fluke onto the answer

Good luck!

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I've just tried a bunch of other stuff but it's still not working. (Actually, I just spent the past hour fixing sonar because the sound disappeared altogether... fixed now though)

I really am new to Sonar, infact I'm new to DAW's at all.

1) Where do I find the fast bounce option? I've done a search and found nothing.
2) How do I check this? What I've done at the moment is hit CTRL+A to select everything and then hit export under the "file" menu and exported as WAV. Is this right?
3) How do I find this? (I feel really stupid)
4) Yep, both PLAY and Sonar are using up to date patches
5) I did indeed raise the Latency buffer size in the audio options menu. This actually made it worse (I think...) So I tried lowering it, but it's still just the same.
6) I don't think my CPU is being pushed no. When I'm just playing the song in Sonar it only goes to around 10%. It can't be that it's flat out and out of CPU when mixing down, if this is the problem, then I need a tick box that says "Take your time exporting!" lol
7) I've adjusted the engine level within play, it was initially set to 2, I changed it to 1, and then 0... still hasn't helped.
8) I can't see a polophony option anywhere in play.

Sorry for being such a newbie, as I said, I'm rather new to all this, and here was me thinking I was getting the hang of it haha.

1) Where do I find the fast bounce option? I've done a search and found nothing.
2) How do I check this? What I've done at the moment is hit CTRL+A to select everything and then hit export under the "file" menu and exported as WAV. Is this right?
3) How do I find this? (I feel really stupid)
4) Yep, both PLAY and Sonar are using up to date patches
5) I did indeed raise the Latency buffer size in the audio options menu. This actually made it worse (I think...) So I tried lowering it, but it's still just the same.
6) I don't think my CPU is being pushed no. When I'm just playing the song in Sonar it only goes to around 10%. It can't be that it's flat out and out of CPU when mixing down, if this is the problem, then I need a tick box that says "Take your time exporting!" lol
7) I've adjusted the engine level within play, it was initially set to 2, I changed it to 1, and then 0... still hasn't helped.
8) I can't see a polophony option anywhere in play.

Sorry for being such a newbie, as I said, I'm rather new to all this, and here was me thinking I was getting the hang of it haha.

Apology not required! Took me ages to learn Sonar when I first started to use it. Anyways......

1) In top menu: File -> Export -> Audio. A menu window pops up with options for the mixdown (audio file creation) process. Fast Bounce is here - untick it for better stability within your mixdowns.
2) Yes make sure everthing has been highlighted, then go to File -> Export -> Audio but in that options window again check what it's mxing - just busses, main outputs, entire mix (I'd do main outputs)
3) Its in the same mixdown screen - it's a dropdown menu called "presets" which has a few more options of what Sonar will mix
4) Cool
5) Arse
6) "Take your time exporting" is effectively unticking Fast Bounce
7) Bugger
8) It's in the main PLAY window (not the browser) at the bottom of paramaters on the left (starts with MIDI device, then MIDI port etc). It's set to 32 voices as standard which often isn't enough at all (for me) if you have many notes playing at same time (with release trails). I have mine set to 64 which mostly covers it.

If anything, I think your problem could well be number 8). If your strings patch has many notes playing together and/or passage of quickly played notes then this would almost definitely cause dropouts. Maybe set it to 128 or 256 or something just for experiment.

All of the above may not work - if not, post back and I'll think more.....!

BTW: I use Sonar 7 so there may be differences to S8 that I don't know about which I may need correcting on.

Yeah, let us know if ya get it sussed!

Yeah, that's me studio - if bothered, more pics here (it's all in a different room now, but is still the same setup)

Keyswitch samples/patches are only really heavy on memory consumption - my point about sample quantity is that a single note could be 3 or more samples combined (attack, main part, release trail). Using this example hit ONE non-staccato and non-legato note quickly can use a dozen or more voices, so if your PLAY is set (and limited) to only 32 voices then it could very easily run out of voices if playing quick and complicated passages.

BTW: there's nothing wrong with k/switch samples - I have approx 66 untampered-with master k/s patches loaded - just takes about 10 mins to load a project though