Performance questions with Platinum

I'm having heavy trouble with cpu performance in SPlat when i try to work with MIDI. 
 
But i have an i3 2310, 2ghz, 4GB RAM, HD 500GB 5400RPM.
 
That is the problem. SPlat needs a good PC to run smoothly. 
 
But you must try to increase or decrease buffer size to test. 
 
For midi editing, set the buffer to 512 or lower. For audio, 512 or higher. 
 
 

bielphc
I'm having heavy trouble with cpu performance in SPlat when i try to work with MIDI. 
But i have an i3 2310, 2ghz, 4GB RAM, HD 500GB 5400RPM.
That is the problem. SPlat needs a good PC to run smoothly. 
But you must try to increase or decrease buffer size to test. 
For midi editing, set the buffer to 512 or lower. For audio, 512 or higher.

What do you mean, "when you try to work with MIDI"? Are you talking about VST instruments, or MIDI that's sent to an external synth?
 
In either case, MIDI shouldn't be stressing your system, even with an i3 and a 5400 RPM drive. If you have a dozen Kontakt instruments loaded, then yes, you'll have some problems.  But that's not really "MIDI"; that's a problem with the processor and RAM. And even with that, there are things you can do to work around the issues.
 
Changing the ASIO settings will help with the audio dropouts (and pops and clicks), but not with MIDI. If you're having to increase the buffer settings to keep the audio from dropping out, you might want to either get a faster hard drive or add RAM (or both). A 1-terabyte, 7200 RPM drive is less than $50 (a 2-TB drive is only $68), and the software to clone your system is free. If you decide to get more RAM, make sure the timing and the speed match the RAM you already have, if you want to get the most out of it.
 
You probably already know about "freezing" any synths you're not actively editing in a project, and if you have the latest version of SPlat, check to see which MIDI driver you're using. In the Preferences, under "MIDI/Playback and Recording", you should see a relatively new entry at the top of the window: "Driver Mode: MME". If yours has nothing there, or says something else, you might want to look into that.
 
Another option that could free up some RAM for you is to follow BlackViper's tips for optimizing your Windows installation. And of course, there are many other sites that offer tips for optimizing DAW systems. For the most part, they all recommend the same things, but it's good to check those tweaks every so often, to see if a Windows update has "reset" a tweak you'd made years ago.
 
I don't mean to suggest you actually need any of the things I've suggested here, @bielphc, but if you do have any questions, please just let us know. 
 
Steve

If it happens in a new project with no plugins, it really points to a driver issue. Normally you would try to update to the latest driver first but if you have that, also try rolling back to a previous one!

rodreb
I always try to keep up with the latest drivers on everything. Have tried many, various ASIO buffer settings. Hard drives are 7200 RPM. I defragment/optimize drives weekly. I have tried turning off my AVG Free and even shutting off internet but, neither made any difference. I have not re installed Win 10.
Something I just noticed last night.... the 1 second lags seem to be visually only. In other words, the GUI is visually showing these lags but, the actual, audio response of Platinum seems pretty much instantaneous. Might this indicate my video card may be starting to go????

It might indicate your video card isn't configured optimally for SONAR (not that SONAR requires much from a video card), but I doubt the card is failing. From what I've seen in my years of computer consulting, video cards don't fail slowly--they just die all at once (usually when the fan gets clogged with dust).

Aside from the good suggestions @chuckebaby and @sanderxpander offered, when's the last time you actually ran CHKDSK /R from a command prompt/PowerShell (Admin) window, and checked the Windows Event Log to see what CHKDSK found? I just got off the phone with a fellow SONAR user whose CHKDSK found some interesting errors on his hard drive (and its clone).
 
A failing video card (or other, video-related problems) wouldn't cause these three issues you mentioned, though:
 
1. Hit Play - Blue spinning ball thing appears for about 1 second
2. Hit Stop - Again, it takes about 1 second
3. Frequent loss of sync between tacks, requiring toggling the PDC button to line them up again (This definitely wouldn't be from a video card issue, unless the audio portion of the driver is screwing up your ASIO driver.)
 
What else do you have running on startup? Are you familiar with having Windows show you a list of running apps and services? It would be interesting to see which of them is grabbing the CPU cycles.
 
Steve

Sanderxpander had a good point "If it happens in a new project with no plugins" This will help narrow down weather or not it could be a plug in bogging you down.

The out of sync comment in the OP concerns me most. Is that always the same track(s), and if so, which VST(i)s are on those tracks?

Someone else with a Focusrite Sapphire has a play/stop delay.

In that other thread, Bitflipper made a good point that audio buffer size will contribute. The spinning circle/out of sync issue leads me to believe that a VSTi is pulling samples from a hard disk in preparation to stream and possibly internal audio processing as well. Depending on fragmentation of a sample drive, and how many samples are being pulled, the input/output cache for the drive must also be filled before play will start. Running FX with look ahead buffers will also contribute, since they need to know what audio is coming down the pipe to process "time now." All three of these things are additive.
 
The out of sync issue is something to track down, since I have seen select VSTis lose sync with the host, and the issue may be as simple as freezing that particular VSTi. I have noted some which lose sync when stopped and jumping the now time manually, then restarting. In that situation, SONAR is trying to resync time now to where the VSTi "should be," which can get complex depending on how much internal audio processing the VSTi does before passing it to SONAR. Freezing reduces this processing dramatically, and becomes simple audio playback for that track.

If you have WIFI, turn it off while using Sonar. It's like getting a new motherboard.

Opened a new project with just 1 track, 1 Master bus, no plugins at all..... everything appears to work fine, with no sluggishness. Started adding a BUNCH of plugins (Lots of comps, limiters, and reverbs). No change. Cloned that track over & over. Never really got the sluggishness but, after 21 clones it kept dropping out completely. NOTE: these tracks had about 10 times the amount of plugins I would EVER use! I especially loaded them up with plugs that take up a LOT of CPU!
So, I guess I'm just asking too much out of my computer? I have never seen high readings in the performance meter in Sonar. Isn't that odd?

Hughkills: As far as I know, everything is all up to date but, I will check.

all good ideas here,
 
I would check the bios and make sure it set as hi as possible and if it was set to full turbo or over clocking, it may have reset back to default. it happens.
 
Another thing I discovered by accident that seems to have fixed some Splat running issues.
if you have been trying different audio drivers with no luck. as I was.
so, Each time I change the Audio drivers now, I "reset to default" from within the configuration File menu option.
I have now done this on all of my systems running deferent audio devices and they are all running smother.
 
I have not spent much time on this but it looks like the Configuration File adapts to the selected drivers.
Maybe a glitch on something that is suppose to automatically change ?