Prevent screensaver/lockscreen when Sonar is running

Hi,
The problem is that Sonar is unable to recover after lockscreen:

• Audio driver gets invalidated or something, Sonar shows a popup where NO must be selected in order to proceed.
• Worse, Sonar loses its windows geometry, which is pretty embarrassing in XXI century.

Many apps are smart enough to prevent screensaver/lockscreen from starting, e.g. video players.
Is Sonar that smart? If not, any workaround that doesn't involve 3rd part utility?
 
Thank you!

frankjcc
I thought this was a standard tweak for a DAW to never let the monitor shutoff, no usb suspend, no harddrive spindown(I have all SSD's anyway) and go with Max power on all cores all the time.  I recommend this

Absolutely. Let nothing power down or go to sleep while using a DAW.

Among other problems (such as drives being slow to wake up) Windows doesn't always handle waking USB ports up very well or restart drivers until they are needed and then not always very elegantly. Which means when Sonar looks for an audio interface connected to one it can't find it fast enough so concludes the interface is missing.

chuckebaby

frankjcc
I thought this was a standard tweak for a DAW to never let the monitor shutoff, no usb suspend, no harddrive spindown(I have all SSD's anyway) and go with Max power on all cores all the time.  I recommend this

I agree with this 100%.
I never understood why someone would leave Sonar open and let their PC go in to sleep mode or activate the screensaver. I also run in Max power and only use Sonar when PC is awake, after a session I shut down.

Oh my )
 
Consider this:
 
- You need to keep your station locked when you are away. It can be locked manually or via screensaver in case you have forgotten.
- You have multiple VMs running on your machine so you cannot shut down without a damn good reason.
- Now you play a guitar while Sonar is looped. 5 minutes and the screen is black and Sonar has lost its window.
 
Anyhow, we do not discuss whether the setup makes sense or not. For one person it does for another it does not. The question was how to prevent screensaver while Sonar is running without 3rd party utilities. May be a trick or something )
 

> Why would you have several VMs running on a music production machine?
This is not the question, you are altering the topic.
 
Just realize that Sonar can be used casually, I am pretty sure that majority of Sonar users are not professional musicians / audio engineers so why should they have a dedicated machine?
I already have a decent station I work on - hence VMs, btw.
Not sure if I need another, pretty powerful computer at home with another pair of monitors, separate audio, and another pair of speakers, leave alone the space required.
 
I understand that a dedicated machine is the right choice for pros but what about the vast majority of the others? ) Providing I am not asking for anything unusual.

I would like to note that while screensaver is on, my PC is still running OK, it always stays awake and never goes into a sleep. I believe only monitors get turned off, that's it.
 
I have USB keyboard, mouse, and wifi card that have NEVER had an issue with screensavers. I don't think my Firewire audio interface has ever had issues too. For example, stand-alone VST plugins I use are fine when screensaver is on, etc.
 
So I really don't understand why Sonar (a) fails to restore after a soft screensaver (not a sleep!) and (b) Sonar devs could not add an option "Prevent screensaver when running".
 
Anyways, this discussion gets rhetorical )
Thank you for your time, appreciated!

Yes, my VM use-case is not typical, however the problem of screensaver is typical.
You do not need to have any VM in order to get Sonar corrupted after you play some guitar loops. I do not see why anyone should disable lockscreen on their machine just because some DAW has problems with that. Having Stockholm syndrome is not a solution for everyone.
 
Just admit that there is no real need/reason behind Sonar inability to handle screensavers. You defending a technical issue, a workaround.
 

Hi. I will join in and agree with the advice given.
It is common procedure to turn off screensaver, and turn on other power optimizations when using a DAW. 
It's not by any means SONAR specific. 
All the best.

Maybe you don't quite grasp the needs of a DAW and how they differ from any other PC - or Mac - usage other than maybe serious video/film editing.

Windows is, of course, a multi-tasking system. If there are multiple applications running it allocates resources to each of them. This means there are brief periods when an application is not getting Windows full (or any) attention. The more applications runnign, the less attention each, includiong the DAW, gets.

Now, the thing about DAWs is that they require as near to real-time computer operation as possible. If you have an ASIO driver buffer set to a latency of, say, 10 milliseconds (which is pretty typical for someone monitoring audio through the DAW as it is recorded) that means that if for any reason there is a period longer than 10 milliseconds where that buffer is not being topped up you get audio dropouts, cracking, all sorts of stuff.

Running e.g. wi-fi and a DAW at the same time can in some setups cause big problems because many wi-fi drivers hog cpu/PCI bus time for long enough to allow the ASIO buffer to overflow. That is not Cakewalk's fault, or Ableton's, or Steinberg's. It is down to the wi-fi driver and how the OS interacts with it (Macs don't have a problem running their wi-fi and a DAW, and PCs often have fewer problems using cabled ethernet). There are other drivers that can have the same consequences.

If you let drives go to sleep, then when Sonar needs to access a drive Windows that drive will very often take long enough to fire up that the ASIO buffer overflows = crackling and dropouts. Putting the screen to sleep means that when you wake it there's a bunch of driver and video subsytem activity. Which distracts Windows from keeping up with the DAW.

I can turn the screen off, or let it sleep to blank and recover from it most of the time by the way. But I don't try running multiple VMs or pretty much anything else either at the same time. If you want the maximum possible multi-taskling smoothness while running a DAW go buy a Mac. Seriously. I've an i7 MacBook Pro that has around half the speed of the sig PC and can run Logic Pro and reliably download stuff at the same time. Which that PC can't, especially using wi-fi. So long as I limit the Logic project to very lightweight plugins (no synths or samplers) and very few tracks. I hit the maximum possible cpu usage before having to freeze tracks a long time before the PC does though.

PCs can make great DAWs, but setting a PC up as a DAW is not trivial and they need tuning for it and some consideration of the real-world constraints.

I have to answer those comments above, sorry )
 
 
35mm
> That means that your user account is locked and you are effectively logged out.
 
logged out? wow. A prooflink to MSDN, please.
 
> As Sonar, processes that Sonar requires and hardware drivers that Sonar needs to communicate with are all running as your user account, they get locked too and so communication gets cut off. No one is making excuses for Sonar. It's simply the way Windows works. 
 
Sorry, are you a software engineer? Do you know how Windows works? It's good then that Reaper's devs do not know "how Windows works" because their DAW has no such issues. Note that I pointed that in my previous post... did you read it at all?
 
Ibanez Laney
> OP - Remove whatever it is you are afraid of people seeing from your computer. 
Then you can optimize it correctly for running a DAW and you wont need screen savers/lockscreens.
 
Oh, please ) Why not advising to buy a new PC? A new apt? To cloister myself on an island lol?
 
Zargg
> This, you have to take up with Microsoft.
 
For what reason? MS has been providing all the necessary tools for years if not for decades. As you might have noticed other DAWs have no such issues, i.e. they are smart enough.
 
tlw
> Your "beliefs" about how things "ought" to be does not coincide with what the operating system says they must be.
 
My "beliefs" are the tested facts: this is what I observe with Reaper DAW and Guitar Rig. They are properly programmed and do not lose geometry. Please continue to blame Windows.
 
> You lock the screen and that means you logout.
 
a proof from MSDN or wrong
 
> And running VMs (why???) in conjunction with a DAW is not conducive to stability or performance. 
 
(1) My DAWs, including Sonar, feel themselves perfect when running on my hardware. Why should I change that??
(2) Please let me decide what's running on my PC. I am a casual user and there is no point for me to get a dedicated machine for Sonar. Moreover, I bet that the vast majority of Sonar users use it like me - on a "shared" machine with other apps running.
 
Bottom line
Reaper DAW and Guitar Rig are doing all right after screen unlocking. They have no issues Sonar has. 35mm, tlw - please try to realize that before making statements regarding Windows and Microsoft.

Zargg
Blocked..

 
+1
 
Me too
Not even sure why the OP asked for help if all he wanted to do was argue and debate offered solutions.
I could offer more help but im not going to waste my time.

Yeah preventing ss/lock screen is easy to implement so it may come sooner rather than later, be sure to put in a feature request... I'd speculate that the loss of geometry is related to other multi-monitor issues that have been reported since X1...