Problem with the SONAR CPU meter please...?

There seems to be a mistaken presumption running through this discussion, which is that X% "CPU usage" when idling somehow indicates wasted resources, or somehow subtracts resources during recording and playback.

All it indicates is that many soft synths continue to produce output even when not being "played", just like your physical synths do. That idle CPU usage isn't some background task that will subtract from the total CPU resources available during recording and playback, and it is not an indicator of efficiency.

bitflipper


There seems to be a mistaken presumption running through this discussion, which is that X% "CPU usage" when idling somehow indicates wasted resources, or somehow subtracts resources during recording and playback.

All it indicates is that many soft synths continue to produce output even when not being "played", just like your physical synths do. That idle CPU usage isn't some background task that will subtract from the total CPU resources available during recording and playback, and it is not an indicator of efficiency.

I understand that fully, but 25 percent on an i7 950 with only one track and not playing/recording?

And taking it one step further, what happens as I do add tracks?
If the meter is inconsequential, am I going to start skipping when I start using up the 75 percent that's left?

The way it seems to me is that Sonar is spinning 25 percent of it's "wheels" on 1 Vsti.
A very popular one in fact.

When I get the time, I'm going to load up that Sonar test project which tests number of tracks or something like that (as soon as I find it!) and see what I get.
Then add Ivory II in as one track and see if it makes a difference.

Sound like a good idea?

Transcending Music

Guitarman1


Man.. I sure am glad I am still using vista 64 bit..lol.. All these problems and each one the operating system is windows 7... maybe I am being to "simple" but... looks like a common thread here.
I don't have a monster of a machine, 8 gigs of memory, dual core pentium... but I start to max out with audio and midi tracks totaling around 30. then I start to get some crackles maybe.

I have never ever on any system I have used ever had any trouble importing mp3's. Never tried the drag and drop method, I don't see why anyone would with sonar, it takes up the screen, much easier to just do it thru the file method.

as for the meter, it is nice to look at, but I don't pay much attention to it, now the disk meter I do, that could cause some problems if the usage from disk is high.. but the cpu meter, no big deal. But for clarification, the highest I have ever noticed it go, is possibly 21 percent.. normally it hovers around 4 or 5 percent.

Motto of the story... to me it sounds like something with windows 7. It is the latest and greatest from uncle bill, and true to form, it has issues. Just like all the other releases of windows.

 
Not necessarily...Vista 64 here and as I described my "special" situation of higher than usual CPU within Sonar is when trying a networked plugin in which as wormser mentioned, behaves fine in other DAW's and reflect what Windows reflect without affecting performance. Now, I say "special" because in all other situations I find myself in working, Sonar behaves just fine. But these occasional situations of high CPU (as some mentioned, Sonar's audio buffering) need to be addressed as other DAW's do not reflect the same behavior.

Hey transcending... I have never had any issues like that with sonar 6.2 or with 8.5.3, using vista 32 or 64 bit. I am not a computer genius but it could all boil down to hardware then. I have just been plain lucky I guess. When I was using sonar 6.2 I did have some issues, but that is because sonar put out a patch as a "sort of fix"  and I don't blame them, sonar 7 was already out and I believe sonar 8 too, companies don't go backwards to make software from before work with new operating systems, but I was glad that sonar did put out that patch, it did work better because of it... but now I am on vista 64 bit, and have had absolutely no problems, except doing the star trek competition from here, one of my synths was eating up my ram, that is all I have ever experienced.

Has anyone suggested or tried turning off Windows Network Crawling?

Hey Guitarman1, I've definitely ruled a lot of variables out. For example other testers of this networked plugin using Vista 64 with Lynx drivers, with an i7 920 using onboard LAN, on a DAW other than Sonar didn't experience this sudden higher CPU usage. And as I mentioned before (possibly on another similiar thread) using this particular plugin in local fashion, is totally and utterly fine, rock solid. For me, because I know others like wormser it's a VSTi issue, it's an issue when I try to use the network version of this plugin. If windows shows barely a 1% hit to the CPU but suddenly Sonar shows 18% for this one instance of the network version, then something going on with Sonar - as suggested in other threads: how Sonar handles audio buffering. This is when I actually hit play, mind you. (So a little different that when idle with 1 instance open there is no CPU activity in Sonar). This sudden rise in usage impacts performance as well. Drop in about 4 to 5 of these, and it's in the "red" and eventually drops out. And again, the local version of this plugin works perfectly and mirrors windows: 1 instance yields barely 1% usage; 4 to 5, you guessed it may be 4%.  

I have 2X M-Audio 1010LT cards running on a single core processor running win 7.
 
What you have to do is select the correct latency setting under your M-Audio hardware. For me if I want maximum CPU usability availibility, I set the latency to max. This blows the chance of using programs like Guitar Rig to process guitar, but I dont use them anyway. There will be delays with meter movements, changing settings but its what I have to deal with.
 
#2) You need to get your IRQ's separate for the Card if possible. Moving the card to a different PCI slot, and or fooling with the IRQ's in Bios are the options you have. If you cant get it on its own IRQ, and it has to share something, make sure it doesnt share with something that consumes alot or CPU like a video or network card. Also make sure its on a lower IRQ below 10. Above 10 the IRQ's are virtual. If you cant get it on its own IRQ use system tools in windows and see what the card is sharing. It may be having the bus dominated by something else running on the bus.
 
Lastly, Your problem with Poor CPU usage with sonar is not unique. Sonar is one of the poorest performers for CPU useage of all the DAW programs using multiple instances of plugins. There have been dozens of shootouts on the net ranking DAWs on CPU consumption. Reaper blows them all away. It deals with the program codeing. Some interfaces and computers do better, but in all, if you have Reaper and Sonar on the same box, Reaper blows sonar away in every case. The best you can do is get the Best IRQ, the jack your M-Audio ASIO drivers up to max. Then reboot and make sure the changes stick. (I think you need to save the changes to the open project, then reopen that same project to see those changes occur). 
 
I've only used one other multitrack card besides the Deltas back in the Windows 98/ME days, and CW8~9 did the same thing with CPU useage. It may be Cakewalk sucks using PCI cards in general, or Users just dont load that many plugins I dont know. Running any real time processing plugins like Guitar Rig or others is a complete failure, at least on my computers. I can run it as a single plugin, but thats it. If I were to adjust the latency down to say 10MS where the latency is tolerable, It might record a single track, but thats about it.
 
Be sure to check the M-Audio forum. Theres a bunch of info there on optimizing the IRQ's and other items that may help. If not you may want to use a different DAW program or try a different interface.  

Getting X1 today, hopefully that'll be a game changer.

Thanks again to all who participated here in this thread.  I sincerely appreciate your time, effort, patience, and especially your help.

benjamincharles


Getting X1 today, hopefully that'll be a game changer.

Thanks again to all who participated here in this thread.  I sincerely appreciate your time, effort, patience, and especially your help.

Would love to hear your experience with it...

Back for a quick look after a month or so away, hoping something might have surfaced on here.
Did anyone ever find out what BenjaminCharles situation is/was?

I may well have one more go at explaining what MY problems are with dropouts and breaking up are to tech support.
Every now and then go back and re-visit all my settings but still no luck getting decent performance.

And to make matters worse I now have some fanboi on the reaper forums acusing me of not trying!

*sigh*
Sonar 8.5.3
ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3  Phenom II 1055 hexcore. 4 gb 1333 Crucial ram.
Black Label SATA3 Hard drives x2 (System and Data separate)
RME HDSP 9652 and/or Emu 1212m
All with latest updated drivers, bios, etc.
Win7 Professional 64bit

Using Kontakt 3/4 and Superior Drummer 2.1 mostly, all else is audio.

No luck here either for my particular situation. In fact, after a while of going back and forth where they repeatedly ask the same questions and not really pay attention to what you are telling them, cakewalk tech support simply stops responding when finally, they don't have any answers left

Yep.

I am still going to keep my eye on the cake forums in the hope of some sort of resolution, though.

Keep trying every thing I see suggested here and other places and no luck so far.

At least the troll is leaving me alone now.

DID ANYONE FIND A SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM?

My computer is as follows:
Windows 7 64 bit OS with
AMD Athlon x4 640 CPU.
Sonar 8 and 8.5.3 32 bit version.
 
I have both SONAR 8 and 8.5.3 32bit versions,  I only get 1 CPU core reading in SONAR 8.5 with CPU usage idling at 50% with various effects and plugins opened. There about 15 tracks in the project as well. MY disk usage is near 0%.

If I open the exact SAME PROJECT in SONAR 8, Four Cores are shown on the meter, and the usage ranges from 3%-8% between the 4 cores, with a disk usage of 4-5%.

The Settings in the Audio Panel are the exact same for both.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SONAR 8.5.3?

I have Sonar 8.5 and It shows both my meter's. I didn;t bother reading this thread as it is very old so I gather there never was a solution other than all these people have upgraded to X1 so end of story. This is obvious but you did enable "use multi core" in audio options.

sneaky, what you're seeing does not indicate that only one core is being used, but rather a different metering method. What you're seeing is an aggregate of all cores in one bar graph. This change was made in 8.3 to allow scaling up for larger numbers of cores. To revert to version 8 behavior, edit cakewalk.ini and change the CPUMeterMode value to 2.

cant find this entry, I looked for it in both the aud.ini files and the cakewalk.ini files for both versions of sonar...could not find the variable.

sneakyybstrd


cant find this entry, I looked for it in both the aud.ini files and the cakewalk.ini files for both versions of sonar...could not find the variable.

Many variables aren't listed, Sonar uses a "default" if a specific variable is not listed in the ini file(s). Check the help file for what options can be altered/added to which ini file(s). In this case just go to "Options>Initialization File" since this allows you to directly add variables (options) that are used in the cakewalk.ini file. In the dialog box type CPUMeterMode into the "Options" space and then type 2 into the "Value" space and add it.

Thank you, I was able to successfully change the metering to the 4 core monitoring style. Now, the problem I am still having is that I open the SAME exact File in SONAR 8, and I get no glitches/crackles/pops/squeaks, and NO CPU usage above 10%. When I open the Project in Sonar 8.5 I the CPU USAGE alternates between 45-60% with spikes exceeding 80%. During the spikes there are noticeable crackles/pops in the audio. Can someone explain to me what is the deal with this?

Good question. Most of us experienced better performance with 8.5 versus 8.0. Is the high CPU usage just during playback, or do you also see when it's idling?

bitflipper


Good question. Most of us experienced better performance with 8.5 versus 8.0. Is the high CPU usage just during playback, or do you also see when it's idling?

 
Yes, during idle, the cpu usage in 8.5 is around 45-60% average and spiking to 80% periodically. In Sonar 8.0, it maintains less than 10% at idle with no spikes.
 
I have another computer (intel dual core) running XP 32bit OS with both SONAR 8 and SONAR 8.5 32bit versions that work great. And The CPU usage is better in 8.5 compared to 8.0. So i do agree with your above statement, however this is not the case with my brothers computer as i described in the above post.
 
Yesterday I unistalled sonar 8.5 without the patches, and it still gave me the same issue. So the patches aren't related nor do they fix the problem in my computer. Im thinking the problem is either WIN7/SONAR 8.5 Conflict or SONAR 8.5/AMD CPU Conflict...oh and another note...I tried installing Sonar 8.5 64bit and it gave me even MORE PROBLEMS and I still had horrible CPU usage. So its not related to 64 bit or 32 bit. Hmmm....what could it be.....

You should really start a new thread, You have sort of hijacked a very old thread.