SONAR 4 With Tascam US-122

Hey xlii! I feel you man! I have an 1150 -tascam us122 rig myself and I could not record one clean track without skips even though it played back old projects fine. Just be careful of a knee-jerk reaction. Try these first...The tascam us122 requires a windows messenger update from microsoft called (windows messenger update -to enhance audio playback). If you have SP2 installed you should already have it. Next I swtched audio driver from wdm/ks to asio at the drivers tab and so far it eliminated the skip.And you'll have reset you soundcard after you change drivers. I also have the buffer in the us 122 set at 256 for quick midi response 5.8 ms latency.The buffer in my Sonar 3SE audio tab is set at 4 (the default being 2) With these settings my rig is pretty stable except for one other problem...Whenever I connect the charging cable to an outlet to power the 1150 and connect the usb 122 to a power amp or mixer I get a hum noise throughout the system but on battery power (which isn't long) everything is fine.I have not tried seperate power circuits yet. I'm working that problem this weekend so if there is a solution I'll holla back. Man...I really hope this helps. And BTW I haven't upgraded the mem still running 256 with no glitches, but I will...Soon! If this works for you...You might actually like that soundcard!

Hello xlii! The solution to my hum problem discussed earlier when I connect us-122 to a power amp or mixer while the laptop is running on ac juice is eliminated by using a 2 to 3 prong ac adapter for the laptop plug (with a surge protector of course). All of $0.75!! Now everything is running like clockwork!!! I really suggest with your Dell Inspiron 1150 like mine to try the asio driver (all of 30 seconds!) before time spent on buffer settings and if all works fine and you're tired of seing that (sigma tel audio prompt) you can disable it in the hardware manager. All The Best!! Pat

I would suggest using ASIO drivers.

Thanks all of you guys!

I've tried each single one of your advices and it seemed to have worked... or... maybe not.

I tried ASIO and then WDM and then ASIO again. Funny thing, I select the ASIO drive, and it runs alright, but still skips every now and then. So I select WDM, re-run the program and it runs like clockwork. What I do is leave the soundcard preferences on 512, but bring it down to 256 in Sonar preferences... So I listen to my most troublesome project on 5.8ms without a single skip while running an antivirus scan and browsing the net...

But THEN....>>>> (here's the biggest bummer of all), next time I run the program again, it's like... Undescribable... Can't hear anything, just clicks jackhammering their way through my monitors, across the room, through my cerebellum, banging some digi-tribal patterns on my eardrums... That's where the realisation comes and I struggle to contain the aforementioned knee-jerk reaction which Mr. Smiff warned me about. Thanks!

Thanks all you guys for all your advices and everything, it was helpful in general, nevertheless, I'm now wondering which one will have to go first: Sonar or US-122. Maybe both? Perhaps it's back to good old Logic 5.5 or Cubase SX.

Dunno where you guys were when I asked the same question 2 weeks ago! I tried everything - except the windows messenger update mentioned , but I already had SP2...anyhow, tried out the firewire solo & ended up w/an edirol UA25 as per 1 users suggested - both worked perfect, But I liked the pre's in edirol better plus it had the midi for $20 more. Hope your rockin now

Yea I don't have any antivirus software running on my laptop DAW unless I'm actually on line to get an update or driver or I really need to update something critical. Also, I had to go into preferences and set the PLAYBACK (not the I/O) buffer to 3000 ms (3 sec) which I found out about from a post here on the forum when I did a search on clicks, pops, etc. which I was having a problem with when using the original default settings. Now it all works very well.

Tom

yea, i had same problems, but switched over to ASIO, no problems.

im running about 18 tracks of audio, 3 - 4 DXi synths (3 amp sims, 1 reason rewire)

works great in ASIO

Hi folks,

I came across this post while doing a search in Google. I've been using Cakewalk since 1995 and like it a lot. I've had Sonar 3 and now I am on version 4. I am experiencing the same latency issue you all described, but I am not using any midi or Tascam machines. I am plugging into the Audigy II ZS external sound card and recording audio. I make simple demos and then send them to a demo service to have a full production. I don't have the space to accommodate studio equipment. Well, Cakewalk's Tech Support advised that I had to reload the drivers from Creative. Then, delete the AUD.INI and TTSSEQ.INI This was supposed to eliminate the dropouts and stuttering. I uninstalled the sound drivers and reloaded them. Somehow my XP Pro thought I had two sound cards instead of 1. I followed the steps on deleting the two files, and when I double-clicked on the Sonar Icon, I received a message that said something about missing files and I had to install the software again. I wanted a clean start and so I formatted and re-installed XP Pro on 06/08/05. I thought it was best to start clean. I downloaded all my drivers soon after installing XP Pro, including installing the sound drivers from the CD and also downloaded the updated drivers from Creative's website. I installed the critical XP updates on 06/09/05 including SP2. Then I installed Sonar 4 Producer on 06/10/05. After I installed version 4 from the CD I downloaded the updates for 4.01 and then 4.02 I did a test recording of the 3:49 I mentioned above, and upon play back, the song played without a stutter. However, the song dropped off a segment all the way at the end. Even though I recorded the full song and visually I saw the clock at 3:49, upon playback, Sonar stopped at about 3:30. It ignored the fact I recorded the entire song. So, I followed Easy Method number 1 from Cakewalk's website and recorded the song all over again. This time, the song played until the end, but it stuttered throughout from beginning to end. When this occurred last week, I thought maybe it was my Norton AV that caused this, so I purposely did not install Norton. I sent an E-mail to Tech Support again to see what else they may have me try. I see on their website that the Advanced Method has a fix by opening up the AUD.INI file in Notepad to delete some lines. I had a Teach Support rep walk me through this over the phone last November and the fix he had me do was Easy Method 1. That worked at that time. It's hard for me to call them as I work during the day. I was on vacation in November and had a few minutes to call in. I don't know what else to do or what else to try. Does anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks,
Vito

For what it's worth: My first audio interface was a Tascam US-122. I was using it with a high-end Dell PC--fast P4 processor, lots of RAM, WinXP Pro, SP2. I had the same sort of problems that you're experiencing. Sometimes the thing worked flawlessly; sometimes it farted and burped constantly, with no predictable pattern. It was unbelievably frustrating. To sort it out, I tried all the tweaks prescribed here thorugh this wonderful forum, to no effect. When I checked out the Tascam forum for the US 122, I learned that there were LOTS of unhappy 122 owners out there with the same problems. The consensus, as I recall, was that the damn thing just wouldn't work reliably under XP SP2. Tascam's drivers for XP were crap, and they weren't quick to write better ones. One prescibed fix was to uninstall both SP1 and SP2. That seemed a lot like heating my house by burning my furniture on the living room floor, so I returned my US-122 and traded it in on an Edirol UA-25, which has performed flawlessly for me.

Hope you sort things out.

If you can get the US-122 to work then more power to you. I tried and tried and tried and then thought, why am I doing this. This shouldn't be this hard to get it working. I ended up with an M-Audio Mobile Pre that worked immediately. I'm not a fan of the tascam 122.

If you're stuck with the Tascam then I wish you good luck. If you can at all take it back for a better alternative.

take care...