Sonar x1 PE, Echo Layla 3G PCI, serious latency and dropout problems!

I bought a Layla 3G from Echo a few months back, and feel as if I've exhausted all my tricks and so now I need some help.  I'm running Sonar x1PE (but also had this problem in S8 and S8.5).  Windows 7 Pro 64bit, AMD Phenom II x4 945, 8GB DDR2 1066 RAM. 

First, the latency issue.  I'm a total soft synth user.  The only audio I record is a guitarist and vocalist, done one track at a time.  The rest is all software, so I do tend to run at least 5 per project including Omnisphere, EastWest Play Sample libraries like Orchestra Gold, Ministry of Rock), Superior Drummer 2.0, Kontakt 4, etc.  It seems that the minimum buffer I can run without getting any pops or clicks when running 1 soft synth is 512samples in the ASIO buffer.  Now this doesn't throw me off too bad when recording MIDI tracks.  Sometimes I"l bump it down to 256 when I'm first starting out so my playing will be near accurate.  However beyond that, I have to raise it to 1024 samples when I'm getting a project going with 3 or more soft synths just to keep it from crackling and even sometimes dropping out.  Obviously for mere playback this isn't really an issue, but recording MIDI tracks at this buffer level is insanely difficult, and often my playing is off time.  My audio settings are 24bit 48KHZ, Cache R/W is unchecked, playback buffer set to 2.
Not sure what else to list that seems notable. 

As for the random dropouts, I can just have one synth like Omnisphere loaded, and will be playing around and then select a different sound, and the audio engine shuts off and I have to click it back on.  This happens mainly with Omnisphere, Trillian PLAY, and Kontakt 4, less frequent with others.

I used to have a Focusrite Saffire Pro 10 until it gave out on me a few months back.  I bought the Echo Layla 3G based on reviews and comments not only saying PCI was the better way to go, but also how highly regarded Echo was.  Honestly, all these problems I'm having (not to mention the pre-amps suck) make me wonder why Echo has the status it does.  Up until my Saffire croaked I didn't have these kinds of problems.  I contacted their support, but they basically just gave me a basic FAQ/Troubleshooting deal and the methods that were clearly stated I've already tried.  Some suggested disabling windows services but didn't specify which one and I'm not enough of a guru to go digging around in there.  I did switch the PCI card to a different slot, but that didn't change anything.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Otherwise I may look into getting a different board and selling this one.  If you need more information, let me know!

Thanks

John

Hey Dave, yes I'm using the ASIO mode in Sonar and not ASIO4ALL.  In ASIO mode the total roundtrip latency is 29.4 ms.   I'm currently trying WDM.  First starting off the project sounds stretched, out of tune/time, and distorted with the slider set to 10.7 ms or 529 samples.  If I raise it to 1056 samples or 22ms it sounds in tune and time but still distorts and fizzes like it's struggling to maintain.  It appears WDM is worse.  Honestly I'm not sure the Layla supports WDM, but it was worth a shot.

I appreciate the suggestion as I hadn't thought of that.  Any other ideas?

Hey Dave, I appreciate you taking the time to read up on the Layla in order to help me out. :)  Kinda pulling an all nighter so I may be a bit lax on certain details simply because my brain is a little mushy.

Anyway, the bit/sample is 24/48.  I'm assuming Superchannel is the 64 bit double precision, or is that something in the Layla software?  Actually hang on I'll look... I don't see anything that actually says "superchannel" (I'm back in ASIO mode so don't know if the "superchannel" is a WDM exclusive option), but I can tell you what I have.

In Sonar x1 under driver settings:

Audio Driver Bit Depth: 24  64bit Double Precision Engine is checked
Sample Rate: 48000
Playback buffers: 2
Input Latency: 111.6 ms
Output Latency: 11.6 ms
Total Latency: 23.2 ms

Asio Control Panel:
512 Samples
All boxes are checked (Enable ASIO 2.0 direct monitoring, Enable short channel names, use multimedia priority boost, lower window manager priority).

I'm doing all I/O through the Layla, the onboard sound is disabled in the device manager.  Hmm, may see if I can disable it in the Bios, don't know if that'll help though.

Running Genuine AMD Phenom II (don't know if operates similar enough to an Athlon) 945 Black Edition 3.0GHZ along with an ECS Motherboard with NVidia Chipset

You said Sonar doesn't support ASIO 2.0?  Even X1?  Hmm, not sure on that one either.  Might be worth looking into. 

Ok, I think I covered everything you mentioned.  Oh, elaborate on the "superchannel" because I didn't specifically see anything called that in the menus and dialog boxes.  I'll look in the manual to see if I can find it, but go ahead and post if you know.  No harm in being redundant.  I'll give the WDM a try again, and see what happens, maybe I did something wrong.  Or maybe I should take a nap and get a fresh perspective, haha.

Thanks again for your efforts man, I greatly appreciate it!  If you come across anything, lemme know!

Glad to hear it. 

Also, you should probably change your buffer size to 256 samples instead of 512. However, I'd say 1.3 ms latency is great.

Well, after 24 hours the solution turned against me.  Although I'm no longer getting dropouts, I'm now plagued with the sound distorting on me.  It almost sounds like the audio loses the ability to stay in sync and it falls apart.  Not off time, literally coming apart sonic wise.  The only way I can realy describe it is when you're watching a DVD that's dirty or scratched and the picture is pixelated and the sounds is all messed up.  A simple stop and start fixes it, or turning off the audio engine and back on, but then it starts up again after a bit.  This happens no matter how high I raise the buffer.I've had the buffer up over 200 samples and it still does, just does it worse at lower settings.

I'm starting to wonder if it's the motherboard, maybe the PCI slots aren't up to par or not getting enough power to support the layla's requirements.  Not sure, just a theory.

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, I"m all ears!!

Hey Dave, I did and but read it again to make sure.  It does recommend ASIO with Sonar, but that's what I was running when my problems first started as stated yesterday.  However the problems in question today are in WDM mode.  If I switch back to ASIO then I'm right back to where I started yesterday.  It appears I have everything setup and all the check boxes that need to be checked (including the MMCSS setting).  I've already emailed Echo again, just waiting on a response.  I got a buddy who has an Echo Audio Fire 2 box and using Sonar, but doesn't have the problems I do.  I'm starting to think that maybe the board is just going bad.  But I figured I'd get all the info and advice I can before heading down that road.  I"m honestly at a loss as to what it could be at this point.


Thanks for the reply Dave.  I'll keep hunting for answers for a while, just wanted to post this in case you or anyone else might have any ideas that I"m not thinking of.

i'm running an echo audiofire 2 at 128 samples, no probs most of the time. but the last coupla sessions there have a been more dropouts, i'm wondering if a win7 x64 update has altered something for the worse? (i have updates on auto)
echo are a good brand and write excellent drivers, so i'd suggest trying a different PCI slot first (if possible). also make sure the bit and sample rates are synced up between sonar and the layla - sounds almost as if you have one set to 48khz and one to 44.1. this would cause some issues.

This won't exactly help, but I'll let you know that I'm running the Gina3g on Win 7 64 and X1 with no problems.  I believe I have the most recent 64 bit drivers from Echo.  I can run both WMD and ASIO with little difference in performance.  I run ASIO now just because Echo suggests it in the manual.  2.7 and 5.8 ms with no pops or clicks.  I run it at 24/44.

Just wanted to let you know it probably isn't the Echo plus X1 or Win 7 64 causing the problem.  May be something else in your hardware--motherboard?  IRQ conflict?

Hope this helps.

Hey Sven, yeah I'm starting to wonder if it's the motherboard.  Before the Echo I was running a firewire Saffire Pro 10 board and didn't have these problems, never used the PCI slots until I got this.  The motherboard is about 6 months old, not an expensive one, but for the most part solid.  I'm thinking maybe the slots are either cheaply made since PCI is becoming antiquated and they didn't put much effort into efficiency or power flow.  At least that's one theory anyway.  Like you, I've read several reviews/posts where people have used the Layla 3G with the same virtual setup that I'm running with no issues.  So it's starting to look like you may be leaning the same way I am that it's hardware, in this case the culprit could be the motherboard.

Hey Dave, LOL!  No man I was talking about throwing the Layla 3G on Ebay, not Sonar!  I love Sonar, never get rid of it if I could.  Besides like I said, the Saffire I was running before it crapped out on me worked great, so I'm not upset with Sonar at all.

I got another email from Echo.  They suggested DPC checker to see if anything is interfering driver wise, and a few other tricks to try.  So I'll keep pushing onward for now.  I'm still open to any ideas if anyone has any.

Thanks to all!

weird dude. i have reaper, studio one and sonar 8.5 all using same latency settings with no issues...

only thing i can think of is that the acknowledged problems some interfaces have had with ASIO drivers and their interaction with Sonar in X1 has done something at registry level to hose your Sonar installation.
Try (if not already) uninstalling x1 and 8.5 completely (and that means deleting registry keys, not just using the auto-uninstall function - JonBouy gives a very good description of how to do this in several threads on this forum - you'll have to search for them though!) and then reinstalling 8.5, and see if that cures things. if not....[shrugs]

Ok so here's the results:

Using the Echo Audiofire 4, I was able to run Sonar at 256 samples with no dropouts.  A few clicks and pops here and there, but for the most part stable and clean.  Loaded 4 different projects with the same result.  Uninstalled the audiofire 4 and reinstalled my layla 3g, and as soon as I load a project, the audio engine drops out, without even playing anything, live or playback.

On Presonus Studio One, both the audiofire 4 and the layla 3g performed flawlessly at 128 samples, with similar projects loaded in terms of number of soft synths and effects.

So it would appear that there is a conflict between the layla 3g and Sonar somewhere.  The only thing left that I know to do is to wipe the layla and Sonar from my computer completely and do a fresh install of both and see what happens.

Will post more when all that is done!

well i can run my audiofire at 64 samples but i get weird behaviour at times, so i keep it at 128 samples even when mixing - ie even when i have a ton of plugs on top of all the instances of guitar rig, kontakt and other synths...and i never go above 50% cpu on my i5 based PC...

and this is a stock PC with ASRock mobo, using the onboard FW controller (which ain't TI), only one hard drive, internet and AV on...

still odd!

I just wanted to add that I do think there's something else going on with his system.  Yeah, he should be getting better overall performance, but for now, raising the buffer setting (hopefully) will make it workable.

To the OP... I don't see where you say you've done the standard tweaks for audio.  Granted, it's not necessary for everyone, but obviously worth a try for you (assuming you haven't already).  Here's one such list:

http://support.presonus.c...indows-vista-windows-7

The key point is that I can set the audiofire 4 and the Layla 3G to the same ASIO settings in Studio One (128 samples) and get flawless audio performance.  I realize they are two different boards with different tech, but yet I can get the same performance with the same settings in S1 from both boards.

In Sonar is where there's a performance difference.  The main reason I was comparing the two was not so much hardware performance as I was looking to see if it was a driver conflict with Sonar.  As I stated, in Sonar the values are much different.  The audiofire 4 can perform decent at 256 samples, the Layla barely holds on for a few seconds before a dropout, and sometimes I don't even have to be playing anything, it just drops out.  That's why I thought it may have been drivers, because it wasn't actually being used, I would just let it sit and the audio engine would dropout.

So on one DAW it works great, in Sonar not so much.  So it's apparent that the problem is somewhere in Sonar. 
And to answer your question, the audio tweaks was one of the first things I did, I got the list from the rep at Echo.  Sorry I thought I had already stated that. :)

Also, I just finished wiping Sonar completely off my system (including registry hacks) and reinstalled Sonar 8.  I have 8.5 and x1 but they are downloaded upgrades and not on disc, so for now I just have 8.3 PE.  It's somewhat better, I can run 1024 samples with 20ms RTL and it works fine, before I had to bump it to 2048.  512 samples has an occasional dropout.  So it's not AS bad but still not satisfactory.  I can do mixing once a project is past the recording stage and be ok with that, my main concern is all my MIDI tracks use soft synths and that kind of lag just won't cut it.

I've got the rep at Echo trying to recreate my problem so I'm waiting to hear back from him.  He's just as baffled as I am, been dealing with him for about 2 weeks now.  He's good, and prompt on the replies, I'm hoping that he'll be able to get whatever resources he can to see if there's a solution.

@Wickens:  Man I know where you're coming from.  It just doesn't make sense that the L3G would work fine on another DAW and not Sonar.  I mean obviously if it works fine on another DAW it's not the L3G, unless there is some sort of driver conflict going on.  But the complete uninstall and reinstall should've cleared up anything that might have been jumbled around in the registry, I cleared it all out!

Anyway, I'm hopeful, but I may have no choice but to resort to another DAW at least for MIDI tracking if I can't get this resolved.  I'd hate to have to buy another audio I/O when for all account the L3G works. 

Thank you very much to everyone who has chimed in, I'm always open to new ideas, especially now since I'm pretty well tapped out.