Sonar X1 drop outs

Personally, I do not think Sonar X1 64bit for win7 is ready for prime time. This is what I have been thru this week with Sonar tech support, Motu, and NI (Native instruments). anyone who can help, please chime in as tech support form 3 companies have not been able to offer a solution so far
 
what I use for hardware - Dell  T1600persion workstation - windows 7 64bit OS 16 gig of ram quad core Xeon processor 3.4 ghz . you could not ask for more!!
 
Wednesday
Audio drops out issue in Sonar X1 . these same files  work fine in Sonar 7
 
Wednesday - Talk to Motu and get drivers for MKS828mk3 - sampling rate 4800 bit depth 128 and switch up to 256 and 512 - buffer 256
Tracks  - have a test bed of 3 audio/midi tracks with big audio files and 2 sonar demo files for testing X1
install sonar - not working, audio drop outs ON A QUAD CORE 16 GIG MACHINE win7 64bit.  no problem on my XP 4 gig dual core 32 bit OS
install guitar rig - not working but need to figure out how it works
work thru preference s and all sonar setting directed at audio
Midi is working fine with M-audio win7 64 bit drivers for midi sport 8x8
 
Thursday
2pm - talk to native instruments and get guitar RIG - NOT THE BEST SUPPORT BUT BETTTER THAN NOTHING
3pm - sonar drops out continue after some minor adjustments - talk with 2 different sonar techs from 3pm until 6pm
5pm - after running sonar service packs, drop out become more frequent
7pm  - Run Sweetwater optimization - did not stop audio drop outs but cut down process
8pm  - start the long process of disabling hardware devices in device manager - did this each device one by one with reboots this does not help. Device i tried were PCI card USB3.0, fire wire PCIe card, one video adapter, onboard audio .
disable on-board audio and USB 3.0 PCI card.
 
All test tracks failing, all tracks drop out, some last longer than other but all fail in the end.  (Edit: - during the course of this 4 day trouble shoot, disable devices thru device manager and try lower video resolution were also tested)
None of the track fail in sonar 7 windows xp 32bit　
 
Friday
10 am - Call sonar support for X1 - talk about plan to stop Audio drop outs with tech -
Problem/Questions: Dropouts (continued)
5pm . 1. Delete AUD file in sonar to get fresh start
         2. Disable Dell audio drivers in Device manager
         3. Try running WDM Drivers - make things much worse, revert back to ASIO
         4. Run Tascam USB interface instead of Motu to see if works any better. (Edit: ripped out all motu drivers and also any registry hive related)still get drop outs
　When running Tascam interface, it take longer to have drop out but I still have them
617.423.9021 - they tried but they point to Motu as the problem at this point
For more support topics visit [link=http://www.cakewalk.com/support%3C/a%3E%3C/font%3E%3C/a%3E]http://www.cakewalk.com/s...%3E%3C/font%3E%3C/a%3E[/link] -= nothing worked so far for Sonar support!

Saturday - no tech support - me and Google today
I scrap the motu 828mk3 audio card and use my portable Tascam audio/midi card to see if it makes a difference
 
install latest Tascam us-122mk11 drivers- use same sequences as last two days
 
with 50 plus track song, 28 track sonar X1 demo and midi track with 10 tracks audio, use the 3 for testing with secondary audio card
audio and loop for one hour - still crash with Tascam interface - 20 minutes
 
use same audio demo from cakewalk , still crash but takes longer before crash - 30 minutes
use these same sequence in sonar 7 and loop them - runs for over an hour and never crashes
 
Uninstall guitar Rig and sonar, uninstall motu drivers on Win7 64 bit machine
 
after reinstall of sonar and guitar rig with the  Tascam, us122 now my prime audio /midi adapter , audio drop continued.
1st file - test files that are was 41.16 /24 cakewalk demo file - it did not crash after one play thru
2nd file was 50 track audio file 48/24 and crashed right away
 
disable AMD HD audio device and real teck audio drivers real tech
no sonar service packs installed at this point - still audio drops out s on 48/24 tracks
LPC latency checker shows no evidence of spikes and say hardware is perfect even when audio drops out, really great tool that does nothing. When audio drops out , the latcey checker stays green and shows no spikes.
 
Could not find audio in Bios of Dell PC so I can not shut that off. Only from device manager
Audio drop out continue and with Tascam card and audio actually slow down on a track ????? very strange
 
after shutting down the sonar the DPC latency checker actually activated and went all "red" and said to check device in device manager and start disabling things
 
Disabled many device but no change, still audio drop outs
 
Disable list - one set of video cards, !ee1394 usb 3.0 any audio not related to the sound card - nothing helped
 
Patch sonar - still have audio drop outs. Remove midisport 8x8 drivers - still have audio drop outs
 
resolve and reinstall Tascam drivers - still drop outs 
  
4 days, no music. only issues with sonar X1
 
after audio drops out the 1st time, sonar x1 allows you to cancel the audio drop out but drops out continue as the track plays and it happens more frequently until I reboot the machine or at least shutdown Sonar
 
My sonar 7 machine is still my production machine so I am going back to work on music. I am really considering leaving sonar after be a Cakewalk user for 23 years. Starting using Cakewalk 2.0 for DOS in 1989 
 
Edit - this message was spell checked and edit for better accuracy

What are your I/O playback & recording buffers set at? I've always found that there's a "sweet" spot that varies per system, and on mine even changing the sample buffer may mean I need to change the I/O buffers. They do make a difference.

I run my interface at 256 samples or 512 depending on project size and for me the I/O buffers are best set to 512 at both those. If I lower my sample buffer to 64 then I need to lower the I/O buffers as well.

It's also worth running Latencymon which will help pin down any problems in your dpc latency.

It's hard to know what else to suggest as you seem to have tried most things unless your interface drivers have issues.

This probably isn't what you want to hear but I run x64 all round and as part of another thread 'test' yesterday I was running 150 tracks all armed for record and input monitoring turned on with 5 Sonitus effects on each track looping over a 4 bar loop inserting and swapping synths and patches. Only issue I had was a slight pause on the synth insert/swap. Other than that it just kept going so Win7 x64 with X1 x64 will work, finding the system balance is the hard part of course.

If anything the audio engine improved quite a bit with V8, and then minor improvements with 8.5 and X1 so it should run better than V7 if anything. I suspect drivers may be an issue.

Dell percsion T1600
I ntel Xeon CPU E31270@3.40 GHZ
16 gig RAM
64 bit OS
Windows 7 pro SP1
Storage controller/Workstation Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller
Intel (R)6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Faimly
TWO Video Display Adapters -AMD FirePro 2270
2 Hard disk, one for OS and one for data
IEEE 1394 Host adapter where i plug in the Motu - LSI 1394 OHCI Compliant Host controller
Intel(R) 82579LM Gigabit network adater
Sonar Details:
Sample rate 4800
ASIO Panle for both Tascam usb or Motu Firewaire  bot set to Sample width 24bit and Sample 48. change to 44.1/16 does not matter, still audio drop out
Filesystem Playback i/o buffer = 256 and same for record
 
Everythin that was disabled in my Device manager has been re-enabled. i can start the process again of disableing devices one by one
 
@fastbikerboy - if system runs sonar in a 64bit windows OS, what chipset do use, what model computer, what audio interface?
 
thanks for your time

the above trobleshooting did not help.

now trying  cakewalk Audio demo 1 as a test bed and looping it around.i t is only 9 audio tracks.  althought it is 44.1/24,  the tascam is smart engouh to change gears from 48/24 and load the file and not give me the error message "File cant be loaded becasue the sample rate is diffrent" wrong"

what is CPU-z

ok , i see it is another freeware program

rca: Dell Model 06NWYK . dell never made a motherboard what gave you this information ?

http://s871.photobucket.com/albums/ab272/rcassent/?action=view&current=cpu.jpg

link to screen shot
 
http://s871.photobucket.c...w%26current%3dcpu2.jpg/
 
 
this link confirms that dell does make this mother board
 
http://3dmark.com/pcm7/96802
 

the last thing i have done today: - i reenabled every device i disabled. made sure my registry was clean, change the playback buffer size from 256 to 512, lowered the resolution of my monitor to 1280x1024

no disk ;looks good. this is a new hi end machine, i am woondering about video cards as i see not many use this brand. i just changed video resoultution and increase the buffer size for play back. loopin a big file right now and i can not belive it is running over 10 minute tight now. i am affraid to try and record :)

thanks FBB - going into the studio and see how things are running

Try to disable Hyperthreading, set ThreadSchedulingModel=2 in aud.ini, set DropoutMsec=500 and don't enable any CPU powersaving settings or any motherboard specific tuningtools or utilities.

Just a few thoughts, good luck !

@sandmannch - i will try your suggestion . i must admit , when i checked the shared driver option, i had the least amount of drop outs

Hi rcassent,

Try loading another recording software package such as Reaper, then see if any of the problems carry over. Reaper  is free to try for 30 days. This will help you troubleshoot, but it's not foolproof.

Good luck.

ok i set ThreadSchedulingModel=2 in aud.ini, set DropoutMsec=500  CPU powersaving settings or any motherboard specific tuningtools were diabled early on thru the Sweetwater optimzation thread. have not found the hyperthreading check box but still looking