I have a problem that's driving me mad! I have a long audio clip that has some minor artifacts I want to remove. What I do is to split the track at that point where the offending noise is and then cross fade each side of the split and move the 2 parts together. When I play the track back it sounds perfect - no noticeable join and the transition is not at all noticeable (I'm listening closely on headphones).

Then in order to make the audio clip easily movable I join it together in a number of ways, but they all result in the joined audio clip having a very small but noticeable click at the point where the crossfade was. I've tried:

Highlighting all audio and selecting 'Bounce to clip(s)'
Rendering the whole project as a new audio track and importing the rendered audio back in
Using the 'Bounce to track(s)' option

It seems that however I do it, Sonar is introducing a tiny click in the rendered audio any time there's a crossfade. As I say, the crossfade has absolutely no audible clicks when playing back the split clips, only when it's rendered or bounced.

This is in Sonar X1 Producer Expanded - any suggestions?

Here are a few things you should investigate:
1. Make sure the split was at a Zero Crossing
2. Make sure the cross-fade is faded in enough to cover any artifacts
3. How are you setting up your rendering  and are you playing back the rendered audio through the same gain stages and effects? This will or may cause clipping artifacts.
 
I cross-fade allot and if there is an artifact upon export, its usually because the cross fade needs to be bigger, meaning it needs to be faded into the tracks more.
 
CJ

When you do "Bounce to Tracks," is it in real time or "fast" bounce? Also, are you using an effects that rely on hardware, like the Universal Audio or SSL Duende plug-ins?

Thanks for the replies. To answer the questions, I've tried every combination of real-time/fast bounce to tracks and they don't make any difference. I've tried turning on/off options like 64-bit engine, fast bounce, different bit depths, dithering on/off. There's no hardware-reliant effects being used and I've made sure the fades are big enough.

What I don't understand is that if I play the project back and listen in real time there is absolutely no click at the crossfaded points. It's only if I try to render using Tracks/Bounce To Tracks or Export>Audio that the clicks appear (they are very small but enough that I can hear them and as I provide audio for broadcast I need to make sure the tracks are as clean as possible). And they only ever appear at the point where the crossfade was, nowhere else in the track.

To make it more confusing, it often happens randomly. Let's say there are four points in the audio track where I've split and crossfaded, a click might appear at one point but not another, but then on a different render it might be on one of the other crossfades, but always on a crossfaded segment.

The only way I've found so far to get a rendered track without clicks is to literally record 'what you hear' onto a new track while the project is playing in real time. But I thought this was effectively the same process as deselecting Fast Bounce during render (which doesn't work the same and will produce a click).

I'm just at the point where I don't trust Sonar to give me a true clean render of my audio without having to put headphones on and listen intently after every render.

What happens if you increase latency? I do lots of crossfading and bouncing, including with solo instruments for classical projects where you could hear a pin drop, and haven't encountered this problem. The only thing I can think of is that your computer is less stressed out during real-time playback compared to doing the calculations needed to bounce a track, and if the latency is on the borderline, there might be a glitch. It's a guess, but who knows...

To make it more confusing, it often happens randomly.

Well with this new info you supplied, I can tell you with 100% confidence that this is not a SONAR issue.
It is a Sound Card driver issue and/or a sound card driver setting issue, and/or a lack of having a good sound card.
 
CJ

That's why I'm curious what happens if the latency gets increased...

CJaysMusic

To make it more confusing, it often happens randomly.

Well with this new info you supplied, I can tell you with 100% confidence that this is not a SONAR issue.
It is a Sound Card driver issue and/or a sound card driver setting issue, and/or a lack of having a good sound card.
 
CJ

My sound card is a Focusrite 8i6 with all latest drivers and PC is brand new last year from a highly reputable builder of custom audio PCs with no extraneous software/bloatware. Purely used for audio.

ASIO buffer size is 10.0 ms
Sonar reports latencies as:
Input 21.0 msec, 924 samples
Output: 31.0 msec, 1366 samples
Total roundtrip: 51.9 msec, 2290 samples

I highly doubt the PC is maxing out or under any stress as there's only a few tracks in this project and zero FX to use processing power.

I'm certainly willing to accept it might be a stray setting somewhere, but I'm curious as to how you can say with certainty that it's 100% not a Sonar issue. It could at least be a Sonar issue in combination with a particular hardware configuration.

But thanks for both your feedback - I'll investigate latency settings and see if there's anything else suggested that I can try.

I noticed you're using X1. Do you have the X1d update?
 
I do recall something similar to what you mention when I was testing out X1 back in the day (I do a lot of narration where here are lots of crossfades in silent spaces), but also found a solution for it. Unfortunately I can't remember what it was; it may very well have been project-specific.
 
For the sake of science , try creating a new project and copy the clips that aren't crossfading correctly into it. Then crossfade them the same way you're crossfading them, and bounce to clip. Does the problem persist?

Total roundtrip: 51.9 msec, 2290 samples

That is pretty darn high for round trip. If you have a good PC,you do not need to have your buffers that high. you have not listed any PC specs, sop i'm assuming your 'custom PC needs some updating.
 
CJ