Ok, thank you for that. I'm not in front of my DAW during the day, but I can answer a couple things. First, the dropouts and noise are happening during playback, which is troubling, because I have that big ASIO Buffer Size (1024) and am still getting dropouts and noise, and I only have two effects on the Master Bus, none anywhere else. (I just re-opened this project after it had been archived for a few years, and the first thing I did was hit the space bar and got the noise, like I mentioned, even after copying all clips into a new clean project.) I haven't even gotten to the recording part yet. But thank you for reminding me about which setting it was I'm supposed to to change to make recording easier.
 
There is a big gap between the importance of these settings and the understandability of terms like "ASIO Buffer Size" to non-digital audio engineer types. Given how critical it can be, and how one setting does not fit all scenarios, even within a single project, it seems like Cakewalk should make this easier. Like a nice slider available in the toolbar, one side saying "Better for Recording" and the other "Better for Playback". You know?
 
I was not aware of the license terms for Sonar. I assumed that once I upgrade, I could freely give my old version to a my daughter's boyfriend. I don't think he ever installed it, but I'll let him know. (Which of course means he'll probably just bit torrent it, but at least I'm not responsible...)
 
I'll look into it again at home tonight. I do know that re-opening the project again this morning I experienced a lot less dropout and noise. Encouraging, but still not close enough to where I can easily work on this beast of a song.

Sure - what effects do you have loaded in this project?  (please list precisely)
 
Also, try this: load up this problem project, then prior to hitting play, hit the letter 'E' on your computer keyboard, and this will Bypass All Effects.  (hitting it again after testing will turn them back on, or just close the project without saving it).  Anyways, after Bypass All Effects, hit play again and see if that makes the noise and dropouts and such go away.
 
If that DOES make the noise and stuff stop, then one or both of those effects are causing some trouble.
 
Also, if you are just trying to playback and not do any recording, it is fine to have the ASIO Buffer Size jacked way up, to give more room for effects that need it.  I think some systems may allow values as high as 2048.
 
There is another parameter you could adjust: Edit>Preferences>MIDI>Playback and Recording, try changing the 'Prepare Using _____ Milliseconds Buffers' from its default 250 ms up to 500 ms.
 
Bob Bone

robert_e_bone
Sure - what effects do you have loaded in this project?  (please list precisely)
 
Also, try this: load up this problem project, then prior to hitting play, hit the letter 'E' on your computer keyboard, and this will Bypass All Effects.  (hitting it again after testing will turn them back on, or just close the project without saving it).  Anyways, after Bypass All Effects, hit play again and see if that makes the noise and dropouts and such go away.
 
If that DOES make the noise and stuff stop, then one or both of those effects are causing some trouble.
 
Also, if you are just trying to playback and not do any recording, it is fine to have the ASIO Buffer Size jacked way up, to give more room for effects that need it.  I think some systems may allow values as high as 2048.
 
There is another parameter you could adjust: Edit>Preferences>MIDI>Playback and Recording, try changing the 'Prepare Using _____ Milliseconds Buffers' from its default 250 ms up to 500 ms.
 
Bob Bone

The effects loaded at the Master Bus are Sonitus Equalizer and Voxengo SPAN. Hitting 'E' before Play (as neat little trick I didn't know about) makes no difference.
 
Someone else had suggested the Prepar Using ___ Millisecond setting, I'd jacked it way up. Moved it back to 500.
 
With all the settings listed in the earlier post, basically everything you recommend for playback, the dropouts, noise and crackles continue, especially after about 30 seconds in. Better than it was, but still poor. My settings are:
 
AUDIO:
Sample Rate: 44100
ASIO Buffer Size: 1024
 
SONAR:
Sample Rate: 44100
Driver Mode: ASIO
Total Roundtrip Latency: 48 ms
Record Bit Depth: 16
 
Of course my roundtrip latency is nowhere near 10 ms. I can get it to 7 ms by changing the ASIO buffer size to 128, but of course I get nothing but noise then. Still, I'm disheartened that you claim that the above settings should put my latency at 10 ms and I should have no problems.
 
The middle section has longer note values and fewer instruments playing, but that's where all the dropouts really get going. The opening minute is a lot of instruments and a lot of notes. If I start playback in the middle of the piece, it's a bit better, but still gets into the dropouts almost immediately. The fact that this seems opposite to what I would expect makes me realize I really don't understand how all this works. Also, percussion (snare and timpani) seem to drop out much more often, if that's valuable.
 
Now what?

jkoseattle

twaddle
Is this all happening on the same machine that you had 8.5 installed on or is it a new machine ?
If it's the same on do you still have 8.5 installed ? I t might be useful to reinstall it as it can quite hapilly
coexist with X3. Just so you can check that it runs okay in 8.5 and compare all your settings.
 
 
Steve

8.5 is uninstalled, and I gave it to someone. I can get it back, but would rather not go to all that if not necessary.

Hmm, so essentially you can't run east west orchestra in sonar X3 but you could in 8.5 and it's the same machine
with all the same hardware?
 
Not sure that installing 8.5 will work but if the project still opens in 8.5 you could compare all your settings
and adjust any that are different.
 
It's obviously not effects related but have you tried opening the project in safe mode?
Load everything apart from east west ?
 
 
Steve

OK - don't panic, we'll get this figured out (he expresses hopefully).  :)
 
Can you please detail your system specs, such as how I have mine listed in the signature section of this post?
 
(I actually recommend you edit your forum profile's signature section to add your specs.  Lots of us in the forum do that, so that when we post issues, others can immediately get an idea of what our systems look like, and that greatly speeds up the problem solving process in a lot of cases.  To add your specs to your forum signature: go to the top of the forum page, click on User Control Panel up in the top right corner, then click on Signature and Comment, add your specs, also making SURE to check the box that says 'Always attach signature to post', then click Save Profile).
 
So, the whole thing about the ASIO Buffer Size and latency, and having to flip between low and high, depending on what you are doing and all of that:
 
When you are using WDM drivers, Sonar DOES provide a handy slider for adjusting Buffer Size, and that's cool, but it only works when using WDM.  When you use ASIO drivers (which is most likely the best choice for you), you have to make the Buffer Size adjustments through the control panel for your audio interface.  
 
When you are in the process of RECORDING tracks, you really want to get things set up to where your Total Roundtrip Latency is down around 10 milliseconds or a little bit less.  If your latency gets much above 10 milliseconds, you will begin to hear a bit of a 'lag' and the sound can become problematic.
 
When you are finished recording, and move on to MIXING, you will have to adjust your ASIO Buffer Size way up, to allow the inclusion of the kinds of effects that use 'look ahead processing', where they load in data ahead of what is playing, in order to do particular kinds of effects processing.  These effects are designed expressly for the mixing/mastering process, and NOT meant to be used for recording tracks, because the way they do their thing requires a much larger ASIO Buffer to support reading all of that data ahead of time.
 
SOOOO, when you work with projects, you basically have the 2 kinds of requirements for ASIO Buffer Size: small for low latency when recording, and large (even huge) for high latency when mixing/mastering.  This is a basic fact of life when working with any DAW, such as Sonar, and you will, over time, get used to adjusting the ASIO Buffer Size when needed, and you will also become aware of the IMPACT certain plugins have on projects - meaning that you need to be careful in the recording part of it not to load effects that induce large amounts of latency.
 
I am guessing that if you were to set things at: Driver Mode ASIO, ASIO Buffer Size of 128, Sample Rate of 44.1 k or 48 k, Record Bit-Depth of 24 bits, and a Total Roundtrip Latency of around 10 ms or a little less, that in a NEW project, you would not likely have any dropouts, lag, crackles, or noise.
 
So, just for a test, try the above settings in a new project, with just a small number of synths, and make sure that things record with no sound issues.
 
OK - so that's a crash course on some of the ASIO Buffer Size stuff.  Back to the current nightmare.
 
I do not yet know your system specs, so this is conjecture, but I am wondering if perhaps you might try a test where you 'freeze' your synths.  (do this on a backup copy of your project - since this is for the moment just a test).
 
Here is some Sonar documentation on Freezing:
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation/default.aspx?Doc=SONAR%20X3&Lang=EN&Req=Mixing.23.html
 
Scroll down to the section titled; To Freeze a Soft Synth.
 
So give the above a shot and post back.
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 

Thanks very much for all this assistance. I'm totally appreciating it. 
 
I've edited my signature at the bottom, good thinking. One thing that I find curious is that in both your signature and in your last post you imply that the roundtrip latency is something I'm to set, as opposed to a result of other settings. Anyway, it's all there now afaik.
 
I do know about freezing synths because I do that at mixing time when I'm adding EQ on just about every track. For this project, I just now froze the whole brass section and three percussion tracks. Fewer dropouts, but still some, and dropouts got frozen into the audio anyway, I assume because fast bounce was turned on. Don't tell me I have to freeze and thaw tracks using slow bounce all the time to get this to work! I hate freezing tracks anyway, even fast, because I need to be able to make quick decisions across instruments and sections and freezing and thawing bogs the whole flow.
 
I tried a new project started from the same template as this one, connected five synths and recorded stuff in all of them, no dropouts or anything as far as I could tell. Didn't get as far as doing the whole orchestra in that test.

You cannot directly set Total Roundtrip Latency, but your other settings factor into it becoming what it is.
 
So, with your ASIO Buffer Size set to 128, Sample Rate of 48 k, and Record Bit-Depth set to 24 bits, you may end up with a Total Roundtrip Latency of perhaps 9-10 milliseconds.  If all the settings remain the same, but you change the ASIO Buffer Size to 1024, your Total Roundtrip Latency may go up to 45-50 milliseconds.  So, not a direct setting of Total Roundtrip Latency, but your settings PRODUCE the eventual Total Roundtrip Latency that gets reported.
 
I was just asking for a TEST of freezing things, to see if we could reduce the dropouts and noise and such, by reducing the processing demands, and help identify factors in causing the issues you are having.
 
Since freezing some things made things better, and starting a new project with fewer components played cleanly, it seems like a resource issue indeed may be a significant contributing factor in the issues you are having.
 
I would like you to try an additional test, which you would perform with Sonar NOT running. (strange as that sounds).  I would like you to download a freeware program called DPC Latency Checker, and run it for 3-4 minutes with Sonar NOT running, so that the program can measure your computer's basic ability to handle streaming audio processing, which is what Sonar does.  I am just curious if something else running in your system might be part of the issue with your issues.
 
DPC Latency Checker is available here:
 
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
So, please post back the results from your measuring your computer's basic DPC Latency.
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 

OK, I let DPC Latency Checker run for a few minutes. Current Latency sits around 170, and absolute maximum is 278.

OK - that's GREAT news.  That means, that whatever is happening is NOT due to some weird thing elsewhere in your computer, so we don't have to go chasing down issues from hardware or other device drivers and such.  :)
 
Now - I did some digging, and happened to notice some folks on the web in other places had complained about 'noise' and such from the East West stuff.  I have to look into those claims further, so don't panic - I just thought I should mention seeing those.
 
We WILL (hopefully) get to the bottom of this.
 
I just finished typing a REALLY lengthy post for someone on setting up and using Kontakt multi-racks in Sonar, so my brain hurts and my fingers are hungry (as is the rest of me).
 
I will be offline for at least a couple of hours chilling, but will jump back into this thread sometime tonight, prior to calling it a day.  I want to read through everything thus far, as well as do some additional research elsewhere on the web, to see what else we can look at for getting you past these issues.
 
Bob Bone
 

Hey - can you please detail your sample library locations for these East/West instruments, AND also list your hard drive configuration for the computer (how many hard drives, and what sorts of things are stored on each one)?
 
I am wondering if you are just trying to stream too much data through a single hard drive.
 
The other thing is that you might be too lean on memory to be loading that many instruments and samples and programs - 6 GB seems a bit light for trying to run that much.
 
IF you have multiple hard drives, you might find some relief by shifting the location of some of those instrument's sample libraries to a different hard drive.  That would cut down on how much data would have to push through a single drive.  Just a thought - I would suggest just a copy/paste operation, and an alteration of the library location parameters for several of the instruments, so that to undo it after testing, you would just change the location parameters back and delete the content from the new locations.
 
Just some thoughts.
 
Bob Bone