Hi, all. Back again with more buggy behavior (when will it end? :).

I just finished a really, really big project (32 tracks, 13 busses, 100+ VSTs) without any serious problems.

I'm now in the process of reworking the track into a club mix. I've simply moved a bunch of MIDI and audio clips around to rearrange them, with the intention of doing more in-depth editing once the arrangement is complete. However, I'm now noticing that, on playback, a MIDI clip that worked without a single problem in the original project is now skipping every downbeat. I'm in Staff View, watching the Now marker highlight the notes, but no MIDI messages are sent. 

I don't understand this. The EXACT SAME MIDI sequence worked PERFECTLY not two hours ago on the same computer, IN THE SAME PROJECT, and now that I've moved a few things in the timeline, it's dropping notes in EVERY measure??? 

For the record, I've tried bumping up the MIDI buffers, restarting SONAR, and hard rebooting my PC. Nothing.

Any ideas? :/ 

Thanks for your help, everybody! :]

All together now:
 
The most common cause of dropped MIDI notes is having the Prepare Using buffer too low. The X-series default of 250ms is too low for a lot of systems. I recommend starting with the pre-X-series default of 500ms. Preferences > MIDI > Playback and Recording. that will take car of it in the majority of cases though some have had to go to 600 or more.

Hi Dave, thanks for this helpful advice. I never thought to try this setting! 

Unfortunately, though, it didn't have any effect on the problem. I went as high as 750ms without success, even restarting Sonar in case it was a setting that needed a "refresh." Nada. 

Seems unlikely to be the issue, at least from my admittedly naive perspective, as everything worked fine with a 50ms buffer while working on the original mix.

Please reveal your hardware and software (check my footer for example). Thanks...

Done! :D

The fact that it's happening in the same place in a consistent way every time is very helpful. That means when you find the problem, it will likely be fixed throughout the project. A few things to try:
 

• Quantize just the clip's downbeat with no swing, full strength, etc.
• Go into the event list and see if the note in that clip really does start at the beginning of the measure. If not, adjust the value. It if does, set it just a couple ticks late.
• Go into the piano roll view, then use the length function to shorten all notes in the clip to 99% of their original values.

 

Please list:
 
Audio interface: Sample Rate, ASIO Buffer Size
 
Sonar: Driver Mode, Sample Rate, Record Bit-Depth, Total Roundtrip Latency.
 
Also, have you tried the simple test of temporarily checking to see if the issues are caused by one or more effects plugin?  You can quickly check this out one way or the other, by loading the problem project, then simply hit the 'E' key on your computer keyboard.  This is the shortcut key to 'Bypass All Effects'.  So, once you hit the 'E' one time to toggle the effects off, hit Play and see if your dropouts go away.
 
IF your dropouts go away from bypassing your effects, then one or more of your plugins is requiring a larger ASIO Buffer Size than what you have specified.  Effects that require a larger ASIO Buffer are those such as Boost 11, Perfect Space, and LP-64 EQ.  Some folks use an ASIO Buffer Size as large as 1024 (I think some have reported using even 2048).  PLEASE NOTE that the larger ASIO Buffer Size is realistically only usable during mixing/mastering, and NOT for tracking (recording).  (By the way, after doing the playback test with Bypass All Effects - simply hit 'E' again to turn all the effects back on).
 
If you found that your dropouts did NOT go away after Bypass All Effects was turned on ('E'), then it is quite possible that you simply have 'Hit the Roof' on the limits of what your computer can handle with the horsepower it has.  In other words, it is possible that you simply cannot process everything Sonar has loaded up in this particular project.  IF this is the case, you could simply begin FREEZING some things, in order to 'lighten the load'.  This is something to consider - if some things are really pretty 'done' then you could freeze them and that would reduce the work the computer has to do during playback.
 
Another thing you could look at is a bit more obscure, but I recall it did end up helping someone in the past.  IF I recall correctly, Noel had made some comments about something called the 'Mix Thread Count' variable in the AUD.ini file.  Changing the value from the default of 8 down to a new value of 6 ended up reserving some threads for the OS and for other tasks.  You could try making that change as well, and could always change it back if you found it did not help your situation.
 
So, I HOPE that something in the above is of some help to you resolving these problems for you.
 
Please carefully review the above, post back with the requested information, and try out the couple of things I suggested above, and let us know if anything helped.
 
Thanks, and hang in there, 
 
Bob Bone
 

Another thing to check is if this is only one clip and you moved it (especially to another VSTi), you may have a mismatch in the mapping. A quick check would be to open the PRV and run your mouse up the keys to make sure they are assigned correctly. It is possible that "missing downbeat" is an unassigned key.

Thank you ALL for spending your valuable personal time helping me with this issue! :D

Given the amount of time you've spent on your suggestions, I'm sad to report that I've identified the issue as being a disappointingly simple one. 

The solution was to simply CLICK the left edge of each clip, which I guess snapped the clip boundaries back into place at 1:000. Apparently the downbeats of the measures (which were each split into clips due to earlier sloppiness in my workflow) were getting cut off. This is unexpected behavior to me, since the Staff View showed the cut notes, and even highlighted them during playback as if they were playing. 

As far as the source of the issue, I have a few clues. When I started reworking this project, I changed the tempo from 122 to 125, hoping that SONAR would be intelligent enough that this would be a straightforward process. After about 15 minutes of downward spiral into the cryptic and confusing world of AudioSnap, I found that this attempt was futile (I'll export each track when I'm done and use Ableton to remap the tempo *simply*). I then changed the tempo back to 122. The MIDI clips on all of the tracks *except* the one in question adjusted to these changes without issue. I guess something about having dozens of clips (one for each measure) threw SONAR off a bit.

Again, thank you all for your help! Perhaps this topic will help another user sometime. :]
-Vince

fif4lifefif
Apparently the downbeats of the measures (which were each split into clips due to earlier sloppiness in my workflow) were getting cut off.

This is what I don't like about the so-called "Non-destructive MIDI Editing" mode. It can actaully be quite destructive in terms of what you hear after splitting a clip, especially with unquantized MIDI. Non-destructive MIDI Editing will truncate notes (by slip-editing) right at the split point. This can leave just a stub of a note a few ticks long before the split point, making it virtually inaudible. Disabling this editing mode keep notes that traverse the split point intact with the earlier clip overlapping the later one to the end of the longest note. Musically, this is usually what you'd want.
 
My guess is that your troubles were related to this one way or another. I've not seen any issues with MIDI following tempo changes, regardless of the number of clips in a track.
 
You can disable Non-destructive MIDI Editing in Preferences > Editing > MIDI section. Unfortunately, there are some buggy side-effects to having it off; chief among them for me being that Sustain Pedal Up (CC64=0) events that terminate a clip will get slip-edited away when you copy-paste a MIDI clip from one track/position to another. There are a few others related to copy-pasting groove clips, and such. Just be aware that whenever you get unexpected results of any kind while editing MIDI it may be related to the state of Non-destructive MIDI Editing.