Hi guys,
 
Thanks in advance for any help you can give. I've been experimenting with a MIDI controller keyboard and have run into an obstacle. When I go to use the pitch wheel on MIDI notes I get a very brief, low fuzzy sine wave sound and then the note is stopped in its tracks until the next one is triggered. This is the case whether I draw the pitch control messages in or play them in with the wheel. For what its worth, when I 'play' the wheel into Sonar the messages are all drawn in fine, so no problem at the hardware end as far as I can see.
 
This appears to happen on all the SI (studio instrument) soft synth plug-ins, but not on other plug-ins - for example the wheel works fine in Dimension Pro.
 
Interestingly, if I hold the wheel dead still in a certain position along its track (i.e. somewhere other than the neutral position) the note is changed correctly, but as soon as I release or move it, it dies again. Is it the case that these plug-ins are simply not made to be used with a pitch bend wheel? Perhaps the soft synth doesn't have enough samples between the increments or something? If anyone would be able to check this out on their own setup or let me know if this is normal I would be very grateful. It's a bizarre problem and some looking around has not yielded me any answers yet,
 
Thanks
TMG

I myself have never experienced this type of reaction when doing a pitch bend.
 
Just curious - what Driver Mode are you using, what is your audio interface, what are the Sonar-reported latency values, and what is your computer environment (specs, CPU, memory, etc.)?
 
I am just wondering if something else with your setup is causing this issue, as nobody else has reported these kinds of problems.
 
For this project, what kinds of plugins are loaded?  Are any of them 32-bit?
 
Sorry for the seemingly random questions - just trying to get more info on how you are set up and what within the project may be present that could potentially cause your troubles.
 
Bob Bone

Hi Bob
 
Many thanks for the reply Bob. After you asked me about my driver mode I experimented with the sampling rate - as you can see below my usual rate is 96khz - I dropped it down and noticed that anything lower and the pitch bending works fine! My setup is as follows (what an idiot for not posting it originally):
 
Driver mode: ASIO 96khz, 16-bit
Audio interface: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20
Computer: i7 3770 3.4 GHz, 12GB RAM
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
 
Sonar reports a total roundtrip latency of 50.8 ms (I use direct monitoring so don't usually touch this).
 
The problem happens even if I have one instance of the soft-synth loaded and try it on that (it does it on a brand new empty project), so it's safe to say I don't have any 32-bitters running.
 
Another thing I should mention is that when the problem occurs the MIDI channel's dB meter spikes to the top - in fact this happens even if I move the wheel without playing any notes and seems to push the meter higher or lower depending on how hard I push the wheel (though this doesn't generate any actual sound)
 
While I've got you on message Bob, would you happen to know why I am unable to change my audio driver bit depth to 24 from 16? If this is not normal perhaps there is something I could do? I read that deleting the aud.ini file is an option though it was on quite an old post.
 
TMG

I reckon Midi playback buffer settings....

go to preferences > Midi playback and recording > playback > prepare using > and change the default to 500 or something.

Might sort you out.

I don't know, I've never got much from working in 96k other than loosing half my resources.
 
Been really happy working in 48k. Also 16bits? 24bits would give you a lot more headroom.
 
Anyway.
 
It sounds like that pitch bend was just maxing out the synth and you were getting an audio artifact.
 
 

markyzno,
 
Thanks for the reply and idea - just tried what you suggested but did not fix the problem
 
tacman7, if you check out my more recent post above you'll see that I want to work in 24 bits but can't change the setting, either because ASIO is in fact already running 24-bit and does not declare it or because of some bug. Thanks for the insight on the 96khz - I have heard people say similar things before and I think I may end up lowering it.

slight addition to my last post - realised the wheel triggers the MIDI meter regardless because it is of course receptive to data and not representative of dB!

Is it the driver or the project running at 16bit? They are different settings in SONAR.
The driver setting is in Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings "Audio Driver Bit Depth"
The project setting is in Preferences > File > Audio Data "Record Bit Depth"

Hi scook. The driver settings menu says '24' - but it's greyed out (is that normal when using ASIO?) - in the actual project control bar it is displayed as '16'.
 
The audio data record bit depth reads '16'. I just changed that to 24 and the control bar now reads '24'. Would you kindly explain to me the difference there? Is it simply that I was recording at 24-bit (driver settings) but playing back at 16 (project settings)? I must have overlooked that rather obvious detail when setting up.

The driver is operating at 24bit. It is greyed out because that is the only option supported by the driver. The "Recorded Bit Depth" is just that, the bit depth of the stored recorded audio files. More info here.