Well this is just peachy. After all that careful contemplation and trying to get everything just right for my MIDI drum bounce now I can't play the bleeding things. All the tracks are there. I can see the waves (though it took a while for them to draw) but when I start playback the Hard Disk icon in my performance module goes blood red and after a couple seconds I get an audio engine stop error.
 
Things I've tried:
 
Saved and restarted Sonar.
 
Archived the MIDI track feeding BFD.
 
Cranked the buffers on my Focusrite 18i6 to max.
 
and... well I'm tired so I didn't try much else.
 
I checked my available disk space (I am currently writing audio data for this project to my C drive just because that's how I foolishly started the project many moons ago and don't want to double up the data or have something screw up if I try to move it) and there plenty of room.
 
It is a SATA 500GB 7200 RPM Barracuda (or Cav Black... I forget because my brain's not working but it's a nice one).
 
I can only assume this has something to do with hard disk buffers but I a) have never had a problem like this before and it's only and extra 10 tracks or so and b) am not quite sure the right approach to fix such issues.
 
I'm calling it a night but could use some advice on how to troubleshoot this in the morning.
 
Here are some more system details...
Focusrite Scarlett 18i6
Win7 Pro 64
Sonar X2a
i7 2600k
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
700W Coolermaster PSU
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Gen3 MOBO
System tweaked as recommended according to the Sweetwater Optimization guide minus a few Sonar specific tweaks left off.
No external controller or other devices connected.
AV disabled.
 
What a drag. lol

Oh and the project is 24 bit/96khz. Only FX in the project are TH2 on multiple tracks and I think one instance of GR5.

Beepster
I can only assume this has something to do with hard disk buffers

 
Yes, you'll need to increase your file system buffers under Preferences > Audio > Sync an Caching.
 
I'm not sure what the default is any more, but mine are at 256kB and handling large projects pretty well. But running 96kHz sample rate doubles the load vs. 48kHz.
 

Dupe Post

brundlefly

Beepster
I can only assume this has something to do with hard disk buffers

 
Yes, you'll need to increase your file system buffers under Preferences > Audio > Sync an Caching.
 
I'm not sure what the default is any more, but mine are at 256kB and handling large projects pretty well. But running 96kHz sample rate doubles the load vs. 48kHz.
 

Thanks, man. Exactly the area I was looking for. I've kind of left all the fancy internal system settings alone hoping Sonar's defaults would be enough but I guess that may have been wrong.
 
However here is what that section is telling me:
 
Playback and Record buffers both set to 256kb (so I'm at your settings but perhaps I should boost it anyway?).
 
Also the two checkboxes labeled Enable Read/Write Caching are not checkmarked. Should I enable these options or at least "Read" option?
 
Thanks again. Very helpful.

Read/Write caching is generally not necessary and can cause other issues. You should try 512kB at least on the Playback side, but I'm a little surprised you'e having trouble at 256kB even given the high sample rate. How many audio tracks total are in the project (including frozen synths)?
 
 

Well there is a multi out BFD Eco set up (so I think 12 audio tracks there) and 3 duplicates of the MIDI feeding it (the original takes in one which is archived, the bounce clips track of those takes also archived and the final tweaked MIDI track which is what I used for the bounce and I archived after this happened). There is only one instance of BFD and no other synths.
 
Then there are three bass tracks (cloned for blending).
 
There are however a LOT of guitar tracks. You know now that I think about it there are at least a couple dozen of those because of all the original takes I did while writing it, then the keeper tracks, then the clean tracks and huge count of little solo bits that I kept separate on their own tracks because they weren't blending well VIA traditional comping (for some weird reason).
 
Now the new set of bounce BFD tracks. Still though I figured I could get like 100 tracks on this rig without problems but if Sonar isn't set right to take advantage of the horsepower that obviously is a problem. I'm shut down for the night but I'll start archiving any unnecessary crap tomorrow and up the Cache if need be.
 
I'm curious though... does increasing the cache like that introduce latency or other not so desirable stuff?
 
Thanks again. I have neglected studying this type of system setting stuff within Sonar in favor of actually learning how to work the bloody thing. lol

You mentioned cranking your audio buffers to maximum. Sometimes it can be just as bad as making them too small. Try backing off a little from max.

I had this problem once and someone on this forum told the same thing. Once I raised the Playback and record buffers I've never had a problem since.

Increasing the disk buffers will slightly delay the start of playback while the initial disk read is done. And only active tracks matter; it's not going to buffer anything that's archived. But if you have a lot of muted takes, I think that's going to add to the total because it has to be ready to start playing any take to you might umute at any time during playback.
 
Possibly a feature request is needed to allow archiving takes or doing it automatically after a flattened comp take has been created.