I've been exploring Sonar X1, and under Prefs/Audio/Driver Settings/ I noticed an unchecked "64-bit Double Precision Engine" box. What is this, and (more important) does checking it gain any benefit in terms of audio quality?
 
Thank you for your replies.
 
Bob aka jazzwombat
 

Check it and leave it checked.
 
It's kinda a blow back to back when processors weren't as strong as they are now.
 
The only time to uncheck it is if you are having significant problems using Sonar. It would be a step in debugging.

jazzwombat
I've been exploring Sonar X1, and under Prefs/Audio/Driver Settings/ I noticed an unchecked "64-bit Double Precision Engine" box. What is this, and (more important) does checking it gain any benefit in terms of audio quality?

It does calculations with more precision - think more decimal places. 
 
The quality is unfortunately a controversial question, but those of us who can do math, and also bother to do quantitative testing on stuff like this, will tell you that any errors will never accumulate to a degree that will be audible in the real world.
 
So the answer is it really doesn't make any difference if you leave it checked or unchecked.

Further to drewfx1's post, using the 64bit processing may not produce and audible difference; however, 64bit processing can help eliminate artifacts introduced during effect and synth signal flow.  That is were the longer word count (the "decimal places" drewfx1 alluded to) comes in handy.
 
Kind regards,
 
Living Room Rocker.

www.cakewalk.com/Support/kb/reader.aspx/2005278

It's all about signal processing... not debugging, i.e., "greater resolution...accurate audio reproduction...more headroom."  Clipping, for instance, is not a problem introduced by a bug, but a signal which is greater than capacity of the processor, so to speak.
 
Kind regards,
 
Living Room Rocker

gswitz
www.cakewalk.com/Support/kb/reader.aspx/2005278

 
Just so people can put CW's claims into context:
 
When they say, "Your chances of clipping will be significantly reduced", note that while strictly speaking this is true, 32bit single precision already will not clip until you are hundreds of dB's above 0dbFS. 
 
I think the fact that they are even claiming this is a benefit speaks for itself.
 
In this context you might consider when they say, "large projects containing many audio tracks and plugs-ins" and ask, "How large? How many?".

jazzwombat
I've been exploring Sonar X1, and under Prefs/Audio/Driver Settings/ I noticed an unchecked "64-bit Double Precision Engine" box. What is this, and (more important) does checking it gain any benefit in terms of audio quality?
 

Depending on how much time you want to devote to understanding this, here's a link to a tutorial I wrote that goes into this topic in a fair amount of detail:
 
http://soundbyte.arsov.net/Wordpress/2013/07/15/ofdigitalbitsanddecibels/