Hello,
 
Maybe someone can help me here. I was mixing down a song I got done tracking when the strangest thing happened. I was editing a track and added channel tools to a track I was working on. All of a sudden there was a delayed response between when I hit the play button to when it actually started playing sounds. When I hit stop button it did the same thing. I figured maybe its because I inserted a lot of effects onto the tracks I was working on and needed to up the buffer size. That did not work. So I deleted channel tools to see if things would go back to normal, That did not work. I then deleted all efects on the whole song down to just the bare bones and that did nothing. So, I messed around with the buffer size. reinstalled my sound card drivers. Still, nothing helps. As I was trying all these different things out I would periodically get a AUDIO ENGINE FAILED ERROR. I don't think its my computer because I just bought it for musical purpose and im sure my specs are more then suitable for having many tracks with many effects and plug ins without having a issue. Please help!! Ive read tuns of stuff and cant seem to find a solution.
 
MY SPECS:
 
Intel I.5 4670K processor
8 gb ram
600 watt power supply
1 tb hard drive
 

Usually a delay like that is an issue with the audio driver. Has it been working okay on similar sized projects before? Have the drivers been updated recently? Sometimes an update can introduce problems.
 
Try adjusting your I/O buffers as well. There's no magic figure, it's a case of finding what works best for your system. Usually a larger figure helps but not always. Find those in Preferences-->Audio-->Sync and caching.
 
HTH

Thanks for the reply,

The project was working perfectly up until I tried adding channel tools to a track. Its like as soon as I added that plug-in is when this all started.  I have not had to update my drivers recently. Ive messed with the i/o and the problem persist. Ive tried 8.16,32,256,512 even 2000, witch I think is the max. 16 helped a little but no major difference. I saved a dry copy of the song with no effects, just as back up in-case anything happened during editing and it plays fine. Ive opened other projects and everything seems to be fine. For some reason when I open this particular edited song, I get all these issues. Just recently I tried playing the song and now the vocals dont even come through. It sounds like all crackling, sometimes even silence while the mix-down instrumentals play in the back.

Hi,
what soundcard are you using?
Can you give more specification like the OS aso?
best regards

Perhaps the project is corrupted. Have you been using Save As along the way? Try reverting back to a version that worked. This unfortunately happens sometimes which is why I tend to create a new version after finishing a crucial step. My project folders get huge because of this but once something goes hinkey I can't just go back.
 
And Channel Tools isn't a very resource intensive plug AFAIK. Don't know why that would screw things up but whatever... X2 is kind of unpredictable as far as what breaks things.

And the size of the drive doesn't really matter unless it is a) over 1tb or b) getting too full (I try to leave at least 15-20% free space). What IS important is the speed of the drive and whether it is only of those silly Green drives. 7200 RPM and up without power saving features is recommended for audio from what I've seen.
 
That probably has nothing to do with your issues but just thought I'd mention it.
 
You could send the project to tech support to see if they can pinpoint what the issue is if you REALLY need to stick with this exact version but like I said... sometimes you just gotta cut your losses and go back a step or two.
 
Good luck.

Vokalzz
 
Maybe someone can help me here. I was mixing down a song I got done tracking when the strangest thing happened. I was editing a track and added channel tools to a track I was working on. All of a sudden there was a delayed response between when I hit the play button to when it actually started playing sounds. When I hit stop button it did the same thing. I figured maybe its because I inserted a lot of effects onto the tracks I was working on and needed to up the buffer size. That did not work. So I deleted channel tools to see if things would go back to normal, That did not work. I then deleted all efects on the whole song down to just the bare bones and that did nothing. So, I messed around with the buffer size. reinstalled my sound card drivers. Still, nothing helps. As I was trying all these different things out I would periodically get a AUDIO ENGINE FAILED ERROR. I don't think its my computer because I just bought it for musical purpose and im sure my specs are more then suitable for having many tracks with many effects and plug ins without having a issue. Please help!! Ive read tuns of stuff and cant seem to find a solution.
 

Latency (the delay you speak of) comes from two sources:

• Audio interface
• Latent plugins

The audio interface's latency will stay consistent at a given ASIO buffer size... so I don't think that's the culprit.
 
Some audio plugins use additional processing buffers (typically "mastering" type processors, look-ahead type processors, convolution, etc)
This extra buffer introduces latency.  Sonar has automatic plugin delay compensation.  To maintain sample-accurate sync across all tracks, ALL audio is delayed by this (latent) amount.  Thus, if you insert a latent plugin *anywhere* in a project, it will cause ALL audio to be delayed.
 
It's possible that the project file became corrupt.
In that case, copy/paste all the performance data (tracks/clips) into a new empty project.

I have experienced that same kind of problems....sorry for the stupid question but when you say latent plugins what do you mean by that? I mean i know what latent means but i think you mean that it is ''slower''?. How can i identify such plugin (32 bits vs 64 bits)? And another thing please; I always thought of my soundcard (Presonus Audiobox usb) of being not that good so that might be one part of the problem? I found out in that last 3 -4 years that making music with a computer is not always easy...

HELLYA
I have experienced that same kind of problems....sorry for the stupid question but when you say latent plugins what do you mean by that? I mean i know what latent means but i think you mean that it is ''slower''?. How can i identify such plugin (32 bits vs 64 bits)? And another thing please; I always thought of my soundcard (Presonus Audiobox usb) of being not that good so that might be one part of the problem? I found out in that last 3 -4 years that making music with a computer is not always easy...

Most plugs cause a bit of latency. I watched a vid where the guy was using Pro Tools and he was manually finding out what length of latency specific plugs were causing then manually inputting that number into a field so the program would compensate for it. It was kind of freaky but enlightening. Fortunately Sonar (and most DAWs) will do that automatically so you may not notice it.
 
What Jim was referring to however was "look ahead" plugins. That basically means the plug in takes a moment to analyze the audio it is about to receive so that the effect is ready for it once playback reaches that part. Thus the extra delay.
 
At least that's what I think he was talking about. He's significantly more knowledgeable than I am.

And if you think your effects plugins are causing problems as far as draining resources you can just freeze the tracks until you actually need to adjust those effects. It's like a mini bounce but easily reversible (you just click the freeze button again). Same goes for synths. You don't necessarily need the synth plug to be processing it every time. In fact while mixing it's probably best to NOT have it creating a new version every time. It's not like you are physically playing your guitar track ever time you hit play while mixing. Why would you make your softsynths do it?
 
Something to think about.