Hey all, just wanted to say hi, add one more to the community and one more Sonar user. 
Downloaded the 30 day trial, really liked it, so I went and ordered it today. 

Enjoy!

It's a spaceship, and there are lots of cranky souls here - but I like the software.

Good Luck!

 

 

Welcome to the forum redbarchetta.

It's not as cranky as some like to make it out to be.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have. There's tons of helpful people here.

You'll probably be asked for your system specs ... might want to put those in your signature. (Should take my own advice there. )

Ha, I'm just a newbie at recording. I've used Reaper, great program but got turned onto Sonar and really liked what I seen.... 

Having said that, Sonar has crashed on me twice this evening.  Right now I'm just running the demo version until my purchased copy arrives from Guitar Center.   How often does Cakewalk produce updates?  Is there any set pattern?

I'm not sure how the Demo's work to be honest. In other words, the crashes you are seeing now may be fixable by adjusting your system, or have been fixed in patches. You can't patch Demo's as far as I know.

It has differed over the years, but with X1 they put out 4 official patches. So far there is 1 for X2.

The other thing they do is, when they find a problem, they put what they call a Quick Fix. This is just a test patch so to speak that should only be applied if it addresses a specific problem you are seeing. Once an official patch is released, the Quick Fixes are incorporated in to those.

The patch release differs in every version depending on how many problems they have run in to. I'd guess there would be at least 1 more for X2, but I could be wrong.

Thanks for the info Bud!  Looking forward to getting the real deal.  I seen that you had a thread a while back on the Fast Track Ultra....  I have the same issues, it wants to blue screen my computer. I had the latest drivers but I uninstalled all the m-audio software and re-installed.  Not sure if that's going to help yet or not, we'll see.   If it continues to crash on me, I may just have to splurge on the V100.  It looks like I nice interface + controller for my needs.

As far as me?  Eh... I'm a humble sort. A guitar player who is getting good enough to finally want to start recording his riffs and try to put some material together.  Have a friend who plays drums. We've been good friends since high school ( loooong time ago).  He and I will start doing more work together soon and I'm going to want to start mixing our tracks together soon.  As far as a bass player? Have one... Kind of... He's too lazy to really learn the instrament and I don't have much interest in being his teacher if I have to drag him along.  So, for now I'll be playing tripple duties.. Guitar, Bass and Recording/Editing/Mixing boy. 

Sweet, i'm no longer a trial user. The magical brown truck delivered by Sonar shipment today.  I feel like part of the family now.  

Cool!

It's a comprehensive beast of a DAW rb. 

@redbarchetta

The quicker you post the details on the followingL

1.  Your computer hardware, 
2.  Operating system version and service level
3.  Audio interface model and specific driver version used
4.  Settings for the audio interface - Sample Rate and ASIO Buffer Size.  You may have to use the 'ASIO Panel' button in Sonar to access and maintain settings for your audio interface.  That button is found at: Edit>Preferences>Audio>Driver Settings .  If that does not work, there is most likely a program running in the background that allows access/maintenance to those settings - that would be found in the System Tray area of your Windows Desktop, down in the lower right corner of your displayed Windows desktop.  This behavior varies from interface vendor to vendor, and it's just the way life works sometimes.  No biggie - use one or the other - whichever one works.
5.  In Sonar the Driver Mode (Edit>Preferences>Audio>Playback and Recording), and this can hopefully be set to ASIO to access the ASIO drivers for your audio interface.  If it is set to something other than ASIO, you want to set this to ASIO, IF you have an audio interface that has current ASIO drivers for your version of Windows.  So, if you change the Audio Driver, you want to immediately click 'Apply'.  This is so it immediately detects settings changes that are automatically done for you when you change Driver Modes.  So, by applying that change, Sonar will change values for Recording and Playback Timing Masters and such - which you want to immediately use while you are already editing in Preferences.
6.  In Sonar, what is the Record Bit-Depth set to?  This is found in Edit>Preferences>File>Audio Data.

Sorry for all the typing - it's just so hard to know how to help when we have no idea what answers all of the above questions I am asking you to detail in response.

Anyways, beyond all of the above - the goal is to find out what your system will support, in terms of audio processing, and then seek out a balance between performance and stability.

In my opinion, approaching configuration for audio processing from a starting point of hopefully safe/viable settings - in order to expand on success, makes sense.  To that end, I suggest using some starting settings of a Sample Rate of 44.1, an ASIO Buffer Size of 128, and a Recording Bit-Depth of 16.

If things sound OK at those settings, try changing the ASIO Buffer Size to 64 (if that size is an option for your interface), and retest after that one change.

If that is successful, then try changing the Record Bit-Depth in Sonar to 24, up from 16-bit.  Then retest after this change.  

If that works, you could try adjusting the Sample Rate for both the audio interface and in Sonar up to 48, and so on.

Give the above a shot - ask as many questions as you want - we will collectively try to assist.

Welcome to the family, we are an eclectic gathering of life, us forum folk.

Bob Bone

Hey Robert, I can post that stuff, but I should have made one thing clear. My issue with my m-audio fast track ultra has NOTHING to do with Sonar.  It did this with Reaper as well.  Heck, I don't even need to have a DAW open... Just have the unit turned on and it WILL eventually crash my computer.