VariousArtist


Suggested reading:

"Why is a dedicated FireWire card with a Texas Instruments (TI) chipset important on a PC"
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/FAQ/en404647


Important quotes from the article above:
"There are several FireWire chipset developers that build chips that are significantly cheaper than Texas Instruments, and for this reason, PC manufacturers are starting to use these less expensive chipsets. Unfortunately, many of these other chipsets are not as reliable as those manufactured by Texas Instruments. M-Audio cannot simply say only use Texas Instruments chipsets, because some of these other controllers actually work very well, and M-Audio does not want to endorse any particular manufacturer. "

"Even if your motherboard has an on-board FireWire controller with a Texas Instruments chipset, you may encounter problems because all onboard devices, including the FireWire controller, are run through the Southbridge of the processor. This means that there is a lot of traffic that the FireWire signal must compete with for access to the processor (all USB, onboard audio, onboard video, serial ports, network controllers, etc...). Data coming from all of these devices creates a bottleneck and greatly increases the chance of the FireWire signal being interrupted. The interrupted data is dropped to maintain the delivery time of the rest of the data. When too much data is dropped, the audio signal may be appear as distorted, completely dropped, or the computer may even drop the connection with the FireWire audio device. To avoid this on a PC, we always advise installing a dedicated FireWire card. This is because the PCI bus runs to the Northbridge of the processor. The Northbridge provides more reliable access to the processor because it only manages the data from the PCI, AGP, and memory."

NICELY added, 


Bob Bone

Wow......

I'm truely greatfull of all the time and effort you guys put in to help me out.
That alone make me regret my initial frustration....
And John - I understand your points of view in your latest post....

I have dedicated the coming weekend to systematically filter out all suggestions from the posts and start with the most obvious things to do ( Yeeees - I have ordered a TI chipset FW interface ) The other two computers are equipped with TI interfaces.... who knew...

I will reinstall Win 7 x64 with the updates and service packs and then remove the network again and do (yet another) installation of X2.

By the way: Anyone with experience on installing Sonar on a Solid State Drive ?

Again - thanks a lot for your time and knowledge. I'll drop a line when it works....

Rgds
Bruno

Are you installing Windows & Sonar on a freshly formatted blank hard drive?

Bristol_Jonesey


Are you installing Windows & Sonar on a freshly formatted blank hard drive?

Yes - I have done that every time with the major updates... 8.xx -> X1 -> X2

Sorry for some reason I can't input text via speech with mobile devices.
Anyway any experience I've ever had with tech support has been excellent.
 
They've walked me through a few problems with success and never make me feel like an idiot.
Even if I am......
 
WSS

Sitemester

Bristol_Jonesey


Are you installing Windows & Sonar on a freshly formatted blank hard drive?

Yes - I have done that every time with the major updates... 8.xx -> X1 -> X2

Ah, good.

I was going to talk about Registry edits, but it's not necessary in this case.

Sitemester

Bristol_Jonesey


Are you installing Windows & Sonar on a freshly formatted blank hard drive?

Yes - I have done that every time with the major updates... 8.xx -> X1 -> X2

Sitemaster - I am SOOOO happy you stuck with this long enough to realize that once you actually posted some detail on your issues that a BUNCH of folks here in the forum rallied on your behalf to resolve the issues that caused that initial declaration of leaving.

SOOO many times, people have silently struggled with one or more problems, never posting that things were broken, until one day they just sort of snapped and posted a giant "I'm OUTTA HERE" rant and poof they were gone.  

When people do that, it is very frustrating, because in just about ALL of those cases, were we in the forum given an opportunity to help, those users would have been able to get past those problems, either through some education, or by a collective application of assistance in debugging settings and hardware until the problems were resolved.

You coming back to this, and HOPEFULLY regaining your sanity by ending up with a stable system, is a wonderful thing - I hope that moving forward, when you encounter any additional problems, or just have questions, that you now know that there are quite a few folks willing to go to great lengths to help.

To the forum folks who continued to try to work these issues - you are a blessing to all of us.  You have been there many times for me, and it is a principal motivating factor in my trying to make sure I am there for the next guy.  Thank you.

Bob Bone

And the forum (for all its faults :-)) is one of the very good points about SONAR - you almost certainly will get help here if you come to it with the right attitude.

Sitemester


Wow......


By the way: Anyone with experience on installing Sonar on a Solid State Drive ? 

Again - thanks a lot for your time and knowledge. I'll drop a line when it works....

Rgds
Bruno

I have X2a installed on a SSD...it works fine....my Win 8 and Sonar drive is a 128 gb SSD and my 
instruments and libraries are on a 128 gb SSD.

No problems...

I started off by doing a fresh Win 7 install on my original HDD (system restore) and then cloned the drive to my
SSD with Acronis True Image...all went without a hitch...afterwards, with SSD installed, I installed Sonar...


When I upgraded to Win 8 I had to re-install everything, as it wouldn't let me do a
"save programs" install.

One thing to be aware of when installing non Win 8 programs is that when
it tells you the program is not compatible there is a "More Info" button...if you press
that a button appears that says "Install Anyways" Hit the button and everything installs and works fine...

The only programs I have REAL issues with are IK Multimedia...the standalone applications
don't recognize the Win 8 Quad Capture driver....so they won't work with it, but in Sonar
they work just fine...all my other Win 7 programs work fine too...

If you're staying with Win 7 then no worries...other then the typical ones...LOL

Cheers!

Hi

Just a short feedback on all the suggestions and efforts.

I got another firewire Card with TI chipset.
I used most of the suggestion in order to get rid of dropout and crashes
And it actually Works..... but...

Now I get an insane distortion on both playback and recording.
It Works fine from 5 - 60 minuttes and then without warning or even touching anything a massive digital-like distortion takes over. One click on MIDI AUDIO RESET cures it for the Next 5-60 minuttes and then it goes again.
At first I thought it must be the audio engine in Sonar since clicking on reset helped - for a while - but by switching to the computers internal soundcard I can not recreate the distortion in playback mode. (And I havent recorded from the internal soundcard )

So - it could be audio engine, it could be the ZED R16 driver ( I have tried different version but it's the same. ) or even it's built in firewire Card.... - or maybe even an issue with the computers video Card as described somewhere in Cakewalks recommandations... 

Do you have any experiences with this sort of problem ? Or even better: Any solutions ?

Thanks
Bruno