Hello, Ive been a sonar user for YEARS and this is a first for me. So I just recently purchased essential X2 and downloaded the new update 2 days ago (installed it as 32 bit). I am using a 1 month old Lenovo quad core laptop with Windows 8, 8 gigs of ram and an SSD, and a presonus audiobox 1818vsl. Up until this point was using an hp dv7 quad core with Sonar X1 with the presonus and everything worked great! On the new lenovo with X2a, every time I play a session I get horrible clicks/pops and repeated "engine stopped unexpectedly" errors. I upped the latency to 2048 which seems to help out the problems a little bit, but not all the way. I did notice that under the CPU usage of the monitor, that processor 1 was pretty much pegged out while the others were barely being used. In task manager there is hardly anything running and I have already optimized to best performance. The only plugins I am using are Sontinus delay and superior Drummer.

Please check the audio driver mode, under preferences.  It may well have the WDM drivers specified due to your new install of X2.

I also have the Presonus Audiobox 1818 VSL interface, and am running Windows 8, and I had to download and use their BETA drivers to get proper Windows 8 support.

Also, make sure you have your sample rates matching between the audio interface and within Sonar.

Also, please note at at the time of my last checking (3-4 weeks ago), DPC Latency Checker reports incorrect latency when running Windows 8, due to some timer changes within Windows 8.

If you use Latency Mon, you can get a better sense of your latency, and it gives you way more detailed information, as well.

But start with checking the audio driver mode in Preferences, in the Audio section.

Bob Bone

thanks for the quick reply! I actually did check everything through both preferences and also the audiobox interface. I have both set up to 96000 sampling rate, and 2048 latency. I just got the latest drivers from presonus which had support for win8. Also have it plugged into USB 2.0 not 3.0 port.

I run my Audiobox 1818VSL at 44.1 and a sample size of 64, and have zero problems.

Bob Bone

Why are you running this machine with an update on 32bit...?
By the way "robert" is also right. You can run X2 with pretty much lower latencies than yours.
  There is an tool called "LatencyMon" for free on web...check it out and run it...this should give you a glimpse on the problem abd where it´s coming from. 

...if this does´nt work...give us a deeper look to your system configuration and specs.

thearclight


Why are you running this machine with an update on 32bit...?
By the way "robert" is also right. You can run X2 with pretty much lower latencies than yours.
There is an tool called "LatencyMon" for free on web...check it out and run it...this should give you a glimpse on the problem and where it´s coming from. 

+1 on the question of WHY are you running this as a 32-bit install?  Your computer has 8 GB memory, but your 32-bit install will see less than HALF of the available memory.  Go back and do a 64-bit install of Sonar X2, then apply the patch.  

Bob Bone

Also, what bit-depth are you recording at in Sonar?

My general advice for setting up computers for DAW processing is to start with some reasonable settings for the ASIO setup, make sure it all sounds OK, and THEN start upping the sample rates and/or dropping the sample buffer size, so that you are always sure you have one set of settings that works.

Bob Bone

thank you guys for getting a response! Ive been hesitant to install 64 bit since ive heard of glitches, but ill uninstall it tonight and reinstall it to 64 bit. Also do you guys know of any software to monitor the cpu usage and designate it across all 4 processors? thanks again

  In Sonar x2 is an monitor which one show you CPU usage, HDD and RAM usage...outside have a look on "CoreTemp" this will show you CPU load/usage and temperatures...and is btw very "trusty" beside some other tools.