What's the deal here!  Bought a new Presonus 1818VSL unit. Installed the proper ASIO drivers and everything is set in X2 preferences. Now I get "The audio engine has stopped unexpectedly". ASIO buffers match ASIO control panel, etc.  All setup is proper. Why is X2 so finicky?  I'm so fed up with X2 and the way it interfaces with ANY products out there!!  Seriously considering going with StudioOne and giving up on X2 all together.  Very frustrated!!! 

Let me add something else to this.  I've tried a new project with "Normal Template" and same issue. I'm so tired of returning hardware devices because one single piece of software can't work with all the hardware out there. 

Hold on - I thought you were going to call me when your unit came in, and that I was going to walk you through getting it set up in X2?  I was going to also guide you through getting the headphone mix set up.

The issue here, by the way, is with the Presonus device setup, and not with Sonar X2.  

My number should be in that private message.  I HAVE the same unit, and am awaiting hearing from you via phone.

Bob Bone 

It's OK to rant when you're frustrated, but you haven't even told us your ASIO buffer size.  Obviously, the smaller the buffer, the less robust the AE.

Also, have you set Windows 7's power scheme to performance, rather than the default "balanced" scheme?  That is a cause of drop-outs and engine stops, as the OS will drop the CPU speed whenever it can and during mid-stream playback can cause a drop-out, etc.

One of the first things you should do is check for deferred procedure calls.  If you have a WiFi interface or a utility like Asus AI Suite, you will have DPCs that will cause dropouts which are neither Sonar's or Presonus' fault.

I have been working with him over the phone - am waiting for him to call me.  So far, his interface and Sonar settings exactly match mine, but he is still having issues with the engine stopping, and I have no such issues.  Drivers, buffers, etc, all same.

I hope to speak to him tonight, hint hint hint, 

Bob Bone

It's set at the default of 256, Windows 7 is set to performance, CPU parking is disabled.  This runs okay on my laptop with a clean installation of X2.  On my DAW desktop, I have X1 installed along with X2.  Looks like I might have to completely uninstall both and re-install just X2.  See Bob's post.  He's been very helpful working with me on this. What Bob and I left off is that I was going to install the 1.47 AudioBox drivers (So called 1.1 drivers) on my laptop with a clean installation of X2 and see of X2 crashed. It didn't.  I then proceeded to upgrade to 1.57 AudioBox drivers (so called 1.2 drivers) and it didn't crash as well.  So that is where I'm at at this point. I'm also looking at a product Bob recommended called Forte by Brainspawn as well as Presonus Studio One Professional. My intrigue on the latter is the ability to control FOH and Stage levels from my iPad.  Also, the ability to add compression, gating and EQ with little or no latency.  Presonus drivers work seamless with their product and their drivers are DAW independent which means I don't have to rely on the RT (Round Trip) latency.  The bottom line is that I will use whatever gives me the most performance and stability in a live gig situation.  Mixing in the studio is a lot more forgiving to deal with issues.    

Bob, Sorry I didn't get back to you.  Had to get some other IT related projects out of the way for tomorrow.  I know it's midnight in DC.  Call me if your up.  I have a little break in the action.

One other thing I wanted to mention is that I've been running the DPC latency checker as well as monitoring CPU utilization and it's all well below minimums.  I can be very confident that the OS and other components are not the issue.  In regards to the buffer size, I've tried default 256 through 2048 and nothing makes a difference. 

Silicon Audio


It's OK to rant when you're frustrated, but you haven't even told us your ASIO buffer size.  Obviously, the smaller the buffer, the less robust the AE.

Also, have you set Windows 7's power scheme to performance, rather than the default "balanced" scheme?  That is a cause of drop-outs and engine stops, as the OS will drop the CPU speed whenever it can and during mid-stream playback can cause a drop-out, etc.

One of the first things you should do is check for deferred procedure calls.  If you have a WiFi interface or a utility like Asus AI Suite, you will have DPCs that will cause dropouts which are neither Sonar's or Presonus' fault.

Thanks for the update harpman.  That gives us a lot more to go on.  Just for the sake of seeing if there is a difference, have you tried using WDM/KS instead of ASIO to see if it improves things?  It might be useful to know, just from a fault-finding point of view.

Also disable Speedstep, C1E in the BIOS.  In fact, disable everything in your BIOS or Windows that you don't need!
 
Presonus has a nice, thorough guide for optimizing your DAW.  Seems appropriate to follow it since you have a Presonus interface:
 
http://support.presonus.com/entries/119099-optimizing-your-computer-for-audio-windows-vista-windows-7
 
Take the time to read over everything.  You may not need to tweak every area, but try not to miss something that might be important.  If you're not sure about anything, post back and ask here.
 
If you bought a brand-name PC, likely it has a bunch of junk software pre-installed.  Remove everything in registry startup that is not critical (Use regedit or a startup utility for this).  **This, more than any other step, goes overlooked by many users, yet is the most likely reason they have problems  (IOW, don't assume that, for example, your motherboard software installed a monitoring utility, so it must be okay.  For audio purposes, it is not --so get rid of it!).
 
Good luck!