I believe it's called an express card.  I have one on my laptop which is about 6 years old.  Not sure if they are available on newer laptops. 

Beagle


jimmy - i'm not sure what you mean by "a separate USB card may help"

are you talking about a Cardbus to USB card?

Phish record live @ 48kHz and they get pretty good results

Umphreys Magee do theirs @ 44.1kHz I believe.

16 tracks @ 96k is the same as 32 tracks at 48k ... I don't see that happening on an AMD 2.2 dual core.

I'm not making this up - I record multitrack all the time - up to 32 tracks @ 48/24 - without issue ever - right onto the built-in 500GB 7200 rpm drive on my MacBookPro (boot camped to XP).

One thing you should do is set Sonar to allocate disk space in chunks when recording. This will prevent file-resize thrashing as the system constantly recalculates remaining disk space. I have mine set for 300 secs - I've used as high as 600 secs. This means the system will allocate 5 or 10 minutes chunks per recorded wave file. This alone may solve your issue

Another thing is turn off waveform generation while recording .... it eats RAM - yes RAM - not a lot - but the waveform calculation also steals CPU. Turn it off. (you will need to wait for the waveforms to generate after recording. If you don't want this to happen immediately after recording - minimize the waveform view window. 

Of course - no plugins - routing - anything that "works" sonar is bad. Close all other programs. disable wireless, defraggers, everything.

and definitely check your machine's DPC latency as suggested by others

Oh - here is my live setup ...

Focusrite Octopre Platinum v 1.0 (four units)
Presonus Firestudio Lightpipe interface
ADS Pyro 1394a ExpressCard (genuine TI firewire chipset)
15" Macbook Pro @ 2.66GHz 8GB DDr3 OSX 10.6.7 / XP 32
Internal Seagate 7200rpm 500GB hybrid Sata drive

The OctoPres connect via ADAT to the Firestudio, which goes into the ExpressCard via firewire. I run the Presonus in Safe Mode 2 (higher latency) - though I'm not sure this matters - since the deciding factor in this case is hard disk speed.

I also record using ProTools 9 on the same machine - same track counts - without issue.

wintaper


Phish record live @ 48kHz and they get pretty good results

Umphreys Magee do theirs @ 44.1kHz I believe.

16 tracks @ 96k is the same as 32 tracks at 48k ... I don't see that happening on an AMD 2.2 dual core.

I'm not making this up - I record multitrack all the time - up to 32 tracks @ 48/24 - without issue ever - right onto the built-in 500GB 7200 rpm drive on my MacBookPro (boot camped to XP).

One thing you should do is set Sonar to allocate disk space in chunks when recording. This will prevent file-resize thrashing as the system constantly recalculates remaining disk space. I have mine set for 300 secs - I've used as high as 600 secs. This means the system will allocate 5 or 10 minutes chunks per recorded wave file. This alone may solve your issue

Another thing is turn off waveform generation while recording .... it eats RAM - yes RAM - not a lot - but the waveform calculation also steals CPU. Turn it off. (you will need to wait for the waveforms to generate after recording. If you don't want this to happen immediately after recording - minimize the waveform view window. 

Of course - no plugins - routing - anything that "works" sonar is bad. Close all other programs. disable wireless, defraggers, everything.

and definitely check your machine's DPC latency as suggested by others

 
I've already done 16 @96, without issue and without having to disable a ton of other processes, ports etc etc and whilst running off the battery at one point having forgotten the power strip. So you can imagine my frustration at supposedly having a better system now, with [far] worst results.
 
I've done a lot of tweeking at home, but until the new RAM arrives, I won't know how much effect it will have made. The allocation thing I've yet to do though.
 
I've been multi-track recording live bands for years, but had always used dedicated hardware like the HD24 at venues, whilst having the usual kind of PC rig at home. This is the first real venture into using laptops/software for that situation and I did initially go down the Presonus Lightpipe route, but with no working express card slot, that had to go.
 
When I started checking what other people were offering, I decided that to be able to make use of the 96 angle if need be would be good and, having already had that working successfully, why not. That may well change, it may well get limited to 48 for the sake of an easy life, but not until I've fully investigated why the 96 isn't working.

The file-allocation setting will make a big difference - unfortunately the RAM won't.

More to the point...

A fair number of people have chimed in with solutions. Near as I can tell, you haven't tried any of them. At least you haven't posted about it. Instead, you're waiting to try the solution you had already arrived at before posting this thread. So I'm wondering what you expected. It seems like you have an answer for every proposed solution. If you already know the answer - why ask the question.

I'm glad you think your system should be able to handle what you're trying to do ... good luck with that ... let us know how it turns out...

wintaper


The file-allocation setting will make a big difference - unfortunately the RAM won't.

More to the point...

A fair number of people have chimed in with solutions. Near as I can tell, you haven't tried any of them. At least you haven't posted about it. Instead, you're waiting to try the solution you had already arrived at before posting this thread. So I'm wondering what you expected. It seems like you have an answer for every proposed solution. If you already know the answer - why ask the question.

I'm glad you think your system should be able to handle what you're trying to do ... good luck with that ... let us know how it turns out...

I'm sorry if I've come across that way, my replies were not intended to give that impression. I thought I had discussed using things like the latency checker, external drives etc.
 
I'm pretty poor at the moment - I have to wait for the RAM to arrive before I can report back on how much of a change any suggestions have made, simply because I cannot afford to go backwards and forwards from the studio in the meantime. I'd expected it to have arrived already, but it has yet to be seen.
 
If I'm still having issues when I do go, then my intention is to bring the interface back with me.

Just to cheer you up, I think your doing the best you can and seems your biggest frustration is you can't even get at the computer  to mess around with suggestions.
The RAM, while always a good upgrade is not the big issue. Things are pointing at your hard drive configuration and possibly the drivers and the OS. If it was my rig I would install Windows 7. Read a lot of poeple recomending that. I'm still on XP so cannot verify but my couple of run ins with Vista kept me from changing. Thank goodness I missed the whole version and can move on to W7 with next computer.
Your older computer you say ran fine was I bet XP.

Sorry if my last post was a bit edgy. Let us know how you make out with the RAM when it comes.
-Dan

Don't let the anti-96k crowd get to you.  Some on here love to present their opinions as facts, and try to bash those who disagree.  Most professoinal studios I've been to record of at least 96k.  Some, especially those in LA who do classical recordings, use 192k. 

I was able to track 16 tracks of 96k audio on my now retired live computer with 3GB of ram.  It was a old Desktop system with EIDE hard drives.  However, the hard-drives have to be very fast.  Hard drives are usually the cause for many problems in doing digital audio production.  They have been the bottleneck for years in computers.  One day, we'll have SSD that are fast as RAM.  Then, life will be good! :)  I've seen users on this board replace nearly everything in their computer when, in the end, it was a slow HD which caused dropouts, unstable performance, and freeze ups. 

I will say that I couldn't get it to work right when my firewire bus (card) had more than the interface plugged in even if the other things were not being used.  It's odd how some things can conflict that dont seemingly be the problem.

Tascam interfaces have excellent sound quality. However, their drivers usually stink.

Most professoinal studios I've been to record of at least 96k

true, but live recording is very different - especially with a laptop.


For starters, the acoustics won't be as good as in the studio. And you'll get much more bleed across channels. And then there's the microphones. In the studio you can use very sensitive condensers - but live you're probably looking at dynamic mics for the most part. I can guarantee you an SM58 sounds the same at 48k or 96k.


Then there's disk space. 96k/24bit burns over 1GB per (mono) track per hour (2GB/hr stereo interleaved). So a 2 hour performance at 32 tracks would eat over 60GB of disk space.


... and ... hopefully its not a continuous 2 hour set - because the resulting wav file will be larger than 2GB and that can cause problems of it own.


Finally, at 96k you can run about half the plugins you can at 48k before exhausting your CPU. I find I run a lot more plugins on live recordings and that ceiling isn't high as you think.


-Dan