I'm have Win7 Ultimate on a new ( less than 6 mos old) Dell XPS laptop, trying to run Sonar 8.5 Studio. I've installed both 32 & 64 bit versions, but have been mostly running the 64 bit. 

My sound interface is a Focusrite Scarlett 8i6, which seems to be working fine. I don't think it's the culprit in this. 
I'm using the ASIO interface (Focusrite drivers). Setting the latency up or down (from zero all the way up to 20ms) makes no difference at all). 
Dropout happens when recording, or when just playing back. 
Almost no CPU usage in the meters. I've got 8 gig of ram, an internal 640 gig HD, and running the i7 chipset, quad core. 

In a nutshell: lots and lots of dropouts in Sonar, though they're not predictable. I've run through the normal list of usual suspects. I can run normal audio in other apps, and stream live HD video and stereo without problems. It's just Sonar that's giving me fits now. 

I'm pretty sure I've narrowed the problem down to bridging the 32 plugins (Bitbridge), but am still not sure. Also, in running the DPC latency monitor, it shows the NVIDIA drivers to be causing problems. I can't disable them, because the video card is hardwired into the laptop. 

I've shut off just about every service I can, but that seems to make no difference. This includes shutting off wireless, bluetooth, even my ethernet connection to the internet. Sometimes it will simply play and record without problems. Other times it won't run for even a second without a dropout. 

Here are some screenshots. One is my Windows Task Manager, showing the running processes. Another is my system specs. The others are shots of the Latency Monitor, which show various Page Faults and DPC execution times, etc. 

I'm just hoping maybe someone has a similar Dell laptop and has experienced (and maybe solved) this problem. 

One more thing: I've been trying to reproduce the dropout problem in Reaper 64 bit, using the same audio files and plugins, but it hasn't dropped out yet. I'm beginning to think it's a problem with Bitbridge clashing with system resources somewhere (Nvidia drivers?) . Oh, and I've purchased JBridge, as well. Doesn't help any, unfortunately.  

I've been with Cakewalk since Ver 1.0, on floppy disk. I plan to upgrade to X1 Producer, but am waiting until I can solve this issue. Thanks a lot. 

--john 


System information: 

What do you have the buffer size # of samples set to on your ASIO driver? Should be 256 or 128. Also, what bit depth and sample rate are you using? Is your disk drive 7200 or 5400 rpms? 

EDIT: Corrected the RPMs.... Oops. 

Try killing the Windows Search service, which will stop a major CPU muncher, searchindex.exe.

Thanks for the replies. 

Dave: I usually run at 44.1kHz and 24 bit. My HD is 720 rpm. Again, no problems with lots of tracks in Reaper, at the same settings. 

bitflipper: I did that. I seemed to help a bit, but still dropping out. I should say that I'm running a session with only 6 active mono audio tracks. No synths or midi tracks. There are several (about 20 more) tracks that are archived. As soon as I make around 10 of them active, the dropouts start. So, it's sensitive to how many tracks are running at a time. 

Right now, the only plugins I'm using are: 

Timeworks EQ (3 instances)
Sonitus compressor (3 instances)
Lexicon Pantheon Reverb (2 instances)
Vintage Channel VC-64 Compressor

I have tried deleting all instances of every plugin, but that makes no difference. Not sure if Bitbridge continues to run if there are no plugins, but I think it does. 

Here's a look at my audio settings. I've purposely set the latency and buffer high, but setting it to zero really makes no difference, either. It doesn't act like it's running out of memory... more like a driver clash of some sort. My CPU meter usually stays around 03-04%, and the disk is slightly higher, at 05-07%, with jumps up to 35% or so sometimes. These spikes aren't associated with the dropouts. The dropouts occur when there's no load on the disk.

Oh, and I should mention that I've even shut off all unnecessary Focusrite drivers, just to make sure. That makes no difference, either: 

Had dropout problems with my desktop 64 bit, Focusrite Saffire and so on. Only thing that fixed it was clean install of windows. Starting over. Bummer. Did your laptop come with windows installed? Have you deleted all the bloatware?
John

John:  ah.... just what I wanted to hear [grin]. Yep, it's a Dell laptop, so came with Win 7 Ultimate installed. However, I do have install disks so can do a clean install. What bloatware, specifically? I've disabled some of Dell's stuff, have shut off a lot of automatic services like wireless, bluetooth, NVIDIA's programme, and some other stuff, but I'm guessing there's still more bloatware to be found. 

But in normal operation, there really aren't very many processes running when I'm in Sonar. I'm still thinking it's a driver clash somewhere. On another note, I did turn off the "Desktop Composition" in the "Performance Options" in Win 7. It has to do with the Aero Transparency, and I found some similar problems to mine on this page (toward the bottom of the thread): 

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=861291&page=4&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Didn't really seem to make any difference, though. I wish there were a way to replace the NVIDIA graphics card, just to see if it's the culprit. I hate to dial back to 32 bit version (since I have so many 64 bit sessions already), but might have to...

One more thing I will try (tomorrow), is to plug a 7200 rpm external drive into my USB 3.0 port and see if it'll run it. If so, maybe it's an access thing with my internal HD. 

thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to think on it awhile before taking a leap into a clean Win install. 

--je

Hi,
one reason could be the hd runtime, for recording it is far better to have  
a 7200 rpm hd, often in lap - tops 5400 rpm hd`s were integrated . 
Also if the laptop is running in the energy saving mode could be a matter.
good luck

How many total processes are running? Your screenshot only shows the ones that you started. Check the box at the bottom of that screen to show all processes running. 

IMHO, reinstalling Windows should be your last resort. 

Well, I seemed to have solved it for the most part. Still not sure which things were the culprits, but I did various changes: 

1)Found an update for my NVIDIA Audio Manager (even though I had it turned off altogether) and installed it for running the computer's own speakers. I use the Focusrite to run the regular speakers and headphones. 

2) Cleaned out some misc. registry settings, and went through my entire plugin list. Some were doubled up after installing JBridge. Others were doubled for no apparent reason, but I cleaned them off the hard drive and only left one instance of each. 

3) Ran another ScanDisk/ChkDisk type app to make sure the HD was okay. Some small errors, but nothing that seemed to make a difference. I degrag quite often. 

4) Changed audio settings in Sonar to: Playback I/O = 64K, Record I/O = 512K; Latency = 5.0ms (221 samples) 

@Pragi: the HD is 7200. I don't think it's the cause, as I'm able to record/playback many tracks in Reaper. 
@daveny: ah... you're right. I missed that checkbox. turned it on and there are quite a few, though most are probably small Windows services. There is another variation of the wireless network adapter running, though I don't think my wireless is actually "on". I turned it off, in any event. Not sure if I need it, except for wireless and bluetooth, etc. Thanks for pointing that out. 

Thanks for the tips. I didn't go so far as a Windows reinstall, but it seems a lot more robust now. My gut feeling is that my plugins were causing problems, more than anything. But it is probably a combination of things. Thanks again. 

--je