So much for Technical support... After typing in my problem (after going through all the give us your tech specs info, etc) I get... "The Internet is broken... We're sorry but our servers can't find the page you're looking for"... I was better off before I upgraded to X1... Music Creator 6 was working well enough, and none of these outrageous bugs I've been experiencing.

Sorry, Tkrain, to be flip in my last post, I really figured somebody had helped you peg this.  I'd agree that it's something on your end, but it could also involve something in Sonar that only shows under certain conditions.  The plugin theory makes the most sense, but if you're sure it's not that, I have two suggestions - first download a program called DPCLAT and measure the latency on your system. Keep it running in a window when you are working sonar, and see if there are latency spikes when the problem occurs. Systems act weird when they can't get real-time resources they need, and it wouldn't surprise me if that is what you're running into. Good thing is its easy to test, the program is pretty striaghtforward - run it and watch the graph.   The other thing you can do is download the trial version of some other DAW, or Reaper which costs maybe $50 US for the full version, and see if it shows when you import tracks into something other than sonar. But try the latency check first - DPLCAT.EXE.  

Also, are you running any security software  or connecting to the web on these machines?

Did you disconnect your inputs like I said to try to isolate the culprit? If you don't try the suggestions we give you and report back the findings, its hard to help you. The only way to fix a problem like this is process of elimination. Kvetching about it or threatening to use a different program won't help. 

Dave, I did try changing out the DI boxes... I use either the Toneport DI Silver or the M-Audio MobilePre. These aren't even tracks I recorded, though, these are either tracks from Indaba, or tracks that others have recorded for me to mix. When the noise "appears", yes, you do find it in the waveform of the track... but... this is after a -=playback=- not a record. If I stop right when the anomoly appears and -=don't save=-, I can go into the audio folder and play the stem in Windows Media and verify the sound is not in the original stem. If I -=save=- the project when the sound is present, it then appears in the stem in the audio directory. My new workaround is I keep the folder with the original stems I've been sent open, and if the anomaly appears in a track, I delete the audio in the track and re-import it from the original stem folder... and walla, the sound goes away. Of course... 20 minutes later, the anomaly appears in a different location in a different track. When this first started happening, it was once in a blue moon, and I really thought it was a plugin issue. Now it's happening often enough that it's really really impacting my workflow, and it's happening before I insert a single plugin, and yes, yesterday I was very frustrated and may have gotten a little vitriolic in my post. I've tried increasing buffer size, I've tried shrinking it to nothing. I've tried running in WDM/KS, WASAPI, and ASIO, I've tried with and without read/write caching. I've tested my memory and hard drives at the bios level. Today, I'm going to try completely uninstalling and reinstalling Sonar.

these are either tracks from Indaba, or tracks that others have recorded for me to mix.

I have no idea what that means, but I suspect that this is related to the problem.  

and walla

This is a pet peeve of mine. It's "voila". 


Your workflow is too complicated for me to figure out so I'm out. I do all of my own work and don't receive files from others. Good luck with that. 

daveny5

these are either tracks from Indaba, or tracks that others have recorded for me to mix.

I have no idea what that means, but I suspect that this is related to the problem.  

and walla

This is a pet peeve of mine. It's "voila". 


Your workflow is too complicated for me to figure out so I'm out. I do all of my own work and don't receive files from others. Good luck with that. 

Dave you do not mess around. I am a little afraid of you, but I gotta tellya, I spell it 'viola', myself.   It's pronounced vai-ola, after the fashion of the hillbillies.  Ham it up as hard as you can when you say it this way, and you can get a lot of mileage...

I'm just trying to educate. If people don't get corrected, they will continue to make the same mistake. Another pet peeve of mine is when people say "mute" when they mean "moot". Its not personal.

OK. So I educated myself. Indaba is apparently a site that brings musicians together to collaborate. I suppose the OP here is getting files from other musicians via this site. That introduces another level of complexity to try to figure out the problem. 

I'm stumped by this one. I don't think its a Sonar problem though. 


PS: I signed up for Indaba... seems interesting. Folks may want to check it out.  I'm not sure how the OP is getting songs from this site, but perhaps they put noise in them to protect the owner's copyright. 

This is an odd one. I wonder if the OP might have some device that is cycling in some way. A network adapter or some other time based device that is on the same IRQ. 

The notion of a plugin that is not authorized was a very good idea yet seemingly that has been ruled out. 

I can say this its not normal nor have I come across this in quite this way on this forum. 

One last thing to try is change the audio buffers either via the VST control panel or the built in slider for WDM drivers. 

Also make sure that all the files have the same sample rate. 

How about file system corruption? Chkdsk? I don't think Sonar is known to overwrite files imported into the audio folder. You could check the timestamps to see if you can see it happening (i.e.upon save). Also, how about h/w disk or ram problems?

bvideo


How about file system corruption? Chkdsk? I don't think Sonar is known to overwrite files imported into the audio folder. You could check the timestamps to see if you can see it happening (i.e.upon save). Also, how about h/w disk or ram problems?

You know I am impressed with this post. Its a very insightful one. I must say all your points are superb.


What struck me so strongly is your noting the fact that Sonar never messes with the audio files unless it is made to do so. And that is often a copy.