synkrotron


I wish I could help. I, too, am having issues (not dropouts as such, just a complete freeze that requires a reboot in some cases) with my laptop set-up. At first it was just with Rapture. At the weekend, I spent a considerable sum on some Applied Acoustic Solutions instruments. They work fine stand alone, but as VSTs they keep crashing X1.

Good luck with this.

cheers

andy
 
 
I think the problem is that the windows 7 64 bit drivers for the Edirol FA-101 and the chipset on my laptops firewire card don't "get along with each other".  I have a Mackie Onyx 1604 Firewire mixer and that seems to be working fine with my laptops firewire port (so far).  I just order a Rain Computers Inc.  FireWire ExpressCard with TI (Texas Instruments) Chipset which sould work with my Edirol FA-101.  You can find it here www.raincomputers.com

If you are still having problems with dropouts:

1.  There is a TON of info out there on the web for these kinds of problems for XP and Windows 7.

2.  DO adjust your buffers up AND REPORT BACK ON THIS POST with the results - whether it worked or not.

3.  Download a small program called DPC Latency Checker.  This is a free utility that will tell you what your current latency is, as well as your maximum latency during that session of running DPC Latency Checker.  If you are getting latency 'spikes' above 1000us, you will most definitely get audio pops, crackles, or dropouts.  If you are seeing these spikes in latency, you will need to go through identifying and mitigating causes of the spikes.  Things like anti-virus software running, a bunch of other services running that are not needed for recording sessions, and that sort of thing can be causing you trouble with dropouts.  If ANY of these kinds of things are in fact causing your dropout headaches, then switching to another DAW suite will do NOTHING to get you past dropouts, as the dropouts are not caused by the DAW, they are caused by other factors present in your hardware/software environment.

4.  Now the good news - even though identifying the fundamental underlying causes for dropouts is one giant pain in the rear, it is something you will only have to do once for your machine.

PLEASE PLEASE report back on what you find when you run DPC Latency Checker.  There a folks here who will invest time in trying to help you, but only if you show a combination of thoroughness in describing your EXACT software/hardware environment and that you also show a willingness to try incorporating the help that IS offered to you.  This is a problem that MANY MANY people have faced, with Sonar as well as with virtually every other DAW out there.  Many of us here will work with you to get past this.

Here is a link to download DPC Latency Checker: http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe

Bob Bone

I'm running Sonar 8.53PE on a recently setup Dell Precision M4600 with fair performance. I haven't had any time to get an external soundcard yet so I'm running ASIO4ALL which works quite OK. According to the CPU meter, this machine has almost twice the power compared to my desktop (AMD x4 965 BE , OC'd to 4.1 GHz) but in reality, the laptop starts missing notes (!) when I'm getting close to the point of were my desktop would struggle but still manage. However, I believe this has something to do with ASIO4ALL and the internal soundcard. Doing Audio exports takes about 30-40% less time than compared to my desktop so the M4600 is definitely a powerful machine. I'll have a look at DPC as well.