Hey people who read this :P

I'm brand new to Cakewalk Sonar 7, after switching from the free (and ultimately terrible) Audacity. I'm still getting used to all the controls and such, and have experienced a plethora of problems, many of which I have been unable to fix with other online help. My computer runs Windows 7, with a Realtek High Definition Audio thingy....if you want more information on that....you'll have to tell me where to look. I'm really brand new to this...my first problem is this. Because I made my instrumentals live I had to mix them down into a Wav file, as Cakewalk doesn't recognize nor read Audacity Project files. Thus I've had to import these wav files in order to record vocals over.  When I first set up Producer (with the instructions on the website for Realtek Audio) to my hardware, I was forced to use MME-32 bit as my driver mode, as the Asio selection just ended up telling me that my devices don't support the audio format or something like that and WDM simply doesn't work. I understand that MME-32 must be the absolute worst driver mode to be in with this professional software, but my computer wasn't exactly built for this, and I'm flat out broke which means I can't really buy any new drivers x(. My Audio Driver Bit Depth and my Samply rate match my audio card in the computer (16 drive bit depth and  44100 Hz) but sometimes, when I try and clone a track or add an effect like a compressor to my vocals (or sometimes when I'm trying to record) on playback Cakewalk just refuses to play. It's not an issue of the program somehow muting and me not hearing anything. It's like when I click play or hit spacebar, it'll play for maybe a quarter of a second or less, then stop. No movement nothing. It just wont play. Audio stops on its own, and no matter how many times I hit play or fiddle with my audio options, it just won't happen and I'm forced to start over. Also right now, the problem I have is a dropout message at the bottom of the window. Similar to my previous problem but instead of simply showing the message Audio Stopped, it says Dropout. What does this mean? And how do I fix it? Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you all so much!

You have to use a proper audio interface with Sonar. You cannot expect $400 software to work with a $2 sound card. And where the heck did you buy Sonar 7? Hmm. Anyhow a interface with good ASIO drivers is the heart of any DAW recording system.

My uncle :P I hope that's not illegal...but I got a new key and everything so...hopefully not. Its more like 199 here? 400?? Wow...So I should get Asio drivers? How do I go about doing that/installing that?

Welcome to the forum.

What are your PC specs - processor & memory & hard drives (size and rpm)?
Too little memory and/or slow hard drives may add to the suffering caused by the onboard soundchip.

Integrated soundchips usually don't understand ASIO drivers. You could try ASIO4ALL (download). It's a band aid for cards which don't use ASIO.

The drivers come free with the soundcards, you can't buy drivers, and if you could, they're no good without the soundcard they're made for..
A dropout simply means your soundcard/PC are not fast enough to do the job.
You could try increasing the buffers sizes in the Options-dialogue, but I doubt it helps much.

You'll not be able to do fluent DAW work using the onboard soundchip, unfortunately. You can manage, possibly,  with more or less glitches, depending on you PC specs, but it won't be easy.

As KAlle say's - ASIO drivers are what come with a proper audio interface. Interfaces can be USB, Firewire or PCI sound cards. They start at under $100. It is the most important part of a PC recording system.There are thousands of threads here about Audio interfaces. You are probably the 12,000 person who came here looking for help for this reason.

Sorry Cactus for aggravating you, I've searched other forums but none have offered any specific help. Especially with my computer's hardware setup. According to the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, it says that...hm ill just copy and paste:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q8400 @ 2.66GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7GHz

Memory: 6144MB RAM

Hardrive: WDC WD5000AAKS-55V0A0 ATA Device with 465.8 GB capacity. The closest thing to an RPM spec I could find was here: http://www.newegg.com/Pro...x?Item=N82E16822136073

which states it at 7200 RPM...thought I don't think it's the exact same as mine. I understand the fact that I can only minimize glitches at this point, but I will do anything to at least be able to do basic tasks on this computer without having to wish I could throw my fist through it. So is the only way I can avoid these problems once and for all is to buy a brand new PC with powerful sound hardware?

Edit:
I got the Asio4all software thingy, version 2.10. Sonar now recognizes my sound hardware and I can now playback. For some reason though, Sonar will not connect to my Realtek Speakers. As in I can play stuff, but I just can't hear them. 

mcnoyse

Edit:
I got the Asio4all software thingy, version 2.10. Sonar now recognizes my sound hardware and I can now playback. For some reason though, Sonar will not connect to my Realtek Speakers. As in I can play stuff, but I just can't hear them. 

Check your Windows mixer and audio settings. IIRC, there is dropdown in which you can choose outputs.

windows mixer? Where do I find that? What am I looking for specifically? What is an IIRC? Sorry for all the questions I really am very amateur haha but you gotta start somewhere right?

IIRC = If I Remember Correctly

Oh haha that is helpful. So where do I find this windows mixer?