Sonar Home Studio 6 problems with Audio Engine shutoff and USB mic problems

fiddleplayer


I am a bit of a newbie with DAW recording as I have only owned Cakewalk for about six months now but I have done alot of reading and research prior to my first attempts at audio recording so I would have at least some idea what i was doing.I can solve my problems on my own for the most part up until now by going through the software manual and reading the Readme.rtf pages as well as the various help topic tutorials but this time I will ask the people who really have the knowledge and experience with Cakewalk-you all. Anyway,my first problem is that I just purchased a Samson C01U USB Condenser mic and am having problems with latency,audio dropout and the sound I am hearing through my headphones by input monitoring is faint,scratchy and it  echoes.I'm using Sonar 6 on a laptop with 320G 7200 rpm SATA HDD,4G DDR3 Ram,an AMD Turion x2 64 bit 2.2ghz processor and a Creative SB X-Fi soundcard,oh yeah and the oh-so-wonderful Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit OS.I have set my Audio Driver Bit Depth at 16,my buffer size is at 10 msec and I have to keep my driver mode in MME because of compatability issues with Windows Vista not allowing me to use ASIO or MME . When I do use these driver modes I get no sound-input or output.If I left any info out please let me know and thank you for any correspondence.

You should return the USB microphone. Windows treats USB microphones as if they are another soundcard and that is what limits you to MME mode. While you're at it, you should also replace that SoundBlaster card with a better audio interface.

you should have come in here and asked for help with the fast track, we might not could have gotten it to work but we would have tried.  I've found, however, that m-audio's vista drivers are still lacking and some people have problems with them for vista.

the zoom will not work as a soundcard with SHS - you can record on it then download the wave file, then use SHS to edit those wave files, but that's a very indirect route.

USB inputs are fine for recording, just not for the USB mics.  USB mics are separate soundcards from your output and that means you'll have separate clocks for input and output and that will cause sync problems even if you get them to work together.

the EMU USB series have had good success with vista as far as I know and I havne't heard many complaints about the line 6 toneport stuff.  check my website for some more recommendations - just remember that I haven't updated it to say that m-audio is probably not best with vista.

I agree with liebre EXCEPT for USB microphones.  while USB microphones CAN be used, they will inevitably cause sync problems because of the two clocks.  one of them has to be the master clock and the other will not be in sync with the one who has the master.

usb audio devices which you use as both input and output are fine, however.  but I completely disagree that a USB mic can work fine as long as you have a computer with good processing power and RAM. 

you CAN get USB mics to work in MME mode most of the time, but even when you do, you will still have sync problems because of the different clocks between the mic and the output soundcard.

If the Samson has an ASIO driver you should be able to use it unless there is a known issue with them. 

liebre - you can't use the samson USB mic in ASIO mode and hear the output at the same time you're using it because ASIO only allows 1 soundcard at a time to be used.  the USB mic is considered a soundcard, therefore you can't use it AND the onboard soundcard at the same time, so you can't hear the output while you're recording.

a good solid vista compatible "interface" will be your new "upgraded soundcard (interface = soundcard)."  USB is fine - just make sure there are good solid vista drivers for it.

yes, I am aware that sonar le comes packaged with those samson usb mics and as I said, most of the time you can get them to work in MME driver mode using your onboard soundcard as output, but if you can't use it in MME driver mode, then there's a problem with the drivers for vista that won't let it work that way.  AND regardless of the fact that it comes packaged with sonar le, it still doesn't allow perfectly sync'd recordings because of the clock issue I was talking about above. two different soundcards will have two different clocks - one has to be the master - that's OK and will work fine for short recordings - maybe 20-30 seconds - but after that the tracks will begin to drift away from each other.

the tascam us-144 will probably be fine.  I know there are some folks here on these forums who use that soundcard.  I'm not sure about exactly how well it works with vista, but it's supposed to.

another reason that things may be a problem for you using the USB mic in MME driver mode may be because of the soundblaster soundcard you're using.  I've seen many, many times that the soundblasters don't work well in MME or WDM, and most of the time you have to download an ASIO wrapper for WDM called ASIO4ALL to get it to work.  however, that wouldn't work with your set up because you can't use the USB mic AND the SB card in ASIO driver mode - it would need to be in MME or WDM driver mode to get both of them to work at the same time.  if the USB mic won't work with the SB card in MME driver mode, then you're out of luck trying to get them to work at the same time.

Just in case it has left you with any confusion, I defer to Beagle's comments regarding USB mics specifically.  I wasn't thinking about any of the timing issues and the added complication that you have to use two sound cards.  I have seen some XLR-USB adapters that actually have an audio output where these specific issues would not come into play...but that's not what you have in this case.

I agree...return the mic and get an interface with Vista compatible drivers.  I think you are safest getting something with a large user base, which helps insure the manufacturer has a vested interest and the resources to keep debugging and updating drivers.  Line 6 and E-mu probably both fall into that category.  You would think M-audio would as well...I find it curious that they have apparently not kept their driver support up.

Ironically, some of the more esoteric "high-end" gear does not have a large user base and those products often become obsolete sooner than the "prosumer" stuff.