Synchronization problem with session drummer 3

Using Session Drummer 3 with Sonar 8.5.3.  Sound card is M-audio Delta 24/96, ASIO drivers.


 Using Session drummer 3, I've been in the habit of routing my snare, kick, and "all other" drums to three separate audio tracks, so I can process some drums separately from the others. With this configuration, I have found that "looping" to build up a song idea has become a frustrating and nearly impossible venture because of a synchronization issue. To reproduce it, grab any 8 bar drum pattern that has instances where the kick, snare, and maybe a tom or cymbal all trigger together at one or more points in the sequence. Pick a nice medium tempo like 120, select the 8 bar sequence (grid snap on so it's exact), enable looping, and let it play. 

After about a minute (less if you're ears are sensitive to timing problems), you'll begin to hear that the snare, kick, and the other drums are beginning to trigger out of sync with each other. Its as if the drums were being processed by different clock sources that were all starting to drift. Sadly, I've tried no less than 10 times over almost 2 years now to get help from Cakewalk on this. Over and over all they do is send me an automated email telling me to expect followup within a short period, and then they drop the ball.  Sometimes if I persist they reply with all the usual checklists for me to follow, but eventually they abandon me, never considering the remote possibility that they may actually have a bug, or trying to reproduce the problem. I've even offered to send them a sample project to test.... no reply. Nice support for hundreds of dollars spent.


In any case, I have found one solution I'd have never expected, which is to simply stop outputting the various drums to different tracks, and send them all to the same track when I'm working on a loop. I've also heard of a similar problem reported within these forums on another version of Sonar (X1) using SD3, and in that case the individuals were NOT specifically routing drums to different channels! Their fix was to turn the metronome on during playback, but I've had no luck so far making that solution work.

I don't know if my own work-around, to temporarily route all drums to the same audio track is 100% reliable. But I sure would like to hear from others that can reproduce this problem. Obviously, what is going on is that the different tracks (at least from SD3 anyway) are each either losing or gaining some time with each repetition. As a programmer I've dealt with issues like this before in processes that have to remain synchronized and the solution is usually a dual approach... (1) do everything you can to make sure all processes stay in sync to start with, and (2) as a back up, resynchronize everything wherever possible.  Now thankfully, the first item (1)  is being done, or Sonar would be a totally useless product. BUT equally obvious, at least in the case of looping, that second safeguard step is NOT being done. 


I'd like to hear from any other's who have had this problem and found other fixes or work-arounds. But I'd also really like to know if others can reproduce the problem. Because maybe collectively we can influence Cakewalk to at least take a LOOK at this BUG, and try to fix it. Considering what we all paid for this product, there ought to be some other acknowledgement of something as severe as an instrument timing/sync issue in SOME other place than just in the forums!

Charles,

Well my machine is not as impressive as yours. It's just a 32 bit 3.1 Ghz hyper-threaded (what intel called dual core in the beginning).  Of course, 4 gig ram and multiple 500 gig SATA drives (Seagate Barracuda's by the way... very fast drives!) . But system aside, considering I've processed upwards of 20 audio tracks simultaneously with a significant number of plugins and processing in each without running out of CPU, and have never see this problem except with SD-3, I don't think its my sound card. As to the drivers, yes... switching out the ASIO driver doesn't change anything ( except it makes my latency terrible, so I'll keep the ASIO). The M-Audio card I have, by the way, got great reviews when I first got it. Granted it came out many years ago and it may be time for an upgrade. But since all mixing (no matter how many tracks) happens within Sonar, and is finally presented to this sound card as two software pipes (L and R DMA channels), I don't see how a sound card can be overloaded. But even if it was, my argument that Sonar, within its code, should be resynchronizing everything whenever a loop re-plays, is still valid. And finally, considering I've seen some other VERY similar complaints on other people's machines using X1 (se thread at http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2224599 ), it tells me its an issue that Cakewalk really should address. 

Not negative at all, and of course I appreciate people taking the time to offer help. Its just that I've been working with Sonar back to version 2.2 a good 10 years back, and I'm sure you understand that after a while, you get to know the signs of a likely bug, as opposed to just a less than optimal configuration. So I'm more interested in configuration work-arounds, and duplication of the problem by others at this point. 

well peter,i did read that thread and it looks like you are not the only one,
its tough to say though,im not sure what it could be,i mean i would start by using my buffers in que try changing them from 128 to 256.(playback ones)unless your recording,try changing both,(record as well)
see if that helps.

you are facing a serious up hill battle though,its unlikely  anything will be done about it,we late into sonar x1d.
i highly doubt your going to get a fix for this.
i know its discouraging but from a business standpoint,i cant blame them.
you cant please everyone,and three people complaing of this issue isnt like a whole gang of people lining up sending in tickets to cake.

im sorry for your troubles though i wish i could help more.
but i cant,i cant even replicate it and i use session drummer all the time,just like your talking about

i send midi signals from a drum machine to sd3 and i set each drum to its own track 12 in all,i can use the loop explorer to preview or i can set up a 30 minute string of songs(which i have)with no drift at all.
so im at a loss here,doesnt mean i dont believe you though.
is it at all possible to get your hands on another sound card to try it out?
try a break away box,an audio interface that is usb.
see if your still having the same problem.

when i said try mme as a driver,i ment as a test.
i thought for sure you could send sd3 out to each track and play that back without latency,
i mean its not like your recording,just testing to see if mme would stay in synch.
good luck,best on this too.

Chuck,

Thanks... I do appreciate all that. And just the fact that this doesn't happen in your setup at least gives me hope there is SOMETHING external that might change things. I agree with you that there's little hope of getting it fixed at this point. But from a business point of view, I feel CW is without excuse, because I was drawing this issue to their attention back when 8.5 was indeed still the current offering. I also can't agree about upgrading every time a sound card, software version, or the machine itself is bested. I simply can't afford to live that way both money wise and time wise. You'd probably find it amusing that between Sonar 2.2 and 8.5 producer, I purchased NO interim versions. I lost my previous login and started over, but i used to monitor these forums all the time and just heard too many continued tales of woe after each upgrade, the worst of which was CWs lack of support. I finally bit the bullet in 8.5 because I just couldn't go another song  without VST based drums. 

On the hardware front though, as its way easier for me as a musician to change things like sound cards in a desktop, I'm thinking this would be a very wise time to buy. Nobody want's desktops anymore, and I'm starting to think I could get a VERY high end machine dirt cheap for that reason. Especially if I'm willing to roll my own starting with a MOBO and CPU selection. Yes, I can currently get to 20 tracks with a lot of plug ins, and that's pretty amazing for my machine. But I'd feel a lot better to see my CPU meter sitting back at around 10% instead of 60. 


Cactus,

Two questions... (1) are you also saying that an 8 bar LOOP in your setup won't start drifting after, say, a couple of minutes? And (2), its off topic, but doesn't quantizing drums tend to make them devoid of human feeling? I mean I used to quantize everything, but whenever a real drummer listened to my tracks he'd tell me the drummer sounds as stiff as a robot. 

Yes loops will not drift if it is quantized. To a point of course you need to understand how to use it.
I guess I quantize because I must have found this same bug. I thought it was just me sucking at loop construction. I would never have the patients to build tracks with loops. I can play them faster than that.    
I only use loops to set a pattern when I first start composing a song.I pick a groove and either copy paste it or use groove clips and drag it out ( Thanks for that tip Dave.)
Once the song has a structure I then play in real time building each drum part in turn. This certainly works well for me and if you are inclined to be a closet drummer it can sound convincing. 
I often use a real snare/ hi hats and cymbals.I still might tamper with quantize using audio snap --when it's in the mood to work.
I always use a MIDI kick and definatly that should be quantized. This humanization gimmick has it's places but a kick should be in the pocket along with the bass. Myself I can hear a 128th note off time. 16th triplet is as far as I dare go. 
 

My guess is they are already quantized. I was thinking a solution here, if you say they don't drift when they are in one track, then why not compose the song in one track, then split it out into individual parts once it's been established all if good.

I don't know if this is the issue but if you paste clips and the very first event is not exactly on the first beat of the bar Sonar will shift the the events in the bar to start exactly on the first beat. (depending on your snap settings)

Another issue that can occur when pasting clips that are incomplete bars multiple times is subsequent bars will start at the end of the previous clip, not at the start of the next bar causing the track to "go out of sync"

Both problems should be solved by converting to groove clips before cutting and pasting.

I think Glyn just nailed it. And since Dave ( daveny5) clued me in to groove clips I have had no further issues. It's faster too if what you need is just one pattern for 140 bars. The other bonus is it creates one clip so editing is global.

Not off topic but is there a faster way to seperate each drum part than this method I use?

One track containing all the drum parts.
Copy it 5-6 times.
Open each one in turn and delete all but the part ( notes) you want for that track.
Name each track.

Amid many protests that this couldn't possibly be a bug, and 100 more suggestions on how to tweak my settings, I finally got someone at cakewalk to accept an upload of a sample project I made to prove the issue.  Well guess what... I got the following from someone there named Phil. So at least now I'm reasonable sure the problem is confirmed by the manufacturer, and who knows... maybe they'll even fix it!

Hello Randy,


First, I'd like to apologize in that I certainly was able to reproduce this issue fairly easily within SONAR 8.5 with your project.  (Interestingly, not so much in SONAR X1!)  Regardless, I took the liberty of filling out a Cakewalk Problem Report on your behalf to our Cakewalk Development to further examine the issue and provide updates as applicable.  I am fairly certain it is not an unknown issue, as this was easily reproducable, but I cannot say for certain!
A couple of suggestions however:
1.  Try disabling Track Arm (if armed, which in this case it's not), or turning off Input Echo.  This could be causing extra buffers at the start of the loop's succession, causing gradual drift.  (At least that's a hypothesis.)
2.  Try freezing the track, which temporarily bounces the MIDI file(s) in question down to audio, off your CPU.  It should not drift at this point.  Tracks can be frozen and unfrozen  by the freeze button on the track, which looks like an asterisk (near Mute, Solo, Track Arm, etc. on any given track.)

Notice the knife twist  (Interestingly, not so much in SONAR X1!) 

so I guess they will not be fixing any bugs.