KVR Audio

x_bruce · Post by **x_bruce** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 5:58 pm

I'm a Cakewalk/Sonar veteran since Cakewalk Pro 2.0 for DOS except for Sonar 1. Now I'm using and reviewing Sonar 4 Producer.

I've had a lot of problems, actually.

For awhile I couldn't get my reverb and sound tails to render to audio. That was fixed by setting the correct setting for exporting audio.

It went away but is back with a vengence and this time that checkbox is still checked. I'm completely lost! I tried to render a mix and it was like a stutter fest, lurching and sounding quite badly. Then I tried a bunch of things like trying individual tracks, all it did was illustrate how awful the export was now.

The other thing I've noticed is the VST to DX converter. It stops processing at times. Just stops and quits the program. !j Klangformer does it every time. I'm not sure if it's because I have an obcene number of plugins but right now I can't remove them and when I do, half the time they don't register as being gone and show up in the plugin list in Sonar.

I know the file is munged up in a terrible way but everytime I retry the 20 minute process it still picks up problems plugins that do-not-exist in the directory. I need to do a bunch of demo songs and I have a important one that won't export without sounding horrible.

The tracks are:
1 Rephrase instance
1 Kontakt instance with
* John Cage Prepared Piano
* 2 midi channels of Prosonus Prepared Designer
* One Multiple preset of EastWest Silver Orchestra - bass rolls, timpini and gongs

that's it. Not exactly a difficult setup.

I really want to hear the mix on the mixdown, damnit.

I'm frustrated which is not typical of my Sonar experience.

Any suggestions?

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:20 pm

x_bruce quoth

It went away but is back with a vengence and this time that checkbox is still checked. I'm completely lost! I tried to render a mix and it was like a stutter fest, lurching and sounding quite badly. Then I tried a bunch of things like trying individual tracks, all it did was illustrate how awful the export was now.

How do, mate.
Thoughts:

WRT the reverb tails et.c. have you tried rendering based on the length of a 'dummy' section longer than the reverb tail should be?
I'd also try temporarily renaming the AUD.INI file, seeing if that made any difference. And reprofile if you're using WDM drivers, that sorta thing.

The other thing I've noticed is the VST to DX converter. It stops processing at times. Just stops and quits the program. !j Klangformer does it every time.

Not seeing this on anything Im running, although Im not using Klangformer. There were a couple of issues I can think of with some long-latency plugins (Pristine Space, Spectron, that sorta thing) where the plugin's internal buffers needed tweaks, but not the entire program dropping out. Very odd.

Are you using WDM or ASIO drivers? No doubt you've tried swapping over, changing latency settings, full reset-and-rescan of the adaptor, that sorta thing. I guess you could try a reinstall; round about S3 I noticed that the adaptor was keeping settings in a new part of the registry, so that might be having an effect.

I was getting some odd behaviour with my system up until recently with audio recording dropping out intermittently on my Emu 1212M; I wound up setting the cached read and write settings to 2048K (much larger than it really needs to be, AFAIK) and that cleared it; not suggesting that its the same thing, but sometimes its worth tweaking and testing settings a bit.

I'm not sure if it's because I have an obcene number of plugins but right now I can't remove them and when I do, half the time they don't register as being gone and show up in the plugin list in Sonar.

A reset-and-rescan of the adaptor should sort that out unless there's still old pre-Cakewalk adaptor entries (ie for the FXpansion version), in which case you'll need to go back to a FXPansion version and do a reset, or look for the registry entries yourself and prune them...

I know the file is munged up in a terrible way but everytime I retry the 20 minute process it still picks up problems plugins that do-not-exist in the directory. I need to do a bunch of demo songs and I have a important one that won't export without sounding horrible.

The tracks are:
1 Rephrase instance
1 Kontakt instance with
* John Cage Prepared Piano
* 2 midi channels of Prosonus Prepared Designer
* One Multiple preset of EastWest Silver Orchestra - bass rolls, timpini and gongs

that's it. Not exactly a difficult setup.

Smoeone somewhere suggested that you cant do a fast bounce with Kontakt; I had major problems with a couple of tracks a while ago that I eventually went back to and realised that fast bounce wasnt working with specific instruments. Could be related; its in the opitions for the bounce.

I really want to hear the mix on the mixdown, damnit.

Does it play back properly? One thing I managed to do until I sussed the Fast Bounce bit was to use TapeIt to record the tracks; you could send everything to a spare bus with tapeIt on it, and get it that way at least.

Hope there's something useful there, let me know if I can flesh it out more with more info from you...

codacoda · Post by **codacoda** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:30 pm

Kontakt has a bounce button, top right next to the NI logo, that I think only appears in Sonar. Just in case you missed it

20 mins for the wrapper to do it's job is just bizarre

Good luck.

x_bruce · Post by **x_bruce** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:57 am

Thanks gents.

I switched to WDM drivers, I was using ASIO. There doesn't seem to be any difference other than ASIO drivers using far less resources per DXi.

I initiallized my VSTi to Dxi in the adaptor and whee! no more VST instruments now. It craps out in arbitrary places, no specific plugin.

So far 4 hours of waste. Considering I rarely feel up to doing anything that long it's a real waste of time.

I'll get back if I have any good fortune trying some of the other things suggested. I don't give a shit about fast bounce. I'll just turn it off and see if that fixes things. This happens to non-N.I. plugins so Kontakt isn't the criminal in this case.

Thanxs

meroveus · Post by **meroveus** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 4:14 am

Rerun the wave profiler.
And make sure num of playback buffers is > 4.

bigwayne56 · Post by **bigwayne56** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 11:03 pm

Hey all,

Just wondering, what type of setup are you running machinewise? Specs maybe? And also did this machine start out as a SONAR 4 machine? Do you have any version of SONAR on it that you can maybe test the bundle with to see if it is SONAR v4 or not? Have you upgraded to the latest version of SONAR 4.02? Maybe some older versions of plugs are coming back to bite at you?

I know that both 4.01 and 4.02 SONAR upgrades fixed VST adapter things quite a bit for some of the more "intense" VST's and VSTi's

Just a couple of more suggestions....

Hope they help.

Wayne

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 11:17 pm

x_bruce

I switched to WDM drivers, I was using ASIO. There doesn't seem to be any difference other than ASIO drivers using far less resources per DXi.

Whats the card? The sound API (whatever it is) shouldnt be using drivers on a per-anything except input/output track basis, so that sound really odd. If you've got 8 plugins on 8 tracks, mixed down with 4 buses to 2 final outputs, there should still only be 2 channels of communication with the soundcard....

I initiallized my VSTi to Dxi in the adaptor and whee! no more VST instruments now. It craps out in arbitrary places, no specific plugin.

Sounds like something's really screwed up. If the adaptor is blowing up, but there's no repeatable pattern to it, then that's pretty damn unusual.
Are you pointing it at just one folder, or several subfolders? Can you try aiming it at more subfolers, adding them one at a time to see if there's anything consistent at all.
Also, have you done a disk check on the volume containing the plugins?

I'll get back if I have any good fortune trying some of the other things suggested. I don't give a shit about fast bounce. I'll just turn it off and see if that fixes things. This happens to non-N.I. plugins so Kontakt isn't the criminal in this case.

Let us know how it goes Bruce. And give us some system specs as well, in case there's owt that can be gleaned from that.

x_bruce · Post by **x_bruce** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:01 am

I had to reinstall but it works...so far. I also have to render everything without "fast render"

However, I have a weird little number alled "Dementia 9 for percussion, prepared pianos and blown guitar"

3 Kontakt channels of 2 Prosonus prepared pianos and the other the John Cage Prepared Piano Kit. The Prosonus is more film oriented, the Cage is more performance oriented, keeping in mind it's never going to sound like Bach.

2 channels of EastWest Orchestral Percussion, bass drum rolls and timpani.

1 guitar channel very much twisted and made into a blown flute ala Sakuhachi done using Rephrase 1.0.

the song's at http://www.artistlaunch.com/satinover

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:17 am

Glad to hear you got somewhere, Bruce. S4 went onto a complete rebuild here, but I managed an S1->S2->S3 migration without problems on my own machine. But I have no doubt registry cruft can cause all sorts of strange things sometimes...

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:32 pm

x_bruce wrote: I also have to render everything without "fast render"

I saw this post a few days ago and that immedeatly came to me,but I didn't have time to reply at the time,glad you found it.However,I find "slow bounce" only necessary for some sample based things and Kontakt in particular, but not necessary for most VSTi's.Trial and error will give you the picture.

mayan · Post by **mayan** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:56 pm

I just did a clean install of Sonar 4 on a new computer. I've had all sorts of hassles with the VST wrapper. It's not recognizing ImpOscar at all. Period. It's installed but the wrapper totally bypasses it. Also giving me error fits with EVE and a few others. I haven't done alot of bouncing yet. Bruce, have you taken your plight to the Sonar forum at Cakewalk? At the very least, Cakewalk monitors the group and seems to be responsive.

x_bruce · Post by **x_bruce** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:03 pm

What's weird is all these plugins used to work correctly before. I thought it might be a Sonar 4 issue. however that was not the case.

Sonar 4 works a bit different than 3.11 did. Thankfully, you guys and the folks at Cakewalk helped out quite a bit. Their support was great, especially considering NAMM was going on.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:11 pm

mayan quoth I just did a clean install of Sonar 4 on a new computer. I've had all sorts of hassles with the VST wrapper. It's not recognizing ImpOscar at all. Period. It's installed but the wrapper totally bypasses it. Also giving me error fits with EVE and a few others.

EVE and impOSCar working flawlessly here. Are you on 4.02 yet?

Stupid American Pig · Post by **Stupid American Pig** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:17 pm

I never had a problem with eve, even when I was using the older cakewalk wrapper on S2. I dont own imposcar so cant help you there.

McLilith · Post by **McLilith** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:25 pm

Hi x_bruce,

Be sure to let everyone know if you find a cure for the problems with the Sonar4 VST situation. I've heard previous stories of people being able to use certain plugins in Sonar3, but not in Sonar4, along with some other wierd behaviour as well.

thanks,
McLilith

Sonar 4 Producer, HELP!!