Recording - September 2011 - 20

Upgrade #3 – Software
SONAR X1 It seemed like fate when I heard that SONAR X1 would become available the same week that the new PC would be ready. Instead of downloading it, I really wanted the media and any printed documentation too (although there wasn’t much with this version). However, the media version was not shipping yet. It’s handy that I live just a few miles from Sweetwater Sound headquarters. I put an order in and a few days later I picked up one of the first shrinkwrapped copies of X1. SONAR Driver – My TASCAM audio interface can use SONAR ASIO or WDM drivers. With a little testing on the new PC, I still prefer WDM, same as in the past. Performance was roughly the same either way. Mainly I like the more detailed labels that WDM gives your inputs and outputs, so it’s less likely I’ll choose the wrong one when I’m flying through a project. I also tried the relatively new WASAPI driver but it didn’t “take” with the TASCAM interface. Enabling WASAPI bumped the bit depth from 24-bit down to 16-bit, and it appeared the driver mode reverted back to WDM again. SONAR Configuration File – A couple of tweaks here helped SONAR to run much better. BounceBufSizeMsec – Changed this value from 100 ms to 0, which fixed a strange problem I had with missing notes and out-ofsync timing when bouncing a MIDI track to an audio track. It was most obvious with fast phrases like drum rolls and string run-ups. Some of the MIDI notes were completely skipped, or the timing was

came with PLAY). At first I saw just a few PLAY crashes, but eventually this instrument became very solid as I tweaked other areas of the DAW. It was a relief that PLAY 64 went in so easily, compared to the problems I had a few years ago getting the PLAY 32-bit version to become stable on the old PC. Native Instruments Guitar Rig 4 LE: Guitar Rig 4 LE is included with SONAR X1 Producer. The 64-bit version installed very smoothly. I love using Guitar Rig. The one disappointment was that GR 4 LE couldn’t seamlessly play my old projects since it didn’t carry over all of the same models and presets that I had enjoyed in GR 3 LE. However, this was somewhat addressed by the GR 4.1.2 update that provided better importing of old settings. Native Instruments Kontakt 4 Player and the Elements library: A few years ago I installed a nice sound library from Sample Logic called Elements, which used the free Kontakt 2 player. With a little research I learned this library would also run with the updated 64-bit Kontakt 4 player. I installed Kontakt 4, and added the Elements directory location to the Kontakt 4 library/database. At first my sounds would only come up in “demo” mode (they stop working after 15 minutes), but re-starting the PC resolved that. Toontrack Superior Drummer 2: I’m a big fan of Superior Drummer (reviewed with a Walking Tour in our July 2010 issue) and was happy to find there also is a 64-bit version. Once again, the 64-bit version went in clean. I pointed it to my existing SD sample library, but the instructions were not very clear. After a few tries I learned that it requires 2 steps—I had to first add the library in SD2 and then I was able to set a path to it.

Problems and fixes
Once I loaded all the DAW software on the new PC and connected the audio interface, it was time for some troubleshooting. Day 1 audio problems I heard these audio problems right away just running Windows Media Player or Internet Exporer (YouTube, etc.), before even starting any DAW software. • Soft static or crackling sound in the background • Intermittent choppiness, audio dropouts playing a YouTube video • Occasional audio dropouts caused by mouse movement and/or video screen changes • Unable to play multiple sources of audio at the same time. This isn’t something you generally need to do, but it’s an interesting way to “stress test” your audio function—see how many audio sources you can keep going at once before audio begins to fail. Then I started up SONAR X1 and tried some plug-ins, just to see if it would run even in this already-unstable state. It did, but I found these problems... • Unable to run at low latency. Audio would only play using higher latency settings, much higher even than the old PC prior to these upgrades! • Intermittent glitchy distorted sounds in the audio. • Audio engine dropouts—in SONAR you can restart the audio engine by clicking on a button, which is an annoyance even once in awhile, but intolerable if it happens every few seconds. • Mouse movement increasingly erratic. It’s pretty hard to make fine edits to your music project, once your mouse pointer begins jumping and skipping all over the screen. • Sudden application freeze followed by the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death.

changed, leaving the bounced track sounding choppy and very unlike the original MIDI track. 0 means the value will default to being the same as your Mixing Latency setting for your audio interface. ThreadSchedulingModel – Changed this value from 1 to 2 for better multiprocessing performance with large multicore processors such as the i7. DropoutMsec – I was getting frequent audio engine stops/dropouts before I changed this from 250 ms to 500 ms. It makes the audio engine a bit more resistant to other processing that may cause tiny disruptions in timing. SONAR’s X-Ray – this feature provides for translucent windows so you can still see behind the windows. I’m not a big user of X-Ray, so didn’t mind turning it off, which improved performance and reduced some audio engine stops. Plug-ins and Virtual Instruments in 64-bit Versions EASTWEST Quantum Leap PLAY: I installed the most recent PLAY 64-bit software, followed by iLok (using only the drivers that
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RECORDING SEPTEMBER 2011

Recording - September 2011

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