Reference Guide

1311
Improving performance with digital audio
Improving audio performance
Dropouts and other audio problems
If your SONAR application suddenly stops producing audio while in the midst of recording or
playback, you've very likely experienced a “dropout.” Sometimes instead of a dropout, you may
experience a “stutter” during playback (a small section of audio repeats itself once or twice before
normal playback resumes). Or, you may occasionally experience a “glitch” or “pop” during audio
playback (a brief interruption or clicking noise is heard, but audio playback then continues normally
from that point). It is possible to experience a dropout while working exclusively with MIDI (i.e., no
audio data in the project), but this is a different matter and is not covered here.
All of these audio problems are the result of audio information not being sent to or received from
your sound card fast enough or reliably enough. During recording, the sound card sends incoming
audio data to the sound card driver, which in turn sends audio data to SONAR to store on hard disk.
When playing back, SONAR reads audio data from the hard disk and feeds it to the sound card
driver, which in turn passes it to the sound card for audible output. If these activities can't be
completed fast enough, or if the communication between SONAR and the sound card driver is
broken in some way, recording and/or playback will be disturbed.
Causes and cures
The exact cause of your audio problem will vary depending on the configuration of your computer
and/or the content of the project file you're working with. The majority of audio problems are caused
by one of the factors listed here. Read each of the following topics, in the order shown, and follow
the recommendations provided:
“The CPU is being interrupted by “background” activities having nothing to do with audio” on page
1312
“Cakewalk doesn't properly “recognize” your sound card” on page 1312
“The “I/O Buffer Size” may not be well matched to your hard disk” on page 1313
“Mixing latency may be set too low” on page 1313
“Your hard disk may be excessively fragmented” on page 1313
“Your project file may be excessively fragmented” on page 1314
“Your sound card's driver may be obsolete” on page 1314
“There may be a conflict with your video card or other multimedia streaming card” on page 1314
“Your sound card may have a conflict with another device in your computer” on page 1316
“Your project may simply be too “complex” for your computer” on page 1317
“Upgrade your computer hardware: more RAM, a faster CPU, and a faster disk drive” on page 1317