Dropout during rendering (sonar)

[Geoffrey Taucer]

A current (enormous) project of mine sounds great when I listen to the project itself, but when I render to .wav, notes keep dropping out. I'll hear the first 10th of a second or so of the note, then the instrument goes silent until the next note is played.

Any idea what might be causing this or how to fix it?

I'm using sonar 6, if that helps.

[Harmony]

I had a similar problem in Sonar 6.2 when using the TTS-1. I reproduced the problem for tech support but the guy had no answer except for "yeah I see that it happens in sonar 6, but it seems to work in sonar 7. Upgrade!"

ugh.

What synths are you using?

[Moseph]

Can you properly render the individual instruments as audio tracks before rendering the entire project?

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I had a similar problem in Sonar 6.2 when using the TTS-1. I reproduced the problem for tech support but the guy had no answer except for "yeah I see that it happens in sonar 6, but it seems to work in sonar 7. Upgrade!"

ugh.

What synths are you using?

No synths, but some HUGE samples.

EWQLSO (the play version)

RA (play version)

SD2

Kontakt (sitar nation, spiritual wind)

Moseph: Haven't tried yet; I'll give it a shot later tonight

[Harmony]

Sorry man, I've got nothing. I've noticed that if the buffer size is set too high (say, at 1 second latency), nothing renders for me, but that doesn't seem to be your problem.

[SnappleMan]

Try switching export modes (if sonar does that, I'm sure it does). When Cubase was giving me the same problems with some synths, I'd just switch to real time export mode which exports the song as it plays through the sequencer. Check for something similar within Sonars audio export dialogue box.

[zircon]

If rendering modes don't change anything, try turning off multicore processing within Kontakt.

[SnappleMan]

If rendering modes don't change anything, try turning off multicore processing within Kontakt.

Kontakt allows control for that inside a host? I thought it was for standalone only.

[zircon]

I'm not at home but I'm 95% sure that multithreaded processing is an option in the Kontakt engine even as a plugin, and I remember it causing problems for me when I had multiple instances.

[Jago]

A current (enormous) project of mine sounds great when I listen to the project itself, but when I render to .wav, notes keep dropping out. I'll hear the first 10th of a second or so of the note, then the instrument goes silent until the next note is played.

Any idea what might be causing this or how to fix it?

I'm using sonar 6, if that helps.

Huge samples tell me you either have a lot of RAM or have disk streaming enabled. From what you describe, the latter sounds likely. I had that same problem when I wanted to export to audio. Kontakt has an offline (bounce) mode in its engine that makes exporting to WAV successful for me.

A possible way around your issue is to use Kontakt to load the samples from other libraries, then enable Kontakt's offline mode before exporting. I don't know if the PLAY version gives you access to its samples, but see if that's possible. BTW, my method was successful with Kontakt 2.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

If rendering modes don't change anything, try turning off multicore processing within Kontakt.

How do I do that?

I only have one instance of kontakt, but several instances of PLAY. Come to think of it, all the instruments that are dropping are PLAY instruments, I think.

[Zephyr]

I'd also check around and see if there's any polyphony being limited, that would cause each successive note to cancel on of the previous ones, just do a quick check through the plugins and sonar to see if there's a limit polyphony option.

[plawp]

I use Sonar 6 too and I have had plenty of issues like this. Sometimes on a certain beat, it won't play any VST synths. Even if I solo the track and just bounce that one, the note is still missing. I've also encountered sampling issues with Battery 3, where Sonar cuts the sample short - especially noticeable with a cymbal hit. Luckily in that instance, just closing and reopening Battery fixed the problem.

One thing I have noticed in both the synth and sampler issues is that the dropped notes vary depending where your start your piece. Do you have these problems during playback or just when you bounce? I experience problems with both- any dropped notes heard during playback will also be dropped in the exported wav.

I just chalk it up to glitches, I imagine Sonar 8 doesn't have these problems. One of these days I'll have enough money.....

[dannthr]

This isn't a SONAR problem at all but really a problem with your disk streaming/RAM.

When you play back in real-time, the samples may play for you, but when you render, it renders at a faster pace. You could probably duplicate the problem in real-time by multiplying your tempo significantly.

This is not a problem that is uncommon to people with large scale sample projects--it's why so many of us use slave machines.

Simply render parts of your track at a time.

So, for example, render the brass to wav, then the ww, then the strings, etc, etc.

If you still get drop outs, and you feel that the drop outs are identical despite shrinking the sample load, then you may want to try rendering to wav in a real-time recording method.

Simply set up a bus in SONAR, send the VST outs to a new AUDIO track and record.

Again, if you get drop-outs during real time, then you will want to try sectioning out your performance.

If you have applied significant real-time audio effects to the VST tracks, this may also alter your performance, and cutting those out or waiting until after recording may improve performance.

EDIT: I should also mention that EW PLAY products only has support in SONAR versions 6.2 or higher--if you're running 6, make sure you've updated to the latest version of 6.