I am experiencing some audio skips/glitches when recording to disk with Sonar 4. My rigs specs are solid enough, so I figure I must be missing something.

P4 3.2Ghz(Northwood)
Asus P4P800-VM Mini-ATX motherboard
2Gb PC3200(400mhz) Dual Channel Ram
1- 80Gb Western Digital SE drive (8Mb cache) This boots XP Pro SP-2 and is my main surfing and entertainment drive.
1- 250Gb Maxtor Diamondmax10 SATA drive (16Mb cache) This boots Server 2003 Standard Edition and runs all my Audio Production. (More on this later)
Nvidia 6800GT 256Mb AGP video. (nuff said)
Adaptec SATA PCI card (because I don't trust the onboard SATA

Now I have tried both using the onboard SATA controller AND the PCI controller and I get the same issue both ways. Occasionally, I get an audio "hiccup" just enough of one to ruin the take. Almost like a record skipping. If someone knows where I can get an audio file hosted I can post an example of it for everyone to hear.

This glitch is especially annoying when recording live, because the take is ruined. Considering the beefyness of my specs, I can only assume I am missing some kind of tweak or config setting for my drive that would cause it to do this. If anyone has any good links to tweaking/configuring my SATA drive for recording to try to eliminate this let me know. I DO have audio examples if I can find where to host them.

Hi, I noticed that you have not mentioned what sound card you are using, nor anything regarding your signal chain, which may or may not be part of the problem. Your computer is certainly a powerhouse gaming machine, so I see no problem there. If you are using the onboard sound or a standard sound card, you might try either reinstalling the drivers and checking your recording settings. I would recommend, if you don't have a good pro sound card with good analog to digital converters, you get one, it can make a world of difference.

Not just for HD issues, this site's good if you haven't seen it already.

http://www.musicxp.net/

Tim

In troubleshooting...I'd really lose the Server platform. It's disk queing could be configured quite differently--expecting SCSI drives and/or multiple connections to be fed over ethernet, rather than optimized for a local need.

A friend of mine had the same kind of problem - turned out to be something with power management. So I'd say disable all power management stuff - but you've probably already done so.

Definately need to know what your soundcard is.

Where's your swap (Page) file located? If you are using one that is (2G memory) ;-)
Is it windows managed?
Since your Audio Production resides on your 250G drive, Set your page file to a static size on your 80 G drive. I'm thinking you may have tried this already by looking at the specs of your comp ;-)

James, sure you must've solved this by now - at least I hope so. Can you tell us what the problem was, I'm curious.

Thanks.

Cheers, Gerald

Well, I upgraded to Sonar 5, and have developed other issues related to CPU usage, but the skipping appears to have dissapeared. Not sure why or how. As for a soundcard...I don't use one. All my audio is routed outboard through a Tascam FW1884 Firewire Console.

I have had no real issues with Server 2003, other than I can't run a Sounblaster Audigy card in it. All my production audio software functions perfectly in the Server 2003 environment as long as I set the emulation to XP before I run the installer. I have found that I actually get a 20-30% improvement in track count/effect instances over XP or 2000.

While there are a few "interesting " hoops you have to jump through with Server 2003, I'd have to say my experience with it setting up my audio station hasn't been that bad.