Instruction Manual

261

The Audio Engine Button

Recording

The Audio Engine Button

SONAR has a button in the Transport toolbar called the Audio Engine

button . This button lets you turn SONAR’s audio engine off if you’re

getting distortion or feedback and want to cut the sound off. When playback

or recording are in progress, SONAR enables the button automatically—

however, the button appears greyed-out during playback or recording

because you can’t control the button at that time. Whenever the button is

enabled, the Audio Running message lights up on the Status bar that’s at

the bottom of the SONAR window.

If you experience feedback during input monitoring, you can click the Audio

Engine button to turn off the audio engine. However, if playback or

recording are in progress, the button is unavailable, and you should click

the Reset button that’s just to the right of it instead, or else stop

recording or playback first and then click the Audio Engine button.

You may experience slightly better playback and recording performance by

turning the Audio Engine button off before you press the Play or Record

buttons. This happens if your computer’s resources are already stretched to

the limit. When you start recording or playback with the audio engine

already functioning, there is still some processing that SONAR has to do

that’s left over when you start the transport. This places an extra load on

your system that can cause dropouts if your system is already stretched

thin. A more effective solution than disabling the audio engine before

starting the transport is to reduce the load on your system by hiding some

meters, increasing latency slightly, reducing the number of plug-ins and/or

tracks, etc.