Instruction Manual

864 Improving Audio Performance
Improving Performance with Digital Audio
Apply some audio effects offline If you are happy with your real-time effects,
consider using the Process-Apply Audio
Effects command to apply those effects offline.
Then remove those effects from real-time use and
free up lots of CPU power.
Archive unused audio tracks Audio tracks that are muted continue to place a
load on your processor. To lessen the burden and
free up cycles to handle more audio, archive all
unused audio tracks. See To Archive or
Unarchive Tracks for more information.
Mix down or freeze your audio/
synth tracks
If your project contains many different audio/synth
tracks or many real-time effects, you can use the
Edit-Bounce to Track(s) command or the Track-
Freeze-Freeze Track command to reduce all of
this content to an audio track or tracks with no
active effects.
Change I/O Buffer Size on the
Advanced tab of the Audio
Options dialog box
The default setting is 64 KB. Yours may work
better with 128, 32, or 16. If those values don’t
help, try 256, 512, or move on to another remedy.
Defragment your hard disk If your hard disk is fragmented, playback of audio
will be slower. Use the Disk Defragmenter to
correct the situation.
Turn off dithering on the
Advanced tab of the Audio
Options dialog box (choose None
in the Dithering field).
Dithering subtly improves your mix, but most
people can’t hear it. Turn it back on for mastering.
Enable read and write caching By default, SONAR bypasses all disk caching,
which typically results in better performance with
audio data. If your computer has an older IDE
disk controller, or a disk controller that does not
use DMA transfers, enabling caching may
improve SONAR's audio performance. Note:
Changes to these settings only take effect when
you restart SONAR.
Choose Options-Audio and
click the Advanced tab to change the Enable
Read Caching and Enable Write Caching
settings.
Approach… How it works…