Reference Guide

1251
Audio Options dialog—General
Dialog Reference
bounce mode (when Fast Bounce is unchecked). When Audible bounce is unchecked, no audio
output will be heard during the bounce process. When in real-time bounce mode (Fast Bounce
unchecked) and Audible bounce is enabled, you can hear the output of the mixdown.
Audio Options dialog—General
The Options > Audio command opens the Audio Options dialog box. Choose the General tab to
control the following options:
Playback Timing Master and Record Timing Master
These two options determine which sound cards should control timing for the song, if you’re using
multiple wave drivers for playback or recording. Note that if you’ve got two wave drivers, but all audio
tracks are playing on only one wave driver, then that driver will be the timing master no matter what
you choose.
Every sound card’s clock crystal is slightly different, which causes minor differences in the actual
playback rate on each card. These differences may lead to slight synchronization problems if you
use one card for recording and a different one for playback. Multiple wave drivers on the same card
will not have sync problems.
Audio Driver Bit Depth
Determines the number of bits per sample used for communicating with the audio hardware for
playback. Your audio hardware must be capable of supporting the setting you supply here. In
SONAR, choose between 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24. In most cases, even if your hardware is
"advertised" as being 18 or 20 bit, you will want to set this value to 24 for optimum performance.
SONAR 16-bit only.
Double-precision Engine
Enabling this check box chooses 64-bit (double-precision) mixing in SONAR throughout the entire
signal path. This includes dithering and plug-ins. SONAR will send and receive 64-bit data to and
from all plug-ins that accept 64-bit data. If a plug-in requires 32-bit data, SONAR will send and
receive 32-bit data.
Note: Depending on the gainstages used in the project and the mixdown options selected–
such as bouncing with source category assigned to Tracks, or with mute/solo or automation
disabled in the bounce settings or while freezing tracks–the output may be louder or softer than
during normal playback. Please be sure to turn down the master output level before using real-
time audible bounce under these scenarios to avoid the possibility of speaker damage.
Note: Using an audio driver bit depth that is greater than 16 means you also need to choose
a preferred setting in the Stream >16 Bit Data As field on the Driver Profiles tab of this dialog
box.