Reference Guide

852
Improving Audio Performance
Improving Performance with Digital Audio
Refrain from other activity during
playback
If you open and close windows or do lots of editing while playback is in
progress, you may steal CPU cycles that would otherwise be used for
playback.
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” on page
189 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.
Disable the Display Clip Contents
options
Drawing the contents of audio clips in the Clips pane uses some CPU
cycles. If you are using a slow machine, you may want to disable this
feature. To do so, right-click in the Clips pane, choose View Options,
and disable the Display Clip Contents option.
Approach How it works
Table 177.