Reference Guide

1186 Improving audio performance
System configuration
To change playback bit depth
1. Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Playback and Recording and choose the bit depth you
want to use in the Audio Driver Bit Depth field.
2. Click OK.
To rewrite audio files at different bit depths
1. Use the Utilities > Change Audio Format command to open the Change Audio Format dialog
box.
2. Choose a new bit depth in the New Bit Depth field.
3. If you’re changing to 16 bits, you can check or uncheck the Apply Dither check box. Dithering
means to add a certain audio signal to 16 bit audio to make it sound more like it did as a higher-
bit signal.
4. Click OK.
SONAR rewrites the audio tracks in your project at the new bit depth.
Bit depths for recording
You can choose the bit depth of newly-recorded files in SONAR, and you can change this value at
any time. The Transport module in the Control Bar shows the project sampling rate and the current
record bit depth setting.
The choices for the recording bit depth setting are 16, 24, 32, and 64. At present, no devices can
record at 32-bit or 64-bit resolution, so you don’t need to choose these options yet. 24-bit files give
greater dynamic range than 16-bit files, so 24 is a good choice for music that gets very soft, as well
as loud. 16-bit recording is efficient for many recording projects, especially louder projects.
To choose a recording bit depth
1. Go to Edit > Preferences > File - Audio Data.
2. Under File Bit Depths, change the Record Bit Depth field to the desired number.
3. Click OK.
Note:
• If you choose to play back at greater than 16 bits, you may need to pick a bit format for your
data in Edit > Preferences > Audio - Audio Profiles in the Stream > 16 Bit Data As field.
You may need to consult your sound card’s documentation to find the optimum setting.
• Some audio devices, especially USB devices that use WDM drivers, can not operate in 24-
bit mode unless a variable in SONAR’s Aud.ini file is set to 1. The variable is
Use24BitExtensible=<0 or 1>, which goes in the [name of your audio device (‘n’
in, ‘n’ out)] section of the Aud.ini file.
• SONAR 4 does not play back projects that contain files with different bit depths (SONAR 5
and later), so if you want to open a multiple bit depth project in SONAR 4, see the following
procedure or a conversion procedure.