Reference Guide

1191
Improving performance with digital audio
Improving audio performance
Digital audio files and storage
Digital audio requires a large amount of disk storage. The following table shows the disk space
requirements in megabytes for a single minute of digital audio in mono and stereo at various
sampling rates.
For more information, see “Dropouts and other audio problems” on page 1197.
See:
“Mixing latency” on page 1192
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.
Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Sync and Caching 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, click the Track view View menu, point to Display and
choose Display Clip Contents.
Sampling rate 16 bit 24 bit
11 kHz Mono 1.3 MB per minute 1.9 MB per minute
11 kHz Stereo 2.5 MB per minute 3.8 MB per minute
22 kHz Mono 2.8 MB per minute 3.8 MB per minute
22 kHz Stereo 5.0 MB per minute 7.6 MB per minute
44.1 kHz Mono 5.0 MB per minute 7.6 MB per minute
44.1 kHz Stereo 10.1 MB per minute 15.1 MB per minute
48 kHz Mono 5.5 MB per minute 7.6 MB per minute
48 kHz Stereo 11.0 MB per minute 16.5 MB per minute
96 kHz Mono 11.2 MB per minute 16.5 MB per minute
96 kHz Stereo 22.0 MB per minute 33.0 MB per minute
Table 215.
Approach How it works
Table 214.