Audio has Unexpectedly Dropped Out

The information in this article applies to:

  • All SONAR Family Products
  • Music Creator
  • Guitar Tracks Pro 3

If SONAR suddenly stops producing audio during recording or playback followed by the appearance of a red dropout indicator light, you've very likely experienced a dropout. Sometimes instead of a dropout, you may experience a stutter during playback (a small section of audio repeats itself once or twice before normal playback resumes). Or, you may occasionally experience a glitch or pop during audio playback (a brief interruption or clicking noise is heard, but audio playback then continues normally from that point).

Eliminating Dropouts

  1. Complete all the steps listed in the SONAR Help file under the category Dropouts and Other Audio Problems.
  2. There may be a bad setting in the AUD.INI file. Try one of the following methods:

    Easy Method - Close SONAR and delete the AUD.INI file from the SONAR folder. After restarting SONAR you may need to point the app to your WaveData folder. (Options | Audio | Advanced Tab | Data Directory field)

    Advanced Method - Close SONAR. Open SONAR's AUD.INI file in Notepad. Delete everything listed beneath the line PictureDir=C:\Cakewalk Projects\Picture Cache. Save the file and restart SONAR.

  3. Go to Options | Audio | General and move the Latency slider toward the Safe setting.
  4. Click on the Advanced tab and set the I/O Buffer Size to 256.
  5. Open a file that has this problem and run the Tools | Compact Audio Data command.
  6. Make sure nothing else is running while SONAR is open. Choose Start | Run and type MSCONFIG. Click OK, then click on the Startup tab at the upper right of the window that opens. Uncheck all items listed, click OK, then restart your computer. You can always recheck those items again at a later time.
  7. If, and only if, you have an UltraDMA hard drive, make sure it's in DMA mode. Go to Control Panel | System | Device Manager and click the plus next to Disk Drives. Double click on your hard drive, click Settings, and make sure the DMA box is checked. If it is not, check it, restart, and make sure it stays checked.

Keywords: techkb, S3P, S3S, SR1, SR2, SR3, SR4, SR5, SR6, SR7, HS6, CWMC, CWHS4, CWGP3, REAC, audio, dropout