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System Configuration
This section covers optimizing your system configuration to work with SONAR.
The Wave Profiler
The Wave Profiler is a utility that analyzes the sound cards in your computer and
determines the best DMA (Direct Memory Access) settings for communicating
with SONAR. These DMA settings are displayed in samples, at the sample rates
and bit depths your sound card supports. The Wave Profiler also sets a value in
milliseconds for the Buffer Slider, which controls mixing latency. The Wave Profiler
is unnecessary if you are using an ASIO driver. One of the best ways to improve
mixing latency is to use a sound card that uses a WDM or ASIO driver instead of
MME (legacy) type. For a comparison of the two types of drivers, see “WDM vs.
MME Drivers” on page 638.
The DMA settings are used to ensure that a project that contains both MIDI and
digital audio plays back in tight synchronization. If SONAR is not configured
properly with your audio device’s DMA settings, MIDI and digital audio material
may not play back correctly.
Note to users of previous Cakewalk products: The DMA settings in versions
of Cakewalk prior to SONAR 1.0 were displayed in bytes rather than samples.
Using your previous DMA settings in SONAR will not work. Try the settings that
wave profiler displays, and if you are not satisfied, only then attempt to optimize
your settings.
The Wave Profiler utility runs automatically the first time you run SONAR. If you
have a sound card with a WDM driver installed, SONAR will detect this and run
the wave profiler determining the best DMA settings for the supported bit depths
and sample rates of your sound card. You can force the use of the MME interface
by checking the option on the Advanced Tab in the Audio Options dialog box that
says, “Always Use MME Interface Even When WDM Drivers are Available”. This
option forces any card that has WDM drivers to use the MME interface instead.
After you restart SONAR you will be prompted to run the wave profiler, this time
it will determine the DMA settings using MME instead of WDM. This is especially
useful if you have multiple sound cards, one of which does not support WDM.
Note: SONAR does not support the use of WDM and MME simultaneously. To use
a sound card with WDM drivers with a sound card using MME drivers, you must
check the “Always Use MME Interface Even When WDM Drivers are Available”
option in the Advanced tab of the Audio Options dialog. This forces the sound card
using WDM drivers to use the MME interface.
Note: It is possible to load a 48 kHz project when you are using a sound card that
does not support 48 kHz. SONAR does not warn you when you do this. Your project
may crash, or it may appear to record audio when your project is not actually
recording.
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