sonar producer 4 w/reason 3.04/ Line6 Toneport - CPU use through the roof!

[Sensory_Rupture]

I need some serious help... anybody? Here it goes...

I have a P4 3.0 Ghz with 2GB of DDR RAM. I have Windows XP HOME SP2. Asus motherboard, 4 USB ports on back 2 in the front.

I am running SONAR 4 Producer, with Reason 3.04, and using the Toneport as my external sound card. I have tried to use my internal Delta 44 zero latency sound card and a M-AUDIO firewire 1044. I us the ASIO driver and the only way I can get some results is if I increase the latency past 11 MS. This should not be happening on this robust of a system. I have went through everything to try and get this to work... I think it is a problem with my USB... I have the TONEPORT plugged in as well as a KVM switch. Is CPU use related to a power up issue with USB? Would changing the power supply make a difference? I have a 350 Watt power supply... would bumping this up to 500 Watts make a difference? Would installing a PCI usb card make a difference?

Here is something interesting to note... When I have all 3 programs running, and I scroll with my mouse in SONAR, CPU usage jump up in the meter of SONAR. This mouse is connected to a KVM switch over USB. Why would using a mouse scroll cause CPU use to fly through the roof and cause drop outs?

A co-worker of mine suggested that this might be a problem with hyperthreading. We tried the same setup on a Dell P4 1.8 with 1GB of RAM and we did not have this problem. He was on WIN2000.

I am at a total loss and feel like I'm gona rip my hair out... I have gone through all of the troubleshooting documentation for all three programs... this has to be a system issue that I am missing.
I would be eternally greatful for any advice... THANKS

[agreatheight]

This is a pretty complicated Sonar question for the tb board - you'll get better assistance over at Cakewalk, they have a really great Sonar forum. I am sure someone can help you there.

Not that this will help but I am running a slower PC with less ram and using Sonar 4.0 with rewired Reason 2.5 with no issues (win 2000).

Good luck!

[Correlli]

How many other application have you installed on that machine? To make your machine really efficient, you should just have Windows, Sonar, and Reason and nothing else.

Make sure your disconnnected from the Internet when using your Media programs.

Alot of applications have processes running in the back-ground, so look at the Windows Task Manager -> Processors (Alt+Ctrl+Del), and see how many other programs are running at the same time.

You could also un-install any Windows components you don't use. This is done in Control Panel -> Add and Remove Programs -> Add and Remove Windows Components.

There should at least 4 GB of free space on C:\

Parition your hard drive and install all your applcations on a separate parition eg , Windows C:\ and Applications D:\

or even Data E:\

[RSalvador]

Curious what the video hardware setup is? I experienced a similar problem with the mouse scroll on an old Cakewalk Pro system using a PCI audio interface and PCI video card with little video memory. Installed a new video card in the AGP slot with a bunch of memory and that fixed it.

[DougP]

yup, a totally clean install with very little other programs running is very effective.

to get really good results it is best to clean programs out of your "Run" section of the Registry. check out musicxp.net for a lot of very useful information.

KiwiKid mentioned disconnecting from the internet. i would go one step further and actually disable the network interface when you want to run SONAR...otherwise XP will still be checking it.

you do need a decent video card (atleast 128MB??) otherwise the CPU has to redraw the screen. with audio recording you want the CPU only working on audio. this stuff can bring any computer system to it's knees if you let it.