Sonar 2 XL CPU crash

[pingu]

When I stop playing a project the CPU will go down a bit to under 15% of CPU usage and then after a few seconds i goes up and up to 96% and the program crashes.

This happens almost everytime I stop playing a project. The machine is a 1,8 GHz P4 with 512MB RdRam, 300W powersupply and a 40GB 7200RPM disk, running Win XP Pro (also tried with same result in Win 200). The soundcard is a Inca88 from Audiotrak.

The latency was set to what seems to be the minimum possible at 2,9MilliSeconds, even though it would happen if it were set to over 300.

I've tried the same on a Athlon T-Bird 1GHz, 512MB SDRAM and a 40GB 7200RPM disk. And the CPU does jump very much but it seems to stabelize at 55% when not playing, so I would say it's somewhat successfull at this machine which has lighter hardware.

My main question is then, has anybody experienced this CPU problem in Sonar 2.0 XL (also tried 2.1)?
How come does it work on the machine which has lighter hardware specs?

I'll recieve any reply that can help sort out this problem with a great thank.
Merry Christimas & Happy New Year.

[SarkaPRO]

What soundcard are you using ?

[pingu]

Inca88 from Audiotrak

[Alan]

The P4 is known to suffer from a denormalization problem(spiking) with certain plugs,do you have plugs enabled? And if so which ones.

[pingu]

I've read so about P4 and denormalization. Unfortunatly I'm fixing this problem for my uncle so I've never used Sonar so if someone could guide me a "how-to" in Sonar to fix the problems I'd be very glad. I've read that adding a noise plug-in could solve the problem. Does anyone know anything about that and how I can do this?

[Alan]

Sonar isn't the problem,I don't get these issues with my Athlon setup.You'll have to try and locate the offending plugin by going through them and replacing it with something else.Also in the mean time you can shut the audio engine on-off at crucial times,it's located on the transport.Sonar 2.1 also explains how you can make settings in the aud INI to overlook droputs as well(it's in the "new features" read me in 2.1).There is a list somewhere of plugins/VSTi's/DXi's that the P4 is problematic with.You might try asking for it at www.kvr-vst.com/ (http://www.kvr-vst.com/) or here www.cubase.net (http://www.cubase.net) There is a plugin supposedly to help this problem,but users are posting that it doesn't really work.

[SarkaPRO]

Check what plugin is causing this overloading. When you find it don't use it. It could be a buggy plugin.

[bubba freaktree]

there is some plugin programmer genius guy in germany ... he said denormalization is real, not imagined, and that p4's are especially susceptible to it.

what happens is when the audio on a reverb or filter effect (most common culprits) gets quiet on a fade out the processor searches for more bits but runs into some sort of infinity dog-chasing-its-tail syndrome. and then the system cpu usage will balloon at silence or the system will hang, exactly as you described.

the solution is to have a small amount of inaudible noise at 22khz to "give the dog a bone to chew on" so to speak. The volume for this only has to be super quiet, completly inaudible and your a-d converter can't even spit something out that quiet. it's way down in the billionth decimal area or something like that.

smart plugin manufacturers are designing this ghost noise into their plugins. if you you have a problematical plugin, you can insert one of these "noise makers" just above your reverb/filter in the effects chain to give it something constant to feed on.

what is so strange is that if you go onto sonar's website, they say all of their in-store "sonar stations" feature p4 processors...like they are proud of it or something. i just emailed cakewalk to day about this phenomenon and what processors they most recommend. i'll post the results.

if you go to digitalnaturalsound.com you will see p4's kicking amd's ass all over the place. there are many reasons I'm drawn to p4's, but it's a big contemplation for me of intel vs amd right now for various reasons.

note: ALL cpus can hang on this denormalization stuff, it's just that the p4's apparently are particularly vulnerable.

that sucks!!!! my home-team favorite is fumbling on me. kind of like the Giants game Sunday.

[bubba freaktree]

the sonar tech team returned my email. they said sonar is optimized for p4.