Morten Saether Posted August 9 Share Posted August 9 New in Sonar 2024.08 build 30.08.0.019: This release includes major audio engine optimizations with dramatic improvement to low latency and multi-core CPU performance across the board, allowing you to now run hundreds of instances of synths and plugins at low latency. It also includes several new features like Plugin Oversampling, improvements to Plugin LoadBalancing, new PDC Override modes, Fly-out dynamic tooltips to check CPU load for tracks, buses, FX Racks, plugins and instruments, new Bypass synth with auto archive functionality in the synth rack, External Insert improvements, UI/Theming improvements and more. Additionally, the following resources have been updated: Updated French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese localization. Updated online and local help (Note: old screenshots will be continually updated). Plugin Oversampling Earlier versions of Sonar had up to 2X oversampling for plugins. Sonar now includes support for plugin oversampling at higher oversampling ratios from 2x up to 16X. Additionally, oversampling is also available for plugins within FXChains. The oversampling ratio and precision can now be selected in the plugin options as below: Oversampling has been optimized to be CPU efficient and the precision can be selected via the Precision menu. Please note that depending on your project sample rate, oversampling at higher ratios can lead to very high sample rates, that may not be supported by all plugins. Oversampling may also tax your CPU at very high sample rates. How to enable oversampling: To use oversampling, you must set it on a per plugin basis. Once you have enabled it for a plugin it is automatically enabled for all instances of that plugin in a project. Additionally, Oversampling is only activated when the Px button in the mix module is enabled. This button allows you to easily toggle oversampling on to A/B how it sounds in your project. You can check which plugin have oversampling active and the oversample rate by looking at the plugin tooltip as below. Plugin Oversampling Precision You can now specify the precision for plugin oversampling. Using a medium precision uses less CPU and for many uses has no perceptible effect on resampling audio quality. This should reduce CPU load when utilizing plugin oversampling. Precision defaults to Medium. Plugin Load Balancing Optimizations Plugin Load Balancing now uses significantly less load when running at low latency. Please note that enabling plugin load balancing will not necessarily lower CPU use, especially when running at lower latency. This is because load balancing utilizes smaller buffers than the audio engine buffer size. However, on a multi-core processor with 8 or more cores there are benefits to balancing the load, esp when you have expensive plugins in the FX rack. Thread Count and Buffer Size Both the plugin load balancing threads and buffer size are now configurable in settings. When PluginLoadBalancingThreadCount is set to 0, the number of threads is adaptively managed and is less than the number of processor threads. You may change the value to utilize fewer or more threads. PluginLoadBalancingBufferSamples defaults to 96 samples and is the size of the internal load balancing buffers. Setting the buffer size higher will use less CPU but may result in less load balancing. Please note that when the engine latency is less than twice PluginLoadBalancingBufferSamples, load balancing will be automatically disabled internally. Load Balancing Active Indicator When load balancing is enabled and active (PLB) will be displayed in the FX Rack header tooltip next to audio processing load. Audio Engine Low Latency Optimizations for Multi-core Processors The audio engine has been greatly optimized for playback and monitoring when running high plugin workloads at low latencies (less than 256 samples) on machines with high core counts (16 or more processor threads). Prior to this, running at low latencies could result in sub optimal multiprocessing load sharing and higher CPU load. In a benchmark workload of 100 tracks and 400 plugins running at 256 samples with 36 threads, the improvement was in the range of 35% to 40%. While these gains may be more moderate at lower core counts the optimizations will benefit low latency performance across the board even on low powered PC's. Many testers have reported the ability to run high load projects at very low latencies such as 128 or 256 samples, which wouldn't previously play unless the audio interface was set to a high buffer size. Performance Optimizations for Projects with Many Synths and Effects Sonar has been greatly optimized to handle high virtual instrument counts, managing the load more efficiently and using minimal CPU resources. In a real-world orchestral template with 250 Kontakt instances, the base template will now run efficiently at 128 samples with very few late buffers. In prior versions such a project would only run at 1024 samples or higher. Additionally, general plugin performance in FX racks has been improved, allowing you to run workloads with high plugin counts more efficiently. General Improvements and Optimizations Increased hang detection default timeout to 1 minute from 30 secs to prevent false positives with some instruments. Improved editing performance on projects with a large number of virtual instruments. Several optimizations have been made to improve performance when editing clips or MIDI in heavily loaded projects. Additional Audio Processing Load Tooltips Similar to the Control Bar's Performance module tooltip, audio processing load is now shown on hover over several new hotspots, which allows you to check performance load for every element in the project, tracks, buses, plugins, instruments and FX Chains. Load measurements are only performed when the tooltip is visible. When hovering over an FX Rack header, the tooltip shows the current audio processing load and max load. This is useful as a troubleshooting tool because real-time effects have a big effect on CPU load. This tooltip is also shown in FX Chains. In the FX Rack, hovering over a plugin name shows the load for that plugin. In the FX Rack, hovering over an FX Chain shows the load for that FX Chain. In the FX Chain plugin, hovering over a plugin name shows the load for that plugin. In the Synth Rack, the Name field tooltip shows synth audio processing load. The track meter peak indicator tooltip shows total combined processing load for the track including FX Rack and ProChannel. The bus meter peak indicator tooltip shows total combined processing load for the bus including FX Rack and ProChannel. Max CPU Threads Has Been Increased Sonar now supports CPU's with up to 256 threads as supported by the new AMD EPYC. FX Rack Tooltip Shows Audio Processing Load Similar to the performance toolbar you can now view the per track FX rack load. This tooltip is also shown in FX Chains PDC Override Enhancements PDC override is used to reduce latency caused by plugin delay compensation in the signal flow. It allows you to play in real time within projects containing lookahead plugins. When the PDC override button is engaged, any PDC latency for input monitored tracks or instrument tracks is bypassed, and the input monitor signal is passed through in real time. This is useful for recording or input monitoring in real time. The PDC Override button now has customizable modes for recording and playback. These modes act as additional filters only when PDC override is enabled. To access the modes, right click or long press the PDC override button. When Override On Playback is checked, PDC override is engaged during track playback and bypasses any PDC for that track. Note that any clips on the tracks will not be delay compensated in this mode. When Override On Record is checked, PDC override is engaged during track recording and allows recording without PDC latency. If both Override on Playback and Override on Record are disabled, PDC override is only active when the transport is not running and works in input monitor mode alone. It is equivalent to Override on Input Monitor The above modes are only active when the actual PDC override button is engaged. PDC button tooltip now displays the project wide PDC Latency in milliseconds and samples A readout of the per track or bus PDC Latency is now available in the Track Inspector’s track properties window. This reports max latency for that track/bus signal path in milliseconds and samples. Please note that the PDC latency value is calculated during playback and only updates in the UI when playback is stopped. PDC override only applies to input monitored audio tracks and instrument tracks. Aux tracks are not affected by PDC override anymore. Plugin Latency Tooltips Plugin, FX Rack, Prochannel strip and modules all display tooltips showing the plugin lookahead latency when present. Updated Docked Synth Rack and New Bypass Functionality There are several improvements to the synth rack to allow managing large synth projects more efficiently. This allows you to quickly bypass and free memory and CPU resources allocated to synths, or create templates with bypassed synths and bring them online on demand. The docked version of the synth rack has been updated to expose a synth Bypass button. By default, the bypass button will unload the synth when the instrument is bypassed, and also archive all related tracks to save CPU. The synth will be reloaded again and tracks unarchived when the synth is unbypassed. The Synth Rack menu and the synth strip context menus have been redesigned to show the relevant functions: Replace Synth is now available via the synth context menu. Bypass All Synths and Unbypass All Synths can be used to quickly bypass all instruments in the Synth Rack. Note that bypass/unbypass can take a while on projects with large numbers of synths if they are big. The progress is shown in the Control Bar Transport module. You may cancel a long bypass/unbypass operation by pressing the ESC key. Unload and Archive preferences can be set in the synth rack menu. The preset picker has been removed from the docked synth rack to save space. (The undocked version of the rack will still show it). This control is largely obsolete, since most instruments handle preset management is handled inside the synth UI. Import and Export Tempo Map to/from MIDI Files To import a tempo map from a MIDI file, right-click the Tempo track and select Import Tempo Map from MIDI File. Import replaces the current tempo track with any tempos in the MIDI file. To export a project's tempo map to a MIDI file, right-click the Tempo track and select Export Tempo Map to MIDI File. Export saves the tempo track to a MIDI file, without saving any other tracks or events. External Insert Improvements External insert ping signal is now shown on both the send and return meter in the EI user interface. This makes it easier to troubleshoot connection of the return port correctly. External insert now supports using friendly names. As long as the friendly name is not changed, you may switch between using friendly driver names and default names without losing the external insert I/O assignments. Misc.: Improved and faster Nudge performance. Quick Grouping of Mute, Solo, and Archive buttons on track folders. ProChannel EQ flyout animation has been removed to make it open faster. Prevent Quick Start Screen from opening during mixdown or export. Fixed: Project load time slows down because audio engine starts running before the project has finished initializing Fixed: Playback is slow to begin after build 602 Fixed: Tempo envelope incorrect after inserting node in attached project Fixed: Quick grouping not working properly with Folders Fixed: Slow clip nudge with articulations in project Fixed: Synth Rack Fails to display Solo State when Duplicating Synth Fixed: Tools HUD uses old icons Fixed: (Regression) Jump images in tempo inspector are not disappearing when mouse leaves Fixed: Synth icons draw incorrectly in Synth Rack when vertically scrolled Fixed: Moving an effect's position within the same FX bin orphans existing envelopes Fixed: Node nudge in PRV sometimes misses notes from selection Fixed: (Regression) SVG scaled color metering always showing overload Fixed: Crash when attempting to open articulation/articulation lane context menu. Fixed: With plugin load balancing, automation can render incorrectly in delay compensated projects Fixed: Synth Rack fails to display Solo state when duplicating synth Fixed: (Regression) Export to Split Mono fails in Sonar Fixed: PDC override stops working after playback if override on playback is disabled Fixed: Scrolling PRV Track Strips fails to redraw correctly Fixed: Project opens with docked Browser drawing incorrectly opening project Fixed: Incorrect view layout after docking Synth Rack at top Fixed: Tempo node tooltip displays incorrect text size while dragging Fixed: Incorrect VocalSync UI layout when Prefs display scale is not 100% Fixed: Incorrect Synth Rack layout after docking Help Module at top Fixed: Opening Sonar with Start Screen set to show Product Updates results in unexpected toasts Fixed: (Regression) Docking layout issues after docking Browser at bottom Fixed: Project search box in quick start can't find strings in file names Fixed: Crash loading ProChannel FX Chain Preset Fixed: Synth Rack title overlaps Settings button when docked left on 4K/175% display Fixed: (Regression) Incorrect Synth Rack menu bar layout when undocked Fixed: Synth Rack has an unexpected 1px border at the bottom when collapsed Fixed: Unable to adjust CV strip controls with the mouse wheel when scrolled to the right Fixed: Projects saved with external inserts can lose port selection when using or toggling friendly device names Fixed: Mousewheel scroll of Console view stops working unexpectedly Fixed: Crash when using mouse scroll wheel in Console view Fixed: Playback loses sync with PDC enabled Fixed: Default VST3 Path not watched on clean system installation Please give us feedback on this release. 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