Morten Saether Posted November 13 Share Posted November 13 New in Sonar 2024.11 build 30.11.0.097: This release continues our quest to further improve and optimize the audio engine, which can greatly reduce the CPU load at very low latency and improve performance with large projects. It also includes other performance improvements, faster scrolling in console view, CPU core selection, and several new features like Console View and Track Inspector module resizing, Time+ parameter on MIDI tracks can be set in milliseconds or ticks, Control Bar module expand/collapse via double-click, improved device change notifications, improved application error handling and crash detection/recovery, improvements and optimizations for Mackie HUI control surfaces, a redesigned Light color scheme and more. User Interface and Editing Console View and Track Inspector module resizing You can now resize the Volume, Sends, and FX Rack modules vertically by dragging the splitter bar handles located above the modules. Module sizes are persisted per project. When the Volume module is at its smallest size, the fader turns into a knob. To restore the default module size, double-click the drag handle. Time+ parameter on MIDI tracks can be set in milliseconds or ticks The The Time+ control on MIDI tracks allow you to apply an offset to the start time of the events in the track. You can now specify the Time+ offset value in milliseconds or ticks. To toggle between ticks and milliseconds, long press or right-click the Time+ control and select the desired format on the popup menu. When using milliseconds, a "ms" suffix is used. When using ticks, no suffix is used. The max values are as follows: Ticks: +/-61440 (equal to 16 measures in 4/4 time with 960 ticks per beat) Milliseconds: +/-1000ms Note: During playback, any event that would be negatively delayed before 1:01:000 will be clamped to 1:01:000. Control Bar module expand/collapse via double-click To expand/collapse a single Control Bar module, double-click the module. Updated Light color scheme The Light color scheme has been completely redesigned. Known issue: poor contrast with volume envelopes (you can manually change the envelope color in Edit > Preferences > Customization - Colors). This will be addressed in a future update. Improvements to grid line colors The contrast has been adjusted for grid lines to make them more visible in dark and light color schemes. Optimizations Performance Improvements Further optimizations for VST processing to streamline time reporting to plugins. This can greatly reduce the CPU load at very low latency when running many plugins. In testing, high load projects that wouldn't play at 128 samples now play glitch free. Console view horizontal scrolling with many tracks and buses is greatly improved. Further optimizations for high track/plugin count projects Performance improvements for Aux Tracks routed from Synth outputs Performance improvements for audio effects CPU Core Selection With the ARM Snapdragon platform being commonly used for Surface devices and also several Intel Chipsets supporting e-cores, it has now become commonplace to have heterogeneous systems with efficiency cores and performance cores in use. Heterogeneous systems support a combination of e-cores and p-cores. p-cores are high power “performance” cores and e-cores are “efficiency” cores. p-cores generally run faster than e-cores at the expense of consuming more CPU power. While efficiency cores are cost effective and can improve general responsiveness of applications while consuming less power, at low latency this can create performance problems due to load imbalances when mixing and matching e-cores with p-cores. As such, it's better to deprioritize use of e-cores for low latency applications. There are two new configuration variables that allow Sonar more fine-grained control over these CPU resources. These variables can be referenced through Preferences | Audio configuration. Sonar will now favor p-cores over e-cores and first use p-cores when available. CoreSelectionMethod This aud.ini variable specifies how Sonar chooses preferred cores: 0 = No preference When this is selected, Sonar makes no attempt to specify which cores should be used for audio engine threads. 1 = Requests preferred core Specifies preferred per thread cores. This is the default option and is similar to the now deprecated "UseIdealProcessor" variable. Note that this request is only a hint and as a result the core assignment may be overridden by the operating system. 2 = Restrict to preferred core This is similar to 1, but it actually restricts operation of the engine threads to only run on the specified cores. In this case the OS will not change core assignment. Depending on your CPU this option may allow the engine to run more efficiently without the overhead of its threads being switched to other cores by Windows. This can lead to lower CPU use in general. ExcludeEfficiencyCores Setting this variable to True, instructs Sonar to aggressively exclude efficiency cores (e-cores) from audio processing and to only use p-cores. This can be beneficial since all cores will now have equal performance and as a result you may see better load balancing or better low latency performance. Note that if you have insufficient p-cores you may get worse performance by excluding e-cores completely. Usability and Workflow Improved device change notifications Sonar shows when devices are plugged/unplugged. This has been changed to a toast notification instead of a dialog to avoid blocking the user interface. Since these notifications originate from the OS, there is no way for Sonar to know whether a specific device applies to your setup. If you see notifications for devices which you don't use, you can now choose to ignore a specific device. Once you ignore a specific device, all plug/unplug notifications for that device will be ignored. You can use this to filter unnecessary notifications. Improved crash recovery When a crash is detected, Sonar now attempts to close any files that have been opened for recording, before terminating the application. This allows the wave files to be properly saved and terminated allowing you to reimport the files imported from the audio folder manually, in the event of a crash. Improved application error handling and crash detection Sonar has integrated error reporting and an Exception Severity setting. While exception severity values of 3 and higher can be useful to preemptively catch certain crashes, it was found that this could occasionally aggressively report crashes that are actually internally handled by the OS or certain plugins. As a result, Sonar defaults to a value of 1 (Unhandled errors). In this release, Sonar's error management has been greatly improved to resolve some stability issues and detect several more classes of errors by default, without the need to boost the ExceptionHandlingSeverity. The new mechanism should resolve issues where crashes could silently occur with Windows terminating the app without an error report or giving you a chance to save your work. Errors are now detected in the UI, as well as the engine and plugins in more cases. In all cases a crash dialog will be shown and a minidump and error log will be saved to the crash reports folder at %appdata%\Cakewalk\Sonar\MiniDumps. The crash dialog and error log format has also been improved to show more information for the new error types. Misc.: Control surface ports are excluded from Zero Controllers When Play Stops Improvements and optimizations for Mackie HUI control surface Improve the Fader resolution / responsiveness in HUI mode Fix send controls when using Novation LaunchKey MK4 in HUI mode Optimizations for engine worker threads to simplify error handling Optimizations for dragging multitrack MIDI data in the Piano Roll view; this is now orders of magnitude faster MIDI activity on taskbar is disabled by default (can be re-enabled if needed in Edit > Preferences > Customization - Display) Refreshed Sonitus:delay plugin, resolving stability issues Fixed: Sonitus:delay crashes Sonar at higher sample rates like 96K when delay time is high Fixed: When a crash occurs Sonar should close any wave files being recorded Fixed: Crash adding nodes in Tempo track Fixed: Null Pointer Crash after doing Clean Audio Folder Fixed: Sonar crashes when downloading an online project when app is not activated Fixed: Crash loading ProChannel preset with Spectral Analyzer Fixed: Crash opening project with Loop Construction View Fixed: Crash patching audio with Cherry Audio Voltage Modular Fixed: Sends context menu on Console view/inspector strips not using undoable send commands Fixed: After clicking hardware output in Console view, Inspector fails to focus correctly Fixed: Console view fails to display ProChannel Post FX State Correctly on project open Fixed: ALT clicking aux track number in Console view doesn't select all upstream tracks Fixed: EQ plot nodes are difficult to click on high DPI displays Fixed: Piano Roll view doesn't repaint when vertically scrolling with GPU acceleration enabled Fixed: Piano Roll view fails to draw correctly when scrolling with GPU Acceleration disabled Fixed: Crash when deleting a note in the Piano Roll view Fixed: Piano Roll view does not draw correctly while scrolling during playback with GPU accel enabled Fixed: CC events skipped when drag moving notes in Piano Roll view Fixed: Aim Assist not working in Piano Roll view Articulations lane Fixed: Lag dragging in Piano Roll view when both Drum pane and the Note pane are open Fixed: Unable to see notes while drawing in inline Piano Roll Fixed: Horizontal mouse zoom in Drum Grid causes controller lane to shrink Fixed: Chase MIDI does not send aftertouch in order Fixed: Dragging a MIDI clip out to export it stops the audio engine and never resumes it Fixed: Intermittent deadlock sending hardware MIDI Fixed: Attempting to Nudge a frozen Simple Instrument Track clip moves the MIDI clip instead of the audio clip Fixed: Cropped MIDI clip resizes unexpectedly after splitting note Fixed: Step Sequencer pattern presets pnly play first 4 beats Fixed: Step record moves playhead to wrong location Fixed: Step sequencer clips not working with track delay Fixed: Clip selection is inconsistent with tracks containing Articulation maps Fixed: Incorrect tool selected when using Crop tool and moving mouse to beginning of clip Fixed: Pasting grouped clips in lanes to a new project results in all clips put in the same group Fixed: Clip length changing after moving pitch of cropped note in user project Fixed: Newly inserted sends are shown in tracks but not buses Fixed: Track view incorrect track/bus height after adding send Fixed: Minimized track heights not persisted correctly on high DPI displays Fixed: Repeat of Insert Instrument Fails to add second instance correctly Fixed: Instruments fail to restart consistently in attached project after deleting from synth rack Fixed: Arranger selection incorrect when project start / end is less than section extents Fixed: Section Ripple Delete with auto-xfade deletes more than it should in user project Fixed: Ripple Edit All delete erroneously creates end marker Fixed: Project fails to stop with Stop At Project End in user project Fixed: Control surface send shows stereo port name when send is to mono output Fixed: HUI controller Send control is mapped incorrectly to PAN Fixed: Intermittent notification of dirty project from Start Screen preview Fixed: Device change notifications need improvement to be less intrusive and allow ignoring specific notifications Fixed: Time Ruler selection drawing issue Fixed: Meter peak doesn't follow color scheme Fixed: Export to BandLab incorrectly exports instrument tracks Fixed: Control Bar Sync module Audio Sync button menu closes after opening when module is collapsed Fixed: Don't change active track if you're lassoing with CTRL down and the existing active track is already in the selection Fixed: Unexpected noise/dropout when duplicating clips during playback Fixed: Tempo Track repainting far too often, causing issues with clips view updates during zoom/playback Fixed: Unable to focus track in Track view if control surface is set to Console view, and track is hidden in Console view Fixed: [Regression] Unable to quick group delete sends from Track view Bus pane Fixed: [Regression] When range splitting clips, selection is drawn incorrectly after trimming completes Fixed: [Regression] Fixed regression for recording with Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record Fixed: [Regression] BFD3 groove preview outputs noise when transport is not rolling Fixed: [Regression] Asserts when opening ProChannel and ProChannel EQ spectrum analyzer doesn't refresh Fixed: [Regression] CTRL + LEFT button click/drag no longer adjusts clip gain Please give us feedback on this release. 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