New Sonar Sound Engine

[Helios.G]

I'm still here fiddling with new sonar and trying to work with it best I can.  The UI is still an issue for me, but that aside, I'm trying to be fair with my assessment.  Far as I can tell it runs way better on cpu that CBB did, by a lot.  I have 2 systems  I run projects on.  One is a decently specked desktop and the other is a nice, but not very powerful laptop.  I've been impressed with how easily I've been able to work in sonar on my laptop rig with projects that would make it struggle in the past.  Also, and this is the main point of my post, I opened up a project yesterday simultaneously in CBB and New Sonar to test UI settings.  What surprised me the most was that on playback, the sonar version of the product had better fidelity.  Is that a placebo effect in my head?  Am I hearing things? Or does new sonar legitimately process audio "better" than CBB/Cakewalk?  Any thoughts?

[Colin Nicholls]

You should probably render a mix from each application and then compare by inverting the phase of one of them - that is the only objective way to identify differences.

I don't recall reading or hearing about any engine changes that would affect the sound apart from what I will mention below. If you're hearing a qualitative difference, it pretty much has to be a difference in plugins (plug-in versions?) or choice of sculpting in ProChannel, etc.

One difference you might notice is that, under stress, you may get pops, crackles, drop-outs. With an improved multithreading engine or otherwise optimized, you might no longer hear such artifacts. But I suspect that isn't what you're referring to.

Always compare applications with no other apps running, eg. don't have a web browser open in the background with the Cakewalk Forum open :-). Browsers can use unpredictable amounts of memory as they cache stuff (by design). So you want to make sure as much of the machines resources are available to CbB or Sonar as possible.

[Helios.G]

6 minutes ago, Colin Nicholls said:

You should probably render a mix from each application and then compare by inverting the phase of one of them - that is the only objective way to identify differences.

I don't recall reading or hearing about any engine changes that would affect the sound apart from what I will mention below. If you're hearing a qualitative difference, it pretty much has to be a difference in plugins (plug-in versions?) or choice of sculpting in ProChannel, etc.

One difference you might notice is that, under stress, you may get pops, crackles, drop-outs. With an improved multithreading engine or otherwise optimized, you might no longer hear such artifacts. But I suspect that isn't what you're referring to.

Always compare applications with no other apps running, eg. don't have a web browser open in the background with the Cakewalk Forum open :-). Browsers can use unpredictable amounts of memory as they cache stuff (by design). So you want to make sure as much of the machines resources are available to CbB or Sonar as possible.

I'm gonna try that null test and report back later, should've done that from the start, good catch.

[John Vere]

And if you have one, use a decibel meter. Louder always sounds better. 

[David Baay]

2 hours ago, Helios.G said:

What surprised me the most was that on playback, the sonar version of the product had better fidelity.

Yes, definitely 20-40% better. ;^)

[Helios.G]

1 hour ago, Colin Nicholls said:

You should probably render a mix from each application and then compare by inverting the phase of one of them - that is the only objective way to identify differences.

I don't recall reading or hearing about any engine changes that would affect the sound apart from what I will mention below. If you're hearing a qualitative difference, it pretty much has to be a difference in plugins (plug-in versions?) or choice of sculpting in ProChannel, etc.

One difference you might notice is that, under stress, you may get pops, crackles, drop-outs. With an improved multithreading engine or otherwise optimized, you might no longer hear such artifacts. But I suspect that isn't what you're referring to.

Always compare applications with no other apps running, eg. don't have a web browser open in the background with the Cakewalk Forum open :-). Browsers can use unpredictable amounts of memory as they cache stuff (by design). So you want to make sure as much of the machines resources are available to CbB or Sonar as possible.

Hey Colin, Null test confirmed you were right.  Probably should've done that from the get go.   Thanks for he help.

[Noel Borthwick]

11 hours ago, Helios.G said:

.  What surprised me the most was that on playback, the sonar version of the product had better fidelity.  Is that a placebo effect in my head?  Am I hearing things? Or does new sonar legitimately process audio "better" than CBB/Cakewalk?  Any thoughts?

While there are no direct fidelity changes other than plug-in up sampling (assuming that is enabled), if you were driving a very loaded project you may be getting missed buffers in cbb that no longer happen in sonar thanks to the major performance enhancements. Missed buffers or small dropouts can lead to distribution in the audio. Is possible that this is what you are hearing different. 

 

[Noel Borthwick]

19 hours ago, Helios.G said:

Hey Colin, Null test confirmed you were right.  Probably should've done that from the get go.   Thanks for he help.

A null test won't catch playback related issues caused by dropouts that i mentioned above. The dropouts will null too lol

An easy test to show the effect of dropouts is to lower your latency as low as it can go on a heavy project. You will start to hear distortion as it gets too much for the CPU.

In general however the sound of realtime audio processing is less important than the sound of rendered audio since that is immune to dropouts or performance related artifacts.  Of course if you are using it live thats a different issue.

[Noel Borthwick]

10 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

You should probably render a mix from each application and then compare by inverting the phase of one of them - that is the only objective way to identify differences.

I don't recall reading or hearing about any engine changes that would affect the sound apart from what I will mention below. If you're hearing a qualitative difference, it pretty much has to be a difference in plugins (plug-in versions?) or choice of sculpting in ProChannel, etc.

One difference you might notice is that, under stress, you may get pops, crackles, drop-outs. With an improved multithreading engine or otherwise optimized, you might no longer hear such artifacts. But I suspect that isn't what you're referring to.

Always compare applications with no other apps running, eg. don't have a web browser open in the background with the Cakewalk Forum open :-). Browsers can use unpredictable amounts of memory as they cache stuff (by design). So you want to make sure as much of the machines resources are available to CbB or Sonar as possible.

In addition to this some plugins attempt to throttle DSP based on workload so it's conceivable that it could change the quality when it's more efficient . This doesn't apply to rendered audio obviously.

[user6970180344145356]

I've
- disabled the onboard sound on my motherboard via BIOS,

-made sure my threads don't "park", (high perf mode)
- made sure my USB's don't go to sleep,
-have my media files on a separate fast SSD drive,
-made sure my startup menu was clean and prevented a lot of background apps from starting at startup
but none of that has stopped my fairly high performance windows 10 pc from clicking and popping while playing back audio where there aren't that many tracks playing or FX engaged.

The ONLY thing that stops it is forcing Cakewalk or Sonar to load with "Real-Time" app priority (which you can see in Task Manager). So, I know there is SOMETHING that seems to be competing for resources but I'm not sure what it is. Any clues or suggestions from other users who have encountered the same?  

[reginaldStjohn]

There is a program called LatencyMon by a company called Resplendant,. Run that while playing your project and see if it sees any red flags.

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon