Sample preview in browser is unreliable

[Skelm]

Hi,

Selecting a sample in the media browser, and playing it (not the project) works, but as soon as I play the project the sample is often silenced. I tested it in the same project in the old Cakewalk by Bandlab and it seems to always work, but in the new Sonar it seems to work very sporadically - one sample will play, the next sample won't play and then the first sample won't play. My settings were imported from Cakewalk, so they should all be the same. Any ideas?

[Will.]

48 minutes ago, Skelm said:

Hi,

Selecting a sample in the media browser, and playing it (not the project) works, but as soon as I play the project the sample is often silenced. I tested it in the same project in the old Cakewalk by Bandlab and it seems to always work, but in the new Sonar it seems to work very sporadically - one sample will play, the next sample won't play and then the first sample won't play. My settings were imported from Cakewalk, so they should all be the same. Any ideas?

Open the browser > right click on the Media Tab and choose how you want to preview your samples.

[David Baay]

I did a quick test here and it seemed to be working as expected.

When you're not hearing the preview, verify there's signal on the Preview bus.

Are you soloing anything when this happens?

 

 

[Skelm]

Hi Will, David,

The problem is intermittent - I have made a short video where you can hear the sample play on its own, then it plays along with the track, and then stops playing after switching to another sample and back. I demonstrate it twice in the video. Unfortunately I can't get the video file size small enough to attach here, but I have uploaded a copy to Google Drive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nk883xKjPVBtJdI6grYg3Aj_In6QAtVg/view?usp=sharing

 

[David Baay]

I can't see clearly what's going on in your video. Is the Play button in the Browser turning off when this happens?

I tried to repro that and the only problem I encountered when switching loops on the fly was that the new loop would sometimes play out of sync momentarily until the project returned to the start of a loop region I had set in the project.

This isn't a feature I normally use so I don't have  good feel for how solid it is, and it may well be related to the specific loops you're using. I just created a few quick Groove Clips from my own project content

[Skelm]

Hi,

No, the browser play button stays on, just the audio stops sounding. It could be something about the specific audio files, though they are from a commercial library. 

[David Baay]

If want to zip up a handful of them and PM them to me, I can have a quick go. The issue may also be tempo - and/or ASIO buffer-specific.

You never answered whether you continue to see signal level on the Preview bus...? If you don't have a dedicated Preview bus, add one, and right-click to set it as Preview.

[mgustavo]

Hi, I don't know if this helps, but last week I had this issue, which I already had some years ago. When I clicked on Wav files for automatic preview on browser the sound would only last a few seconds. However other audio format like MP3 didn't have problems.

However this week I started using a new computer which is a bit better than my notebook and I saw the issue doesn't occur.
(*) notebook is Core i5 4200, DDR3 memory and SSD SATA, while new PC is i5 8500, DDR4 mem and SSD m2. Could this be related?

Edited August 27 by mgustavo

[Skelm]

Hi David,

No signal on the preview bus, but the browser play button stayed illuminated. Had to click it on and off a few times to get playback to start again. I will upload a couple of the files a bit later, I appreciate the offer to check, thanks.

[Skelm]

Hi mgustavo,

Thanks, this is also a new PC (less than 6 months old) and as far as I can tell the same problem doesn't happen in Cakewalk by Bandlab. 

[Skelm]

Hi David

Apologies for the delay, haven't had much studio time recently. I am attaching 2 files that display this behaviour - they play at first but soon stop playing, only to restart when the main project playback is stopped and started again. 

 

Example loops.zip

Edited Friday at 01:50 PM by Skelm

[57Gregy]

On 8/27/2025 at 3:03 PM, David Baay said:

If want to zip up a handful of them and PM them to me, I can have a quick go. The issue may also be tempo - and/or ASIO buffer-specific.

You never answered whether you continue to see signal level on the Preview bus...? If you don't have a dedicated Preview bus, add one, and right-click to set it as Preview.

 

10 hours ago, Skelm said:

Hi David

Apologies for the delay, haven't had much studio time recently. I am attaching 2 files that display this behaviour - they play at first but soon stop playing, only to restart when the main project playback is stopped and started again. 

 

Example loops.zip 2.69 MB · 0 downloads

Quoting will cause a notification for him the next time he checks in.

[Skelm]

Thanks, 57Gregy

[David Baay]

On 9/12/2025 at 7:49 AM, Skelm said:

I am attaching 2 files that display this behaviour - they play at first but soon stop playing, only to restart when the main project playback is stopped and started again. 

I think there must be some issue with the metadata in the files that tells Sonar they're 'loops'. They do behave like loops when dragged into a project and rolled out, but the preview basically stops when the file ends as it would with an audio file that has no looping metadata added. You might need to take this up with loop vendor.

Try replacing your files with these - bounced and converted to Groove Clip loops:

EDIT: Just realized I did not export these loops correctly, and the looping info was lost. Fixed by saving from Loop Construction view. I should also note that these are 48kHz where the originals were 44.1kHz.

 

Edited yesterday at 05:24 PM by David Baay

[Amberwolf]

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

I think there must be some issue with the metadata in the files that tells Sonar they're 'loops'. They do behave like loops when dragged into a project and rolled out, but the preview basically stops when the file ends as it would with an audio file that has no looping metadata added. You might need to take this up with loop vendor.

 

(You may already know this, but for other readers that don't):  Wave files can be "acidized", so that Sonar knows they are intended to be looped, and what their looping properties are, including their root key (so if you have key changes these will be followed during loop playback in various portions of the song). 

By default wave files do not have this information in them, and virtually none of the sound libraries I've run across (about 1TB of them in the last couple of years, I think, mostly from Ghosthack, Resonance, BlackOctopus, WAProductions, SampleTraxx, ImageSounds, HollywoodAudioDesign, Cymatics) have acidized their files, so when dropped into any audio editor or DAW, you have to manually turn on the looping function for each clip (wave file) and set it's properties.  

Without acidization, the only info the DAW has is sample rate and bit depth and file length, AFAICR.

 

However, this shouldn't be the OP's problem, because the said that in CbB they did not have the problem, only in Sonar.   

My guess is that, assuming the identical files behave differently in the same project in CbB vs Sonar, that there is an issue in Sonar itself for consistently reading the acidization properties of the file.  Without an actual cut-down-to-just-the-problem project file from the OP, including the files themselves, can't say for sure.   If @Skelm can post such a project, then those here with CbB and Sonar can verify if this is the case, and perhaps work out what the specific difference is?

Edited Saturday at 08:41 PM by Amberwolf

[David Baay]

2 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

in CbB they did not have the problem, only in Sonar.   

On getting back to this I forgot the OP has indicated it wasn't a problem in CbB. I don't have CbB on this machine but I just checked Platinum, and indeed they preview okay there. I don't know offhand how to determine what tool/method was used to embed the looping metadata and whether they are consistent with some standard/convention.

@msmcleod might be able to download the files and have a look.

[Amberwolf]

A quick search finds this page https://filehelper.com/view  that shows these properties.  I don't know how accurate it's interpretation is.  It shows "adder" is an acidized file, but that "amped" is not.  There are probably better waveheader viewers or analyzers. 

Name:HTHT_125_Hat_Loop_Adder.wav

MIME type:audio/wav

Size:1 MB

Modified:Sep 6, 2023, 2:41 AM

Encoding:Microsoft PCM

Num Channels:2

Sample Rate:44100

Avg Bytes Per Sec:264600

Bits Per Sample:24

Acidizer Flags:Stretch, Disk-based, High octave

Root Note:Unknown (0)

Beats:999977

Meter:4/4

Tempo:125

Duration:3.85 s

 

Name:HTHT_125_Hat_Loop_Amped.wav

MIME type:audio/wav

Size:2 MB

Modified:Sep 6, 2023, 2:41 AM

[Skelm]

Hi David, Amberwolf,

Thanks for taking the time to look at this. As I understand the browser preview function, even ordinary wav files can be continuously previewed as a loop without necessarily being "acidized" - in CbB, the browser would pretty much attempt to sync any file to the current project while previewing (with that setting enabled). Dropping the wav files into the project would still require groove clip looping to be applied, unless the file was already "acidized". Something seems to have changed in Sonar to make this previewing a bit more picky in terms of which files it will play and which files either don't preview, or preview for a time and then go silent. I will try and create a minimal project where this can be easily reproduced, hopefully that will help to pinpoint the issue. I appreciate the input!

[Skelm]

9 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

A quick search finds this page https://filehelper.com/view  that shows these properties.  I don't know how accurate it's interpretation is.  It shows "adder" is an acidized file, but that "amped" is not.  There are probably better waveheader viewers or analyzers. 

Name:HTHT_125_Hat_Loop_Adder.wav

MIME type:audio/wav

Size:1 MB

Modified:Sep 6, 2023, 2:41 AM

Encoding:Microsoft PCM

Num Channels:2

Sample Rate:44100

Avg Bytes Per Sec:264600

Bits Per Sample:24

Acidizer Flags:Stretch, Disk-based, High octave

Root Note:Unknown (0)

Beats:999977

Meter:4/4

Tempo:125

Duration:3.85 s

 

Name:HTHT_125_Hat_Loop_Amped.wav

MIME type:audio/wav

Size:2 MB

Modified:Sep 6, 2023, 2:41 AM

This is very strange, as these 2 files are from the same folder in the same sample library, from h2rogen if I recall correctly.

[David Baay]

8 hours ago, Skelm said:

As I understand the browser preview function, even ordinary wav files can be continuously previewed as a loop without necessarily being "acidized" - in CbB, the browser would pretty much attempt to sync any file to the current project while previewing (with that setting enabled).

I had forgotten the previewer could automatically stretch and loop 'unlooped' audio files. I verified this by dropping a 1-bar click into the browser and changing project tempo while previewing it.  But any incorrect "Acidizer Flags" in the header would likely override that.

"Beats:999977" certainly looks a little problematic.

EDIT: Also just noticed this is wrong:

"Duration:3.85 s"

Should be 3.84

 

Edited yesterday at 05:22 PM by David Baay