Cakewalk Sonar Paid Membership Buffer question

[Larry T.]

10 hours ago, Wookiee said:

@Larry T., does the buffer setting get changed by other apps? I have noticed running standalone Arturia apps forces my Clarett to 512. But running Sonar pushes back to either 128 or 96 which ever I left Sonar in.

Hi Wookiee. It may be an Arturia issue that manifests when the Focusrite Asio driver is selected? 

It seems the only time the Buffer setting gets changed is when I use the Focusrite Asio driver.

I'll check the Buffer setting every time I open Cakewalk Sonar Paid membership and post results. 

Thanks

[Larry T.]

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

In ASIO mode buffer size is not stored by the host. It is global across all applications and managed by the ASIO driver.
Sonar does not save or change the buffer size when the application starts up. It has never done so - in fact many ASIO drivers don’t even allow the host to change the buffer size. If its changing on you some other application is modifying it.

Thanks. It's sure looking like this is a Focusrite issue.

[Wookiee]

4 minutes ago, Larry T. said:

It may be an Arturia issue that manifests when the Focusrite Asio driver is selected? 

Only happens when I use one of their, Arturia, instruments Standalone, in Sonar it is fine no changes. 

[Larry T.]

2 hours ago, Bass Guitar said:

Focusrite provides very good quality instructions with their interfaces. 

And not sure if the solo comes with the software mixer, it didn’t in the past. 
 

One way or the other the instructions will explain how to open either the mixer or the control panel. That is where you can choose the correct buffer settings and sample rate. 
 

Then you should also set up Windows sound settings to use the same sample rate as well. 
 

Then lastly you go into preferences of all your audio and video apps and also set default sample rate. 
 

You should not have to set the buffer settings in each app. That setting is only there for when you are not using a proper interface and driver. 

Thanks Bass Guitar. 

I've never checked to see if my Scarlett Solo has the software mixer but I will.

I'll look to see about setting the Focusrite Asio Buffer in my Scarlett Solo. 

I've looked in my Windows 11 audio settings but didn't find a setting to set the sample rate....what would I set it to...I'm not very well versed in this tech area 🤔

Edited Saturday at 05:27 PM by Larry T.

[OutrageProductions]

Windows 11: <Sound> control panel, [choose either] <Recording> or <Playback> tab, select desired Input/Output device, select <Properties> [new dialog opens for chosen device input/output], go to <Advanced> tab, chose desired channel/bit rate/sample freq.

[Wookiee]

@OutrageProductions in windows sound I have found it best, and the general recommendations are that " Exclusive control" is disabled. Just what I have found.

[OutrageProductions]

9 hours ago, Wookiee said:

@OutrageProductions in windows sound I have found it best, and the general recommendations are that " Exclusive control" is disabled. Just what I have found.

If one uses Windows audio for anything, yes, agreed. However... for decades, all my machines send system audio and apps through my ASIO devices exclusively. 

Edited Sunday at 04:17 PM by OutrageProductions

[Larry T.]

From what I can tell by the following data the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Generation driver is changing my Windows 11 Cakewalk Sonar Paid membership MME (32 bit) Buffer setting:

This is my Buffer setting that has been fine the last few days without using the Focusrite Solo:

 

This is my Buffer setting after using the Focusrite Solo for some recordings:

 

This is my Buffer setting after I changed back to the MME (32 bit) Windows driver and manually reset it:

Edited Sunday at 10:29 PM by Larry T.

[OutrageProductions]

Your lowest RTL (round trip latency) using the Realtek is 30 milliseconds. 

If you use the actual ASIO driver and your Focusrite for I/O, you should be able to get that RTL comfortably below 10 milliseconds. 

I use a Presonus I/O with ASIO drivers and have a RTL of 7.4ms without choking.

[Bass Guitar]

It is recommended by Cakewalk to avoid the Realtech ASIO driver. That is what is causing this issue. 
Best to disable that driver and perhaps remove it from the register. 

[Starship Krupa]

On 9/5/2025 at 7:57 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

There is no Sonar platinum or sonar premium. There is only a single Sonar now.

It would be nice if, for clarity's sake, free tier and membership versions had names that would distinguish one from the other. I like "Sonar Premium" for the one that has all the features. Or even "Sonar Full." Even if they're not official, we have to call them something.

SPlat and CbB were widely used abbreviations that helped readers know what someone was using.

I hereby propose to the forum "SoFT" as the abbreviation for Sonar Free Tier.

The membership version could be "SoPre," maybe?

[Amberwolf]

28 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

It would be nice if, for clarity's sake, free tier and membership versions had names that would distinguish one from the other.

I would guess that the company itelf just thinks of them as Sonar Free and Sonar Paid.

 

28 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

I hereby propose to the forum "SoFT" as the abbreviation for Sonar Free Tier.

The membership version could be "SoPre," maybe?

 

SoFree and SoPaid don't have quite the same ring, do they?

 

But...they're kind of funny. (but I'm weird, so)

 

If you want to be subtle you could use sonar and $onar.   

[Starship Krupa]

8 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

If you want to be subtle you could use sonar and $onar

The lad is on fire.

Okay, new set of contenders for fanonical abbreviations:

"$onar" for the paid tier and "SoFT" for the freebie.

[David Baay]

12 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

If you want to be subtle you could use sonar and $onar. 

How about Snr for the free tier with the abbreviated feature set.

[Bass Guitar]

When CbB didn’t have any official abbreviations my favourite was “Bonar”. 

Roland versions were a normal software numbering system but then they changed the graphics and released the X series and started over. But was pretty easy to distinguish between Sonar 3 and X3. 
Gibson took over I think with X2 but totally scrapped the numbers with the release of Platinum series.
This has created confusion over which version a user is talking about ever since then. 

The version numbers are long and I personally have never managed to remember what the version I was using was. 

At least changing the name from Platinum to Cakewalk was easy but then people always had to be asked what version they were referring to. 

Deciding to return to calling it Sonar now has created even more confusion because there are still people using Gibson versions as well as even if someone is using the new Sonar they still seem to call it Cakewalk or very often Bandlab. 
 

I like dates so I’ve been calling it Sonar 2025. 

I like that-  $onar!  That might catch on. 

 

 

[David Baay]

17 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

It would be nice if, for clarity's sake, free tier and membership versions had names that would distinguish one from the other.

In truth I don't think there's actaully much of need to distinguish them except when the discussion is about what features are excluded from Snr.

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, David Baay said:

In truth I don't think there's actaully much of need to distinguish them except when the discussion is about what features are excluded from Snr.

I see what you did there. I like that, too.

"Snr" being the one with a few bits missing.