System Configuration; The Wave Profiler; Enabling And Disabling Audio Devices - CAKEWALK SONAR User Manual

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System Configuration

This section covers optimizing your system configuration to work with SONAR.

The Wave Profiler

The Wave Profiler is a utility that analyzes the sound cards in your computer and determines the best
DMA (Direct Memory Access) settings for communicating with SONAR. These DMA settings are
displayed in samples, at the sample rates and bit depths your sound card supports. The Wave Profiler
also sets a value in milliseconds for the Buffer Slider, which controls mixing latency. The Wave Profiler
is unnecessary if you are using an ASIO driver.
The DMA settings are used to ensure that a project that contains both MIDI and digital audio plays
back in tight synchronization. If SONAR is not configured properly with your audio device's DMA
settings, MIDI and digital audio material may not play back correctly.
Note to users of previous Cakewalk products: The DMA settings in versions of Cakewalk prior to
SONAR 1.0 were displayed in bytes rather than samples. Using your previous DMA settings in SONAR
will not work. Try the settings that wave profiler displays, and if you are not satisfied, only then
attempt to optimize your settings.
The Wave Profiler utility runs automatically the first time you run SONAR. The wave profiler
determines the best DMA settings for the supported bit depths and sample rates of your sound card.
Note: It is possible to load a 48 kHz project when you are using a sound card that does not support 48
kHz. SONAR does not warn you when you do this. Your project may crash, or it may appear to record
audio when your project is not actually recording.
All of your audio settings are listed in the Audio Options dialog box, which you open with the Options-
Audio command. The following list summarizes all the settings that the Wave Profiler sets. You can
override all of them except what audio drivers are listed in the Drivers tab:
• Input and output drivers
• DMA buffer sizes (in samples)
• Mixing latency
If you experience MIDI and audio synchronization problems during playback, before contacting
technical support, run the Wave Profiler and try the default settings.
To Manually Run the Wave Profiler
1. Choose Options-Audio to open the Audio Options dialog box, and click the General tab.
2. Click Wave Profiler.
The Wave Profiler examines each of your sound cards in turn, makes default settings in the Audio
Options dialog, and displays the name of each sound card and the sample rates that each card supports.

Enabling and Disabling Audio Devices

Your computer may have several installed devices like FAX modems and software synthesizers that
Windows recognizes as sound cards containing audio drivers. You do not want to use these devices for
audio input or output. If they are listed as audio drivers in the Audio Options dialog box, you need to
disable them.
To Enable or Disable an Audio Device
1. Choose Options-Audio to open the Audio Options dialog box and click the Drivers tab.
2. In the Input Drivers and Output Drivers fields, do one or both of the following:
• To enable an audio device, click the name of the device so that it is highlighted.
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