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Hi,
Well, I tried Cantabile Lite, but it was simply crashing all the time (i had to select Windows mixer for recording and then the whole thing froze).
Now I am using Reaper, and while it records pianoteq fine, Ivory is always recorded with clicks, pops and skipped notes. I have tried all sorts of bit rates, sampling rates, etc... Just playing Ivory- everything is perfect at 3.3 sec latency...

Are you recording to wav right away or doing MIDI first and then rendering?

Midi first... Although I've tried recording to wav straight away too - in Reaper the result is about the same, cantabile simply crashed.

Is Sonar difficult to understand/configure? Does it hog resources?
If not, maybe i should try it too...

I use RME HammerFall 9632 with UAD 2.
one computer is For PLAY libs and one is for Kontakt2 libs and Kore 2 and tons of crap. Most sounds cards out there will work for you just make sure they have awesome A/D converters.
An awesome price on a sound card is the 1212M by EMU!
it's only 200 dollars! cheap!

Wing Fat I like your Icon this is off topic Sorry I guess I like it because I do have a Japanese cd coming out soon. SO it's Cool^_- I also remember Wing Fat from some Woody Allen Spoof Spy movie(where he dubbed the voicing funny Sh#$%$!)

I have to add my $.02. I have the Echo Mia Midi card [$150] which is just excellent. I use it with Vista 64bit. With Garritan's Steinway I get latency of 2.6 ms - impossible to sense any lag from my Casio AP-45 keyboard. Absolutely no conflict or interference with the motherboard sound output.

This card is great. Price comparable to the M-Audio products, with a no-sweat installation and great drivers. It has an input dongle for midi cables that works great. No headphone out, though.

If you're thinking about about getting a high-end card for use with piano VST software, this one's great.

I've yet to find audio software that's easy to set up. This one was average in terms of difficulty. The recordings come out fine (no cracks or noises). I haven't done any recordings on my new system, but on my slow old one, I'd do MIDI first, and then render.

If you've tried everything, like:

1) change the PCI slot location of the M-Audio 192
2) all sampling rates possible
3) memory/buffer sizes within Ivory
4) partitioned you're hard disk drive to at least two (2) volumes (e.g.: Drive C: for Windows and Drive D: for Piano sample libraries like Ivory etc.)

Then, maybe you can try this:

1) get another physical/separate hard disk for Ivory or Garritan or any other sample-based piano software library you plan on using...

> get another SATA drive which has 16MB or 32MB cache like this:

Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA w/ 32MB cache

2) disable any built-in LAN, built-in audio/sound chip (motherboard BIOS settings) that can be potential sources of IRQ conflicts for your M-AUDIO soundcard

3) increase the system memory (i.e. DDR2...or even DDR3 if your motherboard has slots for this)

> if you're currently running on 2GB DDR2 modules, chances are around 512MB of it is already being used by Windows XP (plus any other software installed like anti-virus, audio-MIDI programs, background Windows XP services running etc.) which leaves you with around 1.5GB RAM left.

> increasing your system RAM can help provide more "resources" or "working space" for your piano samples awaiting processing by your CPU (Core 2 duo or AMD X2)

> increasing your system RAM can prepare your system for migration to 64-bit OS and audio-MIDI programs that can fully utilize or benefit from larger system memory (up to 128GB in certain versions of VISTA) and optimized for multi-core processors (like Sonar etc.)

4) Defragment the partition and/or physical hard disk drive that contains the piano sample libraries

> if you've directed during installation that the piano sample library be installed in, say, Drive D: instead of Drive C:, make sure you defragment Drive D: as well to keep files/bits of data in it near each other to avoid "skipping" or audio clicks.

> or better yet, you can try creating a separate partition on a separate hard disk drive EXCLUSIVELY for Ivory only.


I also use Sonar P.E. 6.2 and the configuration factor is not as time-consuming as learning, mastering and putting to good use each and every functionality/feature of the software itself.

I haven't considered upgrading to the newer version yet (Cakewalk Sonar 7) because for all the features in its predecessor, I'm yet to utilize all of them...and besides I'd rather spend money on another hardware than a newer version of software (since my current version pretty much runs smoothly).

If you're talking about it being a system resource hog, this would depend on:

1) how many VST plug-ins you use (like reverb effects running simultaneously or applied to other instrument tracks etc.)

2) how many VST instruments you're running simultaneously and how CPU-hungry or memory hungry each individual VST instrument is

> in a typical 4-5 instrument track arrangement running 5 VST instruments (Session Drummer 2, Studio Instruments-Bass, Ivory, Garritan's Personal Orchestra-Strings, plus a synth pad or E-piano etc.) running within Sonar 6, my older dual-core system (Pentium D 3.0 GHz with 4GB DDR800 RAM) usage rises somewhere between 30-40%...to think I'm still using an older processor microarchitecture by Intel. Sometimes usage rises to 50-55% but for the most part it's around 40% for both cores of a dual-core processor (but this is taking into consideration that I have anti-virus and other windows XP services running in the background like firewall, indexing etc. which are usually suggested by some forums to be "disabled" in a Digital Audio Workstation PC).

> If you have a newer Core 2-Duo processor, then this is more efficient and can probably run your audio-MIDI software with VST instruments faster and even better and the CPU utilization with just 4-5 tracks may even be lower due to the better microarchitecture of the processor (better prefetch/algorithms within the Core 2-based Intel processors perhaps) which eventually lead to more data processed efficiently in a given number of CPU cycles.

Overall, your problem regarding pops and clicks may not just be due to the audio-card in itself but may also be due to other hardware configurations (like having a separate hard drive, more DDR2 RAM memory modules, etc.)

Currently, the VISTA drivers (64-bit) for M-AUDIO products are in BETA version but they don't distribute it publicly but privately.

Good luck...optimizing your PC is still a "trial and error" thing.