The Audio Engine button

SONAR has a button in the Control Bar’s Transport module called the Audio Engine button . This button lets you turn SONAR’s audio engine off if you’re getting distortion or feedback and want to cut the sound off. When playback or recording are in progress, SONAR enables the button automatically—however, the button appears grayed-out during playback or recording because you can’t control the button at that time.

If you experience feedback during input monitoring, you can click the Audio Engine button to turn off the audio engine. However, if playback or recording are in progress, the button is unavailable, and you should click the Reset button that’s just to the right of it instead, or else stop recording or playback first and then click the Audio Engine button.

You may experience slightly better playback and recording performance by turning the Audio Engine button off before you press the Play or Record buttons. This happens if your computer’s resources are already stretched to the limit. When you start recording or playback with the audio engine already functioning, there is still some processing that SONAR has to do that’s left over when you start the transport. This places an extra load on your system that can cause dropouts if your system is already stretched thin. A more effective solution than disabling the audio engine before starting the transport is to reduce the load on your system by hiding some meters, increasing latency slightly, reducing the number of plug-ins and/or tracks, etc.

 

See also:

Input monitoring