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Sonar 4 noise/hum


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Hi all-

 

After reading through various topicality on this forum, I'm not entirely sure this technical difficulty will be considered appropriate fodder, but here goes; hopefully someone can help me troubleshoot this:

 

 

 

When I have a project open in Sonar 4 SE, I hear a low-level (but definitely audible) hum/whine type thing (excuse the piss poor description of the sound) through my monitors. When I do various mouse operations such as resizing a track or moving the navigator around, etc., I can kind of "stop and start" the hum/whine via the mouse clicks/movement, if that makes sense. Oddly, when I opened the Audio Options dialog box, the noise stopped! When I closed it again, there it is. Not loud enough to be noticeable when I have playback running/tracks crankin', but it is there...

 

- No external devices are generating sounds (no hardware synths, not even soft synths, etc.). Just already-recorded audio/ drum loops.

 

When I shut down Sonar, it stops. Soundcard is M-Audio FW 410, and when I play MP3s and WAVs via Win Media Player, with Sonar shut down, the noise isn't there.

 

- No instruments are being recorded/ nothing is plugged into the inputs of the FW 410.

 

I have thought of some other things I need to check tonite after work:

 

1- Not sure if it is also present in headphones or not.

2- Not sure if I disable any active plugins in projects if that changes anything (maybe a specific culprit?)

 

Any thoughts/wisdom/horribly obvious oversights in my detective work? I did post this on the Sonar forum as well, just to see what the "locals" have to say....

 

Thanks so much in advance for any help!

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I can guarantee that Sonar doesn't make noises on its own.

 

Have you disabled your computer's on-board audio? This will be a lot noisier and prone to system interference than the M-Audio.

 

Are you using two monitors? Some dual-head cards use software to generate the cursor on the second monitor, and this can cause noise.

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If it's only in Sonar and not in other non-recording apps, I wonder if maybe your have software monitoring enabled and noise on an input (not just on output).

 

Agree with doug - what you decribe is what I always hear from on-board audio cards. Make sure you're not using this in Sonar (you could conceivably have software monitoring enabled for this interface).

 

Also, when you open up Audio properties I'm pretty sure it stops the audio engine so that would make a lot of sense if it's software monitoring.

 

-Daniel

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Thanks for the replies, Daniel & Doug!

 

PC on-board sound is disabled-- sound coming only via external M-Audio FW 410.

 

Only using one visual monitor.

 

You are 100% correct-- I tested stopping the audio engine in Sonar, and that stops the noise!

 

When you ask if I have "software monitoring enabled", I want to be sure I'm 100% clear on what you mean. Are you meaning do I have input monitoring enabled thru Sonar so I can monitor with FX? I do have that enabled. Or do you mean something else? Not sure I'm following you.

 

Thanks so much for your help!

 

LM

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I'm guessing maybe a video related issue. Is your firewire interface running on it's own power, or fed from the firewire interface? Try changing the power supply - make sure that the PC, the Video Monitor, the Audio interface and the Audio monitors are all running from the same power point. I'm guessing this is a ground loop hum sort of thing that comes through the power, probably affected by what the video card or possibly the video monitor is doing at the time.

 

For example - stopping the Sonor audio engine also probably stops you screen from re-drawing. Or opening the audio dialog probably does the same thing.

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