Issues with exporting audio

[Carolus Magnus]

I worked a rather fast, roaring passage into one of my orchestral works, and I noticed a few things after exporting the audio;

1: all consonant chords were far louder than dissonant ones, especially those with the tonica as ground tone?

2: after one point, somewhere halfway in the exported track, the track suddenly becomes very soft, exactly at the point where the fast part picks up, after an annoyingly loud consonant.

3: I cannot play back the fast piece in sonar itself, because "the audio engine stops working unexpectedly" every time.

Is there a setting or other way to remedy this problem? I use a basic sonar X3 (bought last year), the cheapest one as it came, with only orchestral sounds added in. thus far I have never encountered this issue.

thank you for any support! :)

[Pte Jack]

I've had quite a few audio engine drops as well, don't know why, it's just music playing alright, music stops... Audio Drop message box pops up. Might it be a buffer thing??? Don't know.

[Carolus Magnus]

Hmm, I noticed it mainly breaks down at specific places. I used a lot of big dissonant cords playing over 10 soft synths at the same time, could that be an issue on mid-end sound cards?

But I never had problems exporting audio before. I managed to get rid of the second half being extremely quiet, but now the choirs don't come through?

I write all my stuff in musescore, save it as midi and import it to the correct synths in sonar, if that could be of help in finding a solution?

[Pte Jack]

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you, but thanks for the musescore reference, I've been looking for something like that forever.

[Aztec]

Are you using ASIO (direct) Drivers?
How much RAM memory have you got?

Try increasing your latency settings which may increase some stability and haste is not especially important at the export stage.

Also have a look at your "Mix Enables" at export time. Specifically try with / without "Fast Bounce" and "64-bit Engine". Consider freezing/bouncing all tracks prior to export.

Regarding fluctuations - I don't expect so ... but check your automation lanes.

[Carolus Magnus]

Thanks for the input, and glad I could be of indirect help Pte (musescore is a handy little program ;) ). I first tried the troubleshooting FAQ on the sonar site. Increasing latency and messing with buffer sizes helped, as well as using the "what you hear" template in the audio exporting menu (or something like that), and with then disabling most automation.

Regarding all the sound-technical stuff, that's a bit of a mystery to me. Understanding harmony, counterpoint, and the tiny details of writing stuff I have a go at; but the whole sound-engineering thing is still a big lump of terra incognita to me. :/

Regardless, thanks a lot to you both for your help! ;)

[SmacksFrog]

what's your soundcloud? I would like to hear your work, as well as the issue you're encountering.

[saunders420]

frequencies and latency issues with drivers and soundcard's capabilities is usually the culpirt, so many different systems these days and sonar is pretty extensive. either or could be anything. PLay it safe and record at a variable rate that is more prominent. like 48000hz and 24bit. less resources. if you know your computer can handle more go higher. Fidelity rules but you must know how to create the quality first of course.