[CWBRN-28929] Crashes

Licensed for all I wonder? 

Also increase the latency by one notch and see what happens.

Tom, I would like to help you, but I need more information than what you have provided.
 
Please review and respond to my requests for information in my above post, or I don't think I can do anything to help you - nor do I know of a way anyone else can, either.
 
Thanks, 
 
Bob Bone
 

It just happened again 5 minutes ago. I had one audio track in the project (reference track) which was muted. Two Concrete Limiters one on the master and one on a sub. I was sending one MIDI channel to an external synth. I've got at least 6 of these hanging out in the crash queue but it happens a lot more often than gets reported.

CWBRN-28929 Report Details

Step**** Haha it thought I was saying something scatological.
Hitting space bar to play after running CAL split note to tracks on drum track MIDI and then editing MIDI. One audio track, muted. Only plugin loaded is concrete limiter on master bus and a sub. MIDI is routed to an external synth via USB MIDI.
 
Here is the project file. You might be able to reproduce the crash by cloning the DrumKit track then run CAL on it Split Notes to track, delete the empty track, cut off the tails on the new track at the end of the song, audition and rename the new split tracks. The play start point was at the start of the last drum track.
 
1. Multiple projects
2. Usually no plugins are loaded.
3. See the report above, it's one workflow that reliably crashes it.
4. Nope, sometimes it white screens, sometimes it just disappears, more infrequently it generates a crash dump.
5. Nothing in the event viewer other than it crashed.
6. The projects are not corrupted and have no effects enabled.
7. No, in fact Sonar was not generating audio at the time, the one audio track in the project was muted.
8. Not really much there to be safe with, I'm just sending MIDI to an external synth with no processing.
9. I'm running X3e, got it the day it was released.
10. I updated windows a week ago.
 

robert_e_bone
X3e is quite stable on its own.
 
My guess would be that one or more 3rd-party plugins are not playing well with Sonar.
 
Can you please provide more detail on these crashes?
 
1.  Is it one project, or multiple projects?
2.  Do any of your failing projects have any 32-bit 3rd-party plugins present?
3.  Is there any consistent set of steps you can provide us with to recreate your crashes?
4.  Is there any error message listed when things go South?
5.  Have you checked the Windows Event Viewer for any listed errors there, after a crash?
6.  If you are able to load one of these failing projects, do crashes still occur if you bypass all effects, by hitting the letter 'E' on your computer keyboard?  (hitting 'E' again after testing this will toggle the effects back on)
7.  Is there any possibility that you have a sample rate mismatch between Sonar and your audio interface?
8.  Do you crash if you load one of the failing projects in Sonar's Safe Mode?
9.  You list X3 - are you running X3e? This is the latest maintenance update for X3.
10. Is your Windows up to date on maintenance applied through Windows Update?
 
Because X3e has been very stable for just about everyone, this is likely some kind of local problem with your settings, loaded plugins, or something like that, which means we can probably get to the bottom of it and get you fixed up.
 
Please hang in there, 
 
Bob Bone

Apologies for confusion. This got moved into the problem reports forum by accident. As there is nothing to indicate a Sonar bug here (could be system specific) the thread stays in the sonar forums for troubleshooting by the community. We really would need full steps to reproduce a Sonar bug.
 
If a reproducible issue can be found with Sonar we would then consider moving it back or creating a new thread for clarity.

Did you try increasing the latency one more step (e.g., 256 to 512) to see if that makes a difference?
 
FWIW all the other programs you mentioned are cross-platform. Sonar plugs deep into Windows, which is why so many of the problems you see here are fixed by something involving Windows or the computer system itself rather than Sonar per se.
 
However if this is a Sonar bug, it would be helpful to have steps to reproduce the bug. Not only does that dramatically increase the odds of a fix, but also, the odds of someone coming up with a workaround until there is a fix.

I don't think it has anything to do with my audio card, latency, or sample rate, once I get to the mixing part of my workflow it's pretty stable. Let me explain my workflow.
 
I do backing tracks for my cover band and we normally cover brand new material. In order, this is what I do:
1. Import the original song into X3 and find the tempo.
2. If there is a MIDI available for the song I'll buy it and import it (there are few good places to get them), it saves a lot of time. If not, I transcribe the song by ear.
3. Fix up the MIDI and make sure the parts are correct. I usually do this with my Fantom X6 still using the original GM patches.
4. Find or create the sounds using soft synths, external synths, etc. This usually involves fixing up the MIDI more.
5. Once I'm satisfied with the sounds I bounce everything for mixing and processing.
6. Once the mix is satisfactory I bounce it to dual mono, one channel for the click, the other channel for the backing track mix (minus drums, guitar, and bass).
 
I normally start with the drums which is when the first crash I experience regularly happens, I like to have the drums as a reference even though I remove them for the final backing track. Usually the drum track has between 5 and 10 different parts depending on the song. Once I'm sure the drum part is close I'll split it so I can mix the drums separately.
 
To reproduce the bug:
1. Move the original MIDI drum track to the bottom of the track view by dragging it there.
2. Open up the drum track in the Event Viewer and remove all of the MIDI controller data, turn off any MIDI effects, center the MIDI pan pot, and set the fader to 101 and disable it. Remove the hat count in if present.
2. Bounce the modified drum track to clips.
3. Slip edit the beginning and ending of the bounced track to measure boundaries.
4. Clone the drum track.
5. Run CAL Split note to tracks on the cloned drum track, use the cloned track number as the source, the next track number for the first destination track, channel 10, and port 1 (Fantom).
6. Delete the now empty cloned drum track.
7. Go to the end of the original drum track and split all the new tracks there (Split notes always extends a few tracks to the edge of the known universe).
8. Select the tails and delete them.
9. Mute all the tracks in the project
10. For each new drum track:
  a. Bounce to clips and adjust the beginning and ending of the clip to measure boundaries.
  b. Unmute the track.
  c. Audition the clip to figure out what drum it is (this is usually when it crashes)
  d. Label the track with the appropriate drum name.
  e. If the track is a Hat track merge the open and closed hats by copying and pasting the closed hat track into the open hat track, bounce to clips, and delete the closed hat track.
 
During the entire MIDI edit process, the only thing that's making any noise whatsoever is my Fantom X (external synth), ALL of the tracks in Sonar are muted except for the one MIDI drum track I'm auditioning. Last night Sonar crashed while auditioning the 7th drum part (crash cymbal) which was the last new track. I haven't tried it, but suspect I could reproduce the crash with no audio tracks loaded. I think I've crashed Sonar at least once for every song I've made a backing track for. I'd be pretty amazed if this has anything to do with my video card, motherboard, sample rate, or latency settings.
 

I have never seen and do not recall ever reading about latency settings causing any crashes.
 
I have seen where a Sample Rate mismatch between Sonar and the audio interface can cause weird behavior, that also includes crashes.
 
In an earlier post in this thread, you said "here is the project", which I took to mean you had posted a link to where we could download the project file to test - but there was no link (unless I REALLY need more coffee).
 
Maybe something is corrupt in this one particular project - have you thought about creating a new project and doing copy/paste of track content over to the new one, to see if that made a difference.
 
There are no errors in Windows Event Viewer that correspond to the same time as one of these crashes?
 
I am just not aware of any current all-Cakewalk component Sonar X3e crashes - so it seems some local condition is involved.
 
If you DO have a way to post a compressed folder of the project I would be happy to download it and test it on my system.  Actually, I will send you a PM with an email address you could send it to me with, if you want me to try to look into it.
 
Bob Bone
 

Anderton
.. but it's a "UFO bug"...people swear they've seen them, but don't have physical proof.

Ah the grey area :)