Cakewalk Sonar Platinum "Freezing" / Crashing Issues - SOLVED!... nope...spoke too soon...
Hey everyone... longtime user (since Cakewalk Pro Audio 6 - 1998 or so upgrading to various iterations of Cakewalk through the years...)... recently upgraded to Sonar Platinum back in July. I just finished a tour with a band and had time to settle back in my studio and begin working with Cakewalk Platinum on a bunch of projects. I had an issue that I solved myself and thought I would share with others.
Here's what happened and what I sent to Cakewalk Support:
Cakewalk Sonar constantly/consistently crashes 10 - 20 minutes into the application. Tried many things, drivers up to date, with 1 track of midi and "native" Cakewalk plugins (Dimension for example), to loading up 10 VST's and a few audio tracks...many scenarios with the same result... "Cakewalk Not Responding" and I have to shutdown via the Task Manager. While in Task Manager, Sonar appears still running and takes 5 - 10 minutes to shutdown. Other option is to restart the PC. I use Cantabile 3.0 (x64) live and in the studio constantly with zero issues in this same setup/hardware/software. I have instances of 20+ VST's, Audio Media playback, and hardware synths/MIDI without so much as a glitch...ever! I have tried the scenarios in Cantabile (thinking its a driver or VST) but nothing crashes/freezes Cantabile, only Sonar. I found a tech note on issues regarding Dell Backup software and uninstalled it. Still having issues. I have stopped many services and prior optimizations of the PC for pro audio applications based on guides from Brad Robinson (Cantabile) and RME. I keep Sonar up to date via Command Center. Please help! Mike Ok... so I get the response from the support team (maybe auto generated, but a response nonetheless). Send them the dump files and wait. Going on two weeks, but from what I read here, they are rather stretched thin in terms of staff... whatever... I understand, but since my music = $/revenue, and time demands/deadlines, I have to move forward to try and resolve asap. I have another DAW (Ableton Live) so all is not lost... our main studio is Pro Tools, but not practical for me to travel back and forth every day breaking down all my gear... I like to walk upstairs into my studio and let the creative process happen.
After hours of research here on the forum and elsewhere, I took a look at my issue. It appeared that the "Freeze" was not a Cakewalk issue, but something else. Cakewalk would indicate it was "not responding", and in "Task Manager" there was no indication of it crashing... it did still appear "running" in the background after I closed it in the pop-up window. Strange... like it was waiting for another process to finish. When I would try to restart Cakewalk, nothing happened (because it was happily running along in the background). Restart the PC and Cakewalk would start back up. Then the problem would happen all over again...regardless of what I had loaded into the project..no audio, no VST's, just a couple of empty tracks and "Freeze"!
A few months ago, I disabled my AMD Radeon video card and switched over to the onboard Intel graphics...AMD was introducing visual artifacts and constantly updating drivers...I figured screw it...I don't need it for my Audio applications anyways. All other drivers up to date, etc... So I decided I would clean out the old AMD drivers, reinstall the drivers for the Radeon, and run Sonar. Ok... different problem. Sonar would not "freeze", but rather crash on exiting. While still an issue, I was onto something. Another remove all Radeon drivers, this time manually selecting my Radeon driver instead of Auto Detecting my chipset through AMD, and now day 2 of rock solid Sonar happiness!
Sorry for the long read, but while I still wait for a "formal" response from Cakewalk support, I just wanted to pass along my experience for others who may have a similar issue. Who knows...there may still be a bug hiding somewhere in my system waiting to reveal itself, but for now I am back at it happily in Cakewalk Sonar.
Mike
post edited by MyriadMike - 2017/11/12 18:21:40