Core balancing sounds so cool...

Noel, I'm grateful for you and all the folks at Cakewalk. Thank you.
 
System Performance
System Performance stays below what 2 or 3 bars mostly. Definitely below 5. So a tiny percentage of the available resource.
 
Latency
I tend not to go above 512 sample buffer which gives me a 24 millisecond round trip.
1024 predictably gives me a 48ms round trip, and at that level I can play chords without glitching for the most part, but I often hesitate from pushing the latency this high b/c it can confuse me when I hear the delays. It's like being on a VOIP phone call... lots of hesitate then rush.
 
Sonar isn't broken
Please don't take me wrong here. I'm not complaining that it SHOULD never glitch no matter the load that I throw at it. I just like to throw a heavy load when I'm noodling b/c I enjoy the sounds of Rapture Pro.
 
Playing with restraint is limiting
When I start to get into the groove... get rolling... I start to play harder... and suddenly, glitch glitch silence. Close and restart having lost all the recording. Most painfully, I lost the recording of a friend and I backing his teenage son (who was on keys) as he rapped for 1/2 an hour. 100% of the recording was lost when we got passionate and Sonar crashed due to Synth load.
 
Ways to work around constraint
It's been a risk for a long time, and I do it anyway. I know I can turn down the voices and I know I can pick lighter patches. I know I can switch a lighter patch to a heavier patch before bouncing it out.
 
I like to play it with my friends listening real time and I end up just taking my chances and watching that meter.
 
Really, I have it doing what I love. I should have read the documentation first and realized that it wouldn't solve this problem, but of course I didn't. I just jumped in, tested and posted.
 
Stopping the Synth
One thing that would be cool would be to have a better way to stop the synth from playing, so I'm going to describe the ways I try to do that. When I stop the synth I can play as hard as I want without fear of dropout.
 
Use Midi to Mute
I have a FCB Midi Foot controller I can use to Mute the incoming midi track. Then I can take off an play as hard as I want. The Roland GR-20 never glitches due to load, so I usually have a background drum, bass sound from the GR20 and TH3 Guitar sound at this point.
 
Use Midi to Fade then Mute
What I don't love about that fix is that tails from the synth get cut when I tap the mute button because it mutes both the synth output and the midi input. I really only want to mute the midi input and I tap the foot pedal. One way to get a blend is to fade the synth out with the expression pedal and then mute it. For some reason, faded to 0, the synth keeps working. I have to tap mute to avoid the chance of a dropout when I switch to chords.
 
So, this works ok but takes a little more thought.
 
Use Midi Event Filter
Something else I've done is use a midi event filter to block midi signal from the guitar from reaching the synth. This is my favorite, but I have never been able to turn it on and off with the FCB 1010. I usually just touch the screen to enable or disable this. Not perfect, b/c I have to take my hand off the guitar and it usually takes 2-3 touches to trigger it, but it also works ok and does not trim the tails.

I just played for the last 30 minutes doing just what I described (never hit a mute button on Rapture).
 
But eventually the synths froze (rapture pro still playing a tone). SD stopped drumming and I had to kill Sonar because it wasn't responding.
 
And just now, as I type this, some piece of Windows Toast popped up saying Restart Required. Surely this was the cause.
 
I can't wait for the Linux version of Sonar. Have I read you're working on that? :P
 

Thanks, Noel. I've called support about Rapture load before. I've struggled to make videos of it glitching on me but they never come out. There's one above and you can hear it start to crackle.
 
There are a variety of patches that are an issue (usually the patches I like more -- Ambient crazy pads that create a blanket of sound beneath the guitar).
 
The reason I like to stop/mute the synth is because when I want to pick up the pace above the level the computer can handle, I need a way to reduce the load on the CPU. Muting the synth removes the constraint and allows me to play anything I want rather than dancing beneath the CPU speed limit. This usually coincides with me starting to sing some song rather than noodling over the pad.

The new load balancing is absolutely wonderful... Thank u! I'm use to a robust desktop but have spent weeks with a new traveling laptop and all the recent improvements make this a pleasure. The load balance is the 'icing' on the cake!

Thanks all! Having so much fun these days!

You are my hero.

You know I'll pay what it costs, but have I told you about my shoeless child?

Thanks!

Soens, you are describing hyper threading which is a way to try to make use of a processor's downtime to shovel more stuff through by having two shovelers.

More processors add conduits to shovel into, in addition to shovelers. The new conduit is the big deal.