I'd like to apologize to the other members for losing my temper. I was indeed attempting to ignore the concern troll but he seemed hell bent on picking a fight. If somehow I get banished then take care of yourselves.
 
Cheers.

mike_mccue
That seems very reasonable, yet we had one poster (whom I know to be a very nice and sincere fellow) recently make the statement that SONAR is working great for him, then he explained hadn't used it all year long and that he's never tried using it with a microphone.
 
That sort of situation invites comment and speculation.
 
FWIW, I find SONAR to be extremely stable, my personal experience is 99.9% stability, but that is because I know exactly how to make it crash.
 
all the best,
mike
 
 

Was that me?  I'd posted something similar to that recently and started and thread that I was loving Sonar and that it was working well for me.

mike_mccue
Hi Don,
 Yes, In the interest of honesty and only because you have asked personally and specifically, I will explain that it was your posts that I was commenting on above.
 
 Please allow me to emphasize that I regard you as one the friendliest and sincere people I have been acquainted with at the forum.
 
 I'm glad you enjoy SONAR. I just feel that satisfaction such as you have voiced can not serve as an effective endorsement of its capability to satisfy the expectations of people who attempt to use all the features they have been offered, sold, and left with.
 
 best regards,
mike

Is it only me who sees mcq for what he is?

Every time I got another email from CW offering a lower upgrade price than the previous one, I'd look at it and think "OK, is this low enough to sway me now?". Each time, the answer was "nah". After this last offer I had to accept the unpleasant fact that I wouldn't go for it even if it were offered free of charge.
 
But, ever the optimist, I'll still be taking a look at X3!

backwoods
Yeah, but Cakewalk would rather have a hundred of me because I actually buy their products. Jeff Evans has already been banned once forpromoting Studio One on this forum beepster.
 
 

I have used Cakewalk products since Guitar Studio, at the end of the 90s. I am a huge fan of Zeta, Dimension and Rapture and they are some of my most used Virtual Instruments. I've turned more than a few aspiring home recordist onto Sonar and helped them set up their DAW and figure out Sonar. Even as of Christmas last year, long after I had switched to Mac. 
 
Incidentally, taking into account only the people I've turned onto Sonar and helped out with their DAW probably account for more $ than what you spent on Sonar 7 and the next couple of upgrades... 
 
I rarely venture in this particular forum because I haven't used the most recent versions of Sonar and I can't really help much. I do chime in in some of debates when people discuss certain products which I happen to be working with on a daily basis and some things are said which don't account for the whole story, IMHO. I try not to be hostile, though I can be a bit harsh in my replies. But I'm usually just as quick to apologize.
 
What I do not do is attack people for no reason on the premise that paying for Cakewalk's flagship product gives me the right to disregard all manners. I've made many good buddies on this forum. If I've offended some people on occasions, and tried to come to an agreement of sort and apologize as often as I could. I am always up for shaking ends and letting bygones be bygones.
 
You on the other hand have mocked my posts and tried to ridicule me repeatedly throughout the last few months. Yet every time I come here, I start afresh and try to let that stuff behind. Some day everything seems just fine. And then out of nowhere, some other days, it's like someone took a pee in your cereals or something... 
 
If Cakewalk wants hundreds of you as you seem to feel entitled to speak on their behalf, that's fine with me. It's their business. But until they themselves tell me, that's your assumption.

Gee, double apology. One is enough I think.

 
Double post...
 
Mind you, this was a new one on me:
 
 
 
 
 

@backwoods... There we go. All is forgiven and I apologize for getting riled up but hopefully you could see now how that might upset someone. I'm frustrated enough with the lack of a B patch as it is (and I really do my best not to be hyperbolic or repetitive when expressing this frustration) and being told I am no longer welcome on the forum if I explore other options... well that did not sit well. I appreciate you taking the time to post that. Let's put this behind us and start over.
 
Cheers.

WARNING! If you don't like hearing about legitimate problems other users are having with Sonar do not read the following post. If you do read it and attack me I will block you:
 
Just wanted to clarify... I think X2 is great and I've had very few crashes compared to X1. The problems are a bunch of minor annoyances that make it difficult to work.
 
Like the selection problem where for some reason things get group selected when you do not want them to be. No matter how many times you reselect what you want it still grabs a bunch of other stuff. Once this starts happening it infects the project and I have to lock all other clips or manually deselect the unwanted items. So for clips there is a work around but it's a pain. It also seems to happen, albeit less frequently, in other areas like the the PRV, automation nodes and audiosnap (actually it's quite bad in audiosnap but I have other issues with that feature which I will explain in a moment). Because of all this I've had things off screen get moved around, deleted, changed, etc... without my knowledge and by the time I discover what has happened it's too late to go back. I have to revert to an older version of the project losing all the work I've done in that session. Doing this doesn't get rid of the problem either so everything has to get locked from that point forward. This causes a lot of tension and worry while editing because I am always having to second guess and double check my work. I have no idea how or why this happens. Is it user error or a computer problem? I don't know but it seems unlikely because other times it doesn't happen at all and many other users have reported the same behavior.
 
Audiosnap. Audiosnap is almost impossible to use which is really disappointing to me because it is, in theory, a really amazing feature. The markers are extremely chaotic in the sense they disappear and reappear randomly as I move the cursor around or zoom in/out. Sometimes they won't enable/disable/insert/move/etc as intended which can be a real problem if you just spent an hour working on something and can't perform a basic function at a critical point. It seems this is another thing that gets worse as time goes on as if the bug is "infecting" the project. Also once I start working with the transients I have to complete the entire section. I cannot save the project halfway through because that COMPLETELY corrupts the project. If I save in the middle of a session when I open the project back up the transients display completely wrong (huge sections missing, threshold isn't right, changes made previously are incorrect, marker statuses are wrong, etc). If I try to continue working anyway the markers do not react properly to my actions (they don't move properly or at all, if they do move they snap back to their original position, their statuses randomly change, appear and disappear randomly, etc). After a while the program starts freezing up, I get whitescreens, project areas bleed over into other areas (like the Clips Pane appears in the Track Pane or console), random white and/or black boxes appear out of nowhere, squiggly lines start showing up, the transport or other functions stop working and eventually Sonar completely crashes and the project can never be used again. So yeah... cannot stop and save in the middle of an audiosnap session. I have to muscle through all the work as fast as I can and render the changes. It's a little stressful especially considering it's hard to w ork with at the best of times. I really need this feature to work properly. I can indeed use it if I'm diligent and don't mind having to start over from time to time but I have lost hours of painstaking work with audiosnap. I was hoping a patch might make it a little more stable.
 
Keybindings. Sometimes the keybindings will refuse to perform the intended function or will behave differently than point/clicking. I have no idea why this is. It doesn't happen all that often but I seem to be having to double check my keybinding list because I think I'm just hitting the wrong combo. This happens more with the less common bindings so it's not TOO problematic but it is confusing. I've also had crashes when using certain bindings like the Insert Loop binding (this was reported by sharke and confirmed by others recently too). I cannot use the R (record) keybinding while tracking takes which is a pain because when I've got the guitar in my hands I don't really want to be messing around with my trackball. What happens is for some reason (and it only happens with the binding and it doesn't happen all the time) it will randomly unmute previous takes once I start recording. It is really weird and frustrating when I'm trying to focus on getting a part right. Another annoying one is my shift key combos don't seem to work consistently when I'm trying to move clips up or down in place on the time line. I have to use snap or if the edge of the clip is out of a specific snap range I have to set the clip to snap offset mode and line it up to the timeline.
 
Editing. Editing is a bit weird in X2 compared to X1. The zoom ruler is great but there is so much other weirdness that it somewhat negates that benefit. Like sometimes if I use Ctrl V to paste a clip or group of clips somewhere specific it lands in a totally wrong track and I have to drag them to where I want (which because of the Shift combos not behaving is a pain because I have to line everything up manually). Also if I drag clips left or right, especially groups of clips across tracks the screen scrolls down and the top track clips will try to move to the lower tracks and the clips below that will try to create new tracks to make room. I then have to drag them back up to the top but sometimes the screen won't autoscroll back up and I have to abort the function and try again. Sometimes when I'm trying to move a clip on the timeline and am trying to visually line up a wave peak to the timeline or another wave as I'm dragging the wave gets washed out and I can no longer see the peak. I basically have to guess where it is and repeat the process multiple times to get it to land where I want. Not very precise or convenient. I get things done but it takes far longer than it should because of all those problems and because none of these things are consistent it messes with my workflow/concentration. If I knew what was gonna happen every time I could just be prepared for it and do what has to be done but that is not the case.
 
Graphical errors. Pretty much every part of X2 seems to suffer from this. Notes, waves, parameters, etc... disappear/reappear/show the wrong status/generally act weird. I also get "ghosts" on screen (basically phantom images that aren't really there). This got a little better after the A patch but it still happens pretty often. It doesn't seem to hurt anything but it can be confusing, especially in the PRV. At first I thought it was just my graphics card being weird but any non promotional Sonar video I've seen shows this behavior as the person is working. You can even see some of this in the webinars and those guys are supposedly using the ideal set up. It has also been reported many times here on the forum. If the A patch made some of these weird visual glitches lessen than I can only assume that it was some kind of stability thing and another tweak might get it under control. I did not experience these types of glitches in X1.
 
So those are the main issues I have with X2. They aren't complete show stoppers and I ahve been working around them but they make working with the program a lot less enjoyable and efficient than they could be. There are MANY more other broken features and oddities but I can generally get around most of that easily or don't need those functions (yet) anyway. I have not as of yet reported all of this to the Bakers because I really have not had the time but once I have moved I intend to completely wipe my system and start from scratch. Before I do that I will be writing an extremely detailed report to tech support requesting advice on a) how to best set up my system (again) and b) how to minimize these problems. Some of it may indeed be user error but because many of it is intermittent that doesn't make a lot of sense. My computer (which I built specifically to run Sonar on following design specs from the Computers section of this site) is more than powerful enough and I optimized it according to the instructions given to me by tech support. To me, aside from audiosnap, these are all extremely basic functions for any DAW. I'm not sure if everyone experiences similar behavior and just ignore it or they don't work like I do or what but I do know that all of these issues have been brought up many times here on the forum. There are also WAY more problems that get reported here that I have never experienced and as I said I do not get constant crashes. Aside from the time I was forcing audiosnap to keep going as an experiment, the time I was trying to confirm that the loop keybinding was causing crashes and the well known Dim Pro patch browsing crashes I've only had maybe three full crashes out of the blue that I believe were directly related to X2 and those were usually me working too quickly. When those crashes happen they aren't nearly as drastic as in X1 either which would refuse to open for a few minutes afterward. X2 is pretty much instantly ready to open back up again. I do get consistent whitescreens when opening X2 or inserting a bunch of heavy duty something other but they only last a few moments and X2 goes back to what it doing. Those whitescreens actually seem to have lessened quite a bit too since I did a through cleaning of the system with CCleaner. I have not yet had a cahnce to really do any work since I did that so maybe that will have helped lessen the other weirdness that was going on as well. I'll have to wait until I'm moved to investigate further.
 
I did not post this to whine, bash, accuse or offend but to document some of the more common issues I've experienced that are indeed making it hard for me to work. It'll be a good reference for me to come back to for when I contact support because I haven't typed it up all at once like this before and maybe others have found solutions to some of this stuff they'd like to share. I did ignore a lot of it because I figured much of it would be fixed with the next patch but that patch never came and now it's looking like it never will. That to me is the disappointing part. I know the A patch helped and I know X2 is right on the brink of being stable. I just wish they had done that little bit extra to clean it up just a little bit more. I can handle SOME quirkiness but it seems I encounter at least one semi major annoyance every session. I'm afraid X3 is just gonna be more of the same. I'll definitely be waiting at least until the New Year to see what everyone is saying here before even considering upgrading.
 
I will not and do not bring these problems up often unless it's related to an ongoing discussion so please... if you are going to attack me for posting this don't bother. I will immediately block you to avoid more blowouts like what happened earlier.
 
Thank you.

musicroom
@beepster
 
I apologize, but I don't read all that many posts anymore so I'm out of the loop somewhat. In a nutshell, what are the showstoppers that are causing you pain with x2?

Hi, musicroom. Not showstoppers but many minor annoyances.
 
To boil that epic post down...
 
1) Selection issues. Things randomly getting selected causing havoc while editing. Once it starts it won't stop. Solution is to lock clips but that only works with clips. Not the PRV.
 
2) Audiosnap. It's just really buggy and hard to use. Lots of graphical issues and I cannot save in the middle of an audiosnap session (I have to finish what I'm doing and render before closing Sonar). If I try to save and close the project completely corrupts and becomes unusable.
 
3) Keybindings. Occasionally bindings seem to just stop working intermittently or they behave differently than their point/click counterparts. Some cause odd behavior and the Loop binding causes crashes.
 
4) Editing. Strange and erratic behavior when moving or copy/pasting clips as well as many other oddities.
 
5) Graphical errors. Waves getting washed out while moving things, things disappearing/reappearing randomly, false statuses, graphical "ghosts".
 
I can indeed work with X2 but it tends to be very laborious and I have a large list of workarounds and have to repeat actions multiple times as well as constantly double check my work. I also have to keep a very large set of Save As files (I have to save after completing pretty much any semi crucial step) in case I overlook an error due to the editing bug or something gets corrupted. X2 is awesome. Just too many quirks to be efficient. I'll still be using it for quite a while though even if I do try out other platforms.
 
Cheers.
 
PS: And I'm more than willing to accept that some of these issues may be system related as my HDD config is a little odd (which is why I intend to rehaul the whole system with the help of tech support) but I can't see all of them being because of that. Many of these things only appeared in X2 (X1 had it's own weirdness but those were more major but less frequent) and the patch did indeed help a bit. I'll be able to deal with it more thoroughly in a month or so after I'm set back up. I'll be doing much more thorough tests of everything so it is documented for the Bakers but by that time X3 will likely be out so I guess it will be moot aside from maybe correcting my own problems and perhaps helping others who decide to stick with X2 for a while as I will be more than willing to share what I find.

bitflipper
Every time I got another email from CW offering a lower upgrade price than the previous one, I'd look at it and think "OK, is this low enough to sway me now?". Each time, the answer was "nah". After this last offer I had to accept the unpleasant fact that I wouldn't go for it even if it were offered free of charge.
 
But, ever the optimist, I'll still be taking a look at X3!

 
You know...I have yet to see any email from these guys...really. Not even in trash or spam...mmmm
I'd love to see X3 come out as well....and...as well as you...I'm looking forward to it!!

trimph1
You know...I have yet to see any email from these guys...really. Not even in trash or spam...mmmm
I'd love to see X3 come out as well....and...as well as you...I'm looking forward to it!!

I could start forwarding mine to you if you like. How are you doing for IKM and GForce emails? I get at least one a day from each of them.

It double posted. Sorry.

leebut
.... Problem with PS is that you have to buy the expensive professional version to get 64-bit processing, which is not in the sale.
...

This is misleading.  The 64 bit you are referring to has to do with the internal audio engine.  Many users (including me) don't give a flip about the double-precision internal processing -- in fact, I have it turned off in Sonar.
The 64-bit ability that most folks are concerned about has to do with allowing access to large amounts of ram.  AFAIK, all versions of Studio One have this capability.

Paul P

Keni

mike_mccue
I watched one of those "here's how my SONAR bug works" Youtube videos last week and I realized I had forgotten how ugly the SONAR gui looks.

 
I'd like to beg to differ.  We had a family gathering this evening in honour of a my brother-in-law who is visiting from LA.  He's a professional doing audio for the film industry.  An Apple guy, exclusively ProTools (like everyone else in his line of work).  He'd never heard of Sonar.  A couple of hours ago I showed him my X2P, first loaded with one of the demo songs that comes with X2, then a small project that just had each important synth loaded for easy demoing.
 
I've said this before, but I'm going to repeat it :  [on my 30" Dell monitor] X2 looks absolutely fantastic.  ProTools is not even close.  I was pretty proud to show it off.
 
Leaving the rest of X2 aside, I'm extremely happy with the way it looks.
 
[Just wanted to slip this in before Ryan locks the thread ]


 


I agree...X2 has the best interface around, barring none, in my opinion...and the best workflow...I absolutely love it...I've been applauding it since X1 was initially released...but, that's also just my opinion...