8.3 .. its February .. where is it ? .. outrageous .. going to LOGIC !!

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1610366&mpage=1&key=?

I told you so !!!!! ;)

TomG

Its February for another 27 days - be patient!!

Bye

Obvious question, but if you're doing such professional work, why not use a more professional piece of software. Hobbyists can afford dropouts and other problems. Heck, they seem to love to talk endlessly about them. Professionals can't. You've been a huge proponent of Sonar for quite a while and I'm sure Cakewalk appreciates it. But if the product is compromising your rep, I'd be looking elsewhere. Probably another reason Pro Tools and DP are so pervasive in mission critical apps.

Pretty professional for me. I dont get these drop outs and i push sonar and my pc. I have the same sonar 8.02 as everyone else. Seems to me like peeps are quik to blame dropouts on everything but their config and their hardware they use. Maybe a bit more research and knowledge will bring you a bit closer to your problems
Cj

I've recorded a demo yesterday with my band on an old XP laptop machine (1gb ram) using my MOTU 828mk3 and SONAR 8.02... 10 songs and no dropout :

8 tracks : 2 vocals + Bass (GT6B) + Guitar (VG-99) + Stereo V-Drums (TD-9) + Mono Keyboard + MIDI drums (Octapad) using Battery !!!!! ...

I think you got to tweak and know yourt gear to work with. Since I'm recording using a PC (more than 10 years) I've encountered many problems and they were all due to a bad understanding of how to use my gear and how to setup my computer. Read, ask, learn and you will not need 8.3 so quickly...

My 2 cents

Read, ask and learn...

if only more people did!

ten me-109's out of the sun.

Not sure if any of you have used the standard Pro Tools....?
But it blows hard unless you sink a TON of money into it.

I miss Sonar and I miss working on a PC.
U think Sonar is finicky? Try implementing a foreign interface into PT without spending extra time and money. Try getting PT to not quit unexpectedly with Melodyne once a day (at the worst time). Try getting PT to not get unplugged from the 192 when you sneeze... anyone who has a digicable can relate.

Anyways, point is.... Sonar rocks and I miss it.

ORIGINAL: DonM
Well... I'm re-racking the gear as we 'speak' from my month long marathon of On-Location sessions. Yesterday the session was 7am to 4pm - Sonar 8 stopped four or five times during the recording - I lost only one take but my trusty HD24 ran the whole time so I will be using that capture. I watched the CPU and Disk meters - spiking throughout the day. I was only recording seven tracks and didn't need any cue sends so the CPU was at 2% and the Disk was around the same - spikes were very persistent - then bang - the engine would halt. I also hate the pause that occurs when I engage software monitoring - at least now it's only a one second gap - before I made some changes that gap/pause when toggling monitoring was a minute or more - very terrorizing. Waiting on 8.3 as well.
-D

That definitely sucks.
Hope 8.3 gets it going for you.

As a curiosity (and sorry if you've covered this ground before in a different thread):
Do you have Sonar 7 still (or ever)? Was it any better? If so, maybe move back for these sessions (or even to 6, or 5, or whatever).

Have you tried a different machine? Audio interface? Driver versions? (I figure you've tried a lot... no disrespect intended)

Or (and not to down Cake in any way here):
Have you tried demoing something else?

Like many others here, I'm NOT doing this for a living (yet), but if I were, I think I'd not stop until I found the system that worked the best, brand loyalty aside. I'll ditch anything that gives me too much trouble... hardware, software, operating systems, interfaces. I don't care. It's got to work.

I mean, it's Windows software, and that means a zillion possible combinations of combinations. And as with all software in that kind of situation, you can fall into a whole that few enter, but that truly sucks getting out of. Perhaps 8.3 will work for you, or perhaps a new machine is in order, or a switch.

Just thinking out loud...
- zevo

ORIGINAL: DonM

Well... I'm re-racking the gear as we 'speak' from my month long marathon of On-Location sessions. Yesterday the session was 7am to 4pm - Sonar 8 stopped four or five times during the recording - I lost only one take but my trusty HD24 ran the whole time so I will be using that capture. I watched the CPU and Disk meters - spiking throughout the day. I was only recording seven tracks and didn't need any cue sends so the CPU was at 2% and the Disk was around the same - spikes were very persistent - then bang - the engine would halt. I also hate the pause that occurs when I engage software monitoring - at least now it's only a one second gap - before I made some changes that gap/pause when toggling monitoring was a minute or more - very terrorizing. Waiting on 8.3 as well.

-D

What's your system, Don? It seems something is amiss. Kudos for having the HD24 recording as well.

In my experience, Sonar versions 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 all run differently on the same machine configuration. There's no way for me to know, before the install, how well a given version will perform on my system. Each new version demands setup time to optimize performance. Sonar 2 was absolutely rock solid from the start. 4, 5, and 6 all had major problems, though they worked pretty well most of the time and sounded very good. 7 has been much more stable, right from the start, though very once in a while it does something a little freaky--mostly when I'm running a project with dozens of tracks and several dozens of heavy-hitting plugins. If I was willing to feed Sonar's jones for big hardware--like, getting a quad core Pentium system instead of the dual core Athlon x2 4800+ I currently run--I bet most of that freakiness would go away, too.

From what I've seen on this forum, any given version of Sonar works brilliantly for many users, and very poorly for others. The complexity of a DAW running plugins is stupendous, and the opportunities for mishap, from the hardware to the OS to the software running on top, are numerous.

My conclusion is that if absolute reliability is the most important thing, the safest thing to do is what the pros running stage setups for major performing artists do:
1) Get your gear running perfectly.
2) Duplicate the working setup thoroughly in a backup system.
3) Don't change anything in the setup, ever. New OS version? Skip it. New plugins? View with skepticism. New ANYTHING? Not while you're on tour for sure, and maybe not more than once every 3-5 years under any circumstances.

I violate a lot of these rules--for example, by updating my soft synths and plugins when new releases come out, and even (gasp!) loading in new freebie VSTs that look interesting. So far I've been pretty lucky. But if I was running the stage setup for Madonna, I'd be living by rules 1, 2, and 3 above for sure.

Regards, lightninrick