Troubleshooting Sonar Hangs Cause By VSTs

These are some notes I'm taking as I troubleshoot an issue with Sonar hanging on a single project. I'm hoping others will chime in with their process of how they troubleshoot VST issues in Sonar.

Symptom: Sonar is hanging upon opening a single project. The project contains 100 tracks and over 300 effects, and was created prior to X1D.

Step 1. Uninstall/Reinstall Sonar. Because this project hadn't been opened since the X1D upgrade, I wanted to eliminate the patch as being relevant in the issue. As suspected, the reinstalled Sonar Expanded patched to D level, reproduced the issue consistently, as well as X1C and any other Sonar X1 patch version.

Step 2. Load project with Shift-key modifier. Click 'no' to each VST. Result: Project loads fine. This confirms that a VST is at issue.

Step 3. List your VSTs in two groups. I use A-L and M-Z.

Step 4. Reload project with Shift modifier, selecting 'yes' to VSTs that start with letters A-L. Reload project and check results. In this case, projects still hangs.

Step 5. Repeat Step 4 with M-Z VSTs. Result, project loads, pointing to a VST in the A-L range.

Step 6. Separate the range that is hanging Sonar in half again, and continue until the offending VST(s) are pinpointed.

Because this particular project is so large, using the proceeding steps became tedious, clicking yes or no on over 300 effects. To shorten the process, I began making educated guesses about the offender based on my system's observed behavior.

First I excluded VSTs that were Cakewalk native and 64-bit. Then I excluded CW VSTs that were 32-bit and bridged. Then I excluded third-party VSTs that my system never had issues with (Satson, etc.).

What was left was AutoTune, a trial of Ozone, third party apps like that. By supposing that Sonar itself is stable and a 3rd party VST was the cause, the process got down to Ozone.

Would love to hear how others troubleshoot VST issues, especially in large projects with lots of instances. Are there any features Cake could add later that might help us troubleshoot VST issues?

I'm not totally sure it's the same issue for us, but could be. What I learned tonight is I need to keep my entire system more stable and make fewer changes. When I look at how many free and trial VSTs I use, how quick I am to jump on updates and quick fixes, there are just so many moving parts over time that can cause something to break. And we're not even talking about Windows updates, audio and video driver updates, etc.

Going forward, I'm going to make a new VST path called Testing, and stick things like Ozone trials, freeware betas, etc in there. That way when I get stuck in the future, I can just exclude that path as a whole to get going again.

I will also start documenting any unusual VSTs a project uses, as well as which patch version of Sonar was used to create it, in the Project Info field.

I'd look at what 3rd party VSTs the project in question is using. If those are all OK, I'd start looking at the newer sonar plugs like Softube or Expander that PC uses. I don't think PC itself is it, but that's just a hunch. Good luck!