Getting more and more frustrated with Sonar

more info here man.
are you saying your using sonar x1 ?
if so have you installed the patches, they go all the way up to x1D
and they take care of a lot of problems,
 
what are your specs there ?
soundcard ?

+1
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/product.aspx/SONAR-X1
Definitely get all the patches to X1d if you do not already have them.
 
As for X3, I think the general consensus has been a very stable release for SONAR.

You might have more luck getting help if you put in the title trouble with X1 Pro and Stylus RMX timing.
 
How many outs are you using in Stylus RMX (each loop /channel in RMX takes ram loading samples). 
 
Do you have the latest eversion of RMX installed?
 
Do you have sync tempo checked in RMX?
 
understand your frustrated but what is "drifting"???  Latency issue?  randomized notes?
 
hard to help someone when most of their post is a rant about how much frustration they have using a product and aren't considering upgrading to newest version - without detailing the original problem more.
 
X1d Pro was very stable for me.  Rock solid, no trouble with my Saffire 24 Pro interface or Stylus RMX.   X3b has been faster and even MORE stable for me.

OK, I appreciate all the help - I'll try and clarify it more but to be honest, this particular problem is just one of loads of little issues I get with Sonar, which is why I didn't give every last detail. Even if I can fix this, there are still so many things that slow down my workflow and mean I'm trying to work around software issues rather than composing.

On this particular issue, I'll give the simplest example:

First, everything is patched to its latest version - all soundcard drivers are most recent, all updates to Sonar applied, all Win 7 updates applied, all updates to Stylus applied. I even have new shoes on.


Let's say I have a simple 2 bar loop which contains 1 track of midi piano (say Truepianos, but it's not specific to that VSTi) playing a simple repetition of 8 quarter notes (quantized exactly on the beat). Then on another track I have a 2 bar loop of a generic Stylus RMX loop (again, it's not particular to any loop). I set the loop region to those 2 bars and start playback. For the first few times it plays the loop around, the 2 parts will be perfectly in sync, but slowly on successive cycles the timing starts to drift so they're no longer in time with each other. The Stylus loop will now be out of time with the piano loop (maybe a few split seconds behind) and it gets progressively worse.

* this example is with one midi channel being routed to one stereo audio output in Stylus
* tempo sync is checked in Stylus
* tried various midi playback buffer sizes including 100/250/500/1000 milliseconds

scook - thanks, I tried your suggestion of switching on the metronome and if I do that, they do seem to stay in time with each other. Strange but not really something I can (or should have to) do in a real world example. 

Yet another issue this reminds me of, looping is rarely seamless - I'll often hear pops at the start/end of a looped region. Even if there are no effects/reverb tails to cause it and the audio (or midi) has perfectly trimmed loop points. Sometimes it will loop without clicks, other times it won't, using the exact same source.

All these 'sometimes', 'ifs' and 'buts' are frustrating just make it a complete pain to work with. I just want something solid to work with so I can get on with my job of composing :(  

Yep, looped exactly on the dot. 

Silicon Audio
Is your timing master in your audio settings the same pair you are using for your main outs?  I have had some funky issues when it's set to another output pair.

Yep :)

scook
If it solves the problem why not use it? Mute the metronome bus if you do not want to hear it.

You're right of course. Don't know why, I just didn't think of muting the metronome bus. I will do that and thanks for the heads up (how did you find that out BTW???)

But this is typical of the sort of bugs I keep coming across that I have to stop and ask for help on. It's stupid that I should have to enable the metronome but then mute its bus in order to fix a timing bug. Do you know if this been fixed in X3?

scook
The subject comes up every now and then (sometimes twice in the same day http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/2921460) ...

That's funny - it is the exact same issue and from the look of that post, it is still happening in X3. Anyway, will make sure I make it part of my workflow too from now on. Thanks again - good catch!

Incidentally if anyone's interested, I've just noticed that this also helps with a related problem I was having where some 32 bit VSTi's cause a click when playing back a looped section. You have to install jbridge (as opposed to bitbridge) and then do the enable & mute metronome and the clicking in the looped section disappears. So obvious really ;) 

brundlefly
Also it went away when I switched to 44.1kHz from my usual  48kHz.
 
Some others have reported it went away when they switched from WDM to ASIO driver mode, so that's worth trying. 
 
Bitbridge's adding an extra empty buffer of audio is another issue, but it shouldn't be an issue in this case since Stylus is available as 64-bit native plugin.

Before trying scook's solution I tried just about everything and it made no difference to me - 44.1/48khz as well as WDM/ASIO. The metronome solution definitely fixes the drifting for me - hope the bakers make a note of that as it does seem to affect others as well.

The jbridge/bitbridge thing wasn't actually Stylus-related (which as you say is 64bit) but a different 32bit VSTi - I only mentioned it because I noticed it was also fixed by the metronome (in conjunction with using jbridge).   

Yeah, I'm not expecting perfection, I just don't want to keep getting bogged down with technical issues when it's hard enough dealing with musical composition! But ever since I upgraded to X1 it feels like whatever I do, I find something new and annoying that slows me down. And I've been using Sonar for over a decade now! I guess everyone has different ways of working and a lot of the things that irritate me may not even be noticeable to others.
 
And I remember doing the same thing as you years ago with regards cutting at snapped audio zero crossings!

Paul P
At least one aspect of the bug isn't hard to reproduce.  Just throw together a few midi notes in the PRV and then define a short loop somewhere over them.  With the metronome off, every few iterations a note will drop out until there's nothing left.
 

Sorry Paul, but this simply isn't true. For me, and I believe for the vast majority of users, this issue is not reproducible.

I think it's pretty clear that it's the environments that differ, not the application.