CakeAlexS
You have taken me totally out of context and bent it so you can vent at somebody in an aggressive manner. Never mind I will take it on the chin.

I see where this thread is going, sadly you would rather vent at people trying to help then get to the bottom of your issue it seems, been here before sadly and have become wise to it. People have already asked a few questions to help you and you haven't provided feedback.

Good luck I hope you find a solution (and calm down!).

jonnewyork
I don't know if these are clues, but they might be:
 
I'd gotten error messages stating that some of the older plugs no longer worked or weren't "recognized" on other songs. I have no problem deleting these and saving a version of the project without them, opening that and putting new plugins on, if that's what I have to do. The data loss that concerns me is the loss of editing and automation.
 
On a couple of 8.5.3 PE projects, I did this and sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. I would put the blue tubes oil can delay, for example, into the fx window but it wouldn't "see" a signal. The icon showed up but it didn't do anything.
 
VC64 still works in some cases... should it? It's no longer in the fx bin.

Anderton

jonnewyork
"What makes you think that nobody here hasn't experienced data loss with an application?"
 
What makes you think that I think that nobody here hasn't experienced data loss with an application? Please don't put words into my mouth.
 
"I am willing to bet everybody here has done so."
 
So the platform is inherently buggy?

 
Well, don't put works in his mouth, either. He said with an application. That includes the docs I've lost in Word by trying to open older files that the new version won't recognize (and the old version that created the document won't run on current operating systems). 
 

Case in point: the mute buttons on the stereo busses don't work.

 
It's not like anyone's trying to hide that fact. The documentation has exclamation marks next to an indented tip offset with a separate color background that says:
 
  
Note: Output ports that are used by the External Insert plug-in are excluded from all track and bus Output controls.

 
Note: Input ports that are used by the External Insert plug-in are excluded from all track and bus Input controls.


The external output and input are not part of the busing structure that Sonar creates inside the computer. I'm no coder either, but I suspect that means a separate module would need to be developed, different from the internal bus output and input controls, to add this functionality. I doubt that would be a trivial task, and I don't know how relevant it would be to most users. However, those buses are now under the hardware's domain. I don't know about the Lynx mixer applet, but you may be able to do the soloing and muting you want to do with the applet.
 
FYI this is something even the Mighty Apple hasn't solved. The following is from Sound on Sound magazine discussing Logic's external insert, which is very much like Sonar's and hasn't changed much since this was written:
 
"...This plug-in doesn't work quite as expected. If you hit the solo button, for example, the audio is actually muted! Also, if you use sends to route audio to the I/O plug-in on an Aux, the Aux return is muted, even in 'solo-safe' mode, when you solo the main channel. "We haven't yet mentioned using external hardware to process a whole mix to, say, compress and EQ a master output in the hardware domain, before limiting using a plug-in — potentially one of the most common applications of external hardware devices in a DAW. Using the processes covered already in this article, the obvious way to set up such a system is to insert an instance of the I/O plug-in on an output object, so the signal is routed through your hardware before it reaches your speakers. But this also works a little strangely, whereby soloing any channel strip mutes the entire output! In Logic 7, putting an I/O plug-in on an output didn't work properly either, and the workaround was to route all your track outputs through a bus, on which you insert an instance of the I/O plug-in: a technique that can still be applied in Logic 8."
 
As soon as external hardware gets into the picture, all bets are off. My favorite is people who complain Sonar has a "bug" that doesn't let them instantiate more than one instance of external hardware. Hello?!? It's hardware and there's only one of them!!! Or the other "bug" that you can't do faster than real time bounces with external hardware. Of course not - the hardware is independent of the computer and you have to stream audio in real time. Anyway, back to the original issue. We STILL need to know what happens if you open an 8.5.3 project in 8.5.3 so we can find out whether Sonar X3 is related to the issue or not.
 
This is important because your thread title is "X3 Destroying Work," which is probably wrong and therefore wasting time by causing people to look in the wrong places.

jonnewyork
In the meantime, maybe someone can come up with a more accurate thread title?

robert_e_bone
@johnnewyork, 
 
Here is the link to the post with my questions: http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3079438

robert_e_bone
I wish this thread title didn't represent the assertion, as fact, that X3 destroyed work. This has certainly not been determined to be the case, at this point.

bapu
Maybe he just skimmed that one and did not take it all in.

 
Here is the link for the driver/firmware updates page for you:
 
http://www.lynxstudio.com/support_downloads_results.asp?prod=1&type=0
 
Few questions for you:
 
1.  Do you have the latest X3 maintenance applied?  (X3e)
2.  You indicated some 8.5.3 projects open in X3, which is very helpful to know.  Can you try to detail differences between the ones that do open, and the ones that are now messed up?  That might also help narrow things down.
3.  Are you running with ASIO as your driver mode in X3?  (Lynx had prior issues when not running ASIO, if I recall correctly from some time ago).
 
Hang in there,
 
Bob Bone

jonnewyork
 
On a couple of 8.5.3 PE projects, X3 plugins don't work. I would put the blue tubes oil can delay, for example, into the fx window but it wouldn't "see" a signal. The icon showed up but it didn't do anything.

VC64 still works in some cases... should it? It's no longer in the fx bin.

I was going to contact Lynx today but I didn't get to it. Last time I contacted their tech he said I should call up when I have more time to update the firmware which makes it seem like it isn't something that's impossible to foul up, so I'll do that tomorrow.