@jbow... You don't know how much I needed to hear that today, man. I'm feeling a little battered from some nasty remarks downstairs this morning. You're good peeps yourself and it's always a pleasure chatting with you. :-)

People shouldn't feel guilty that they can't get Sonar to meet their expectations. Compared to other DAW programs you kind of do have to meet it half way. 

Life is too short to get upset by it and the DAW market has many options. Have a look around and find something that works for you and your computer. You may have to make some compromises but you will most likely find something that's a close fit to the way you want to produce music.

Or use crystal meth... just don't plug in too many VSTs...

rscain


I usually stay away from threads like this because whenever I give my opinion I get labeled a "fanboi", but I guess I'm in the mood for some abuse....

I truly hate that some of you are having so many issues, and I wish I was smart enough to help you out. Which ever DAW you find that will work for you is the one you should use. We're all just in it for the music, there should never be any hard feelings because the pile of code I use is different from the pile you use.

But the fact is, I've been using SONAR since version 3 and with the exception of a period of time when I was using a crap computer I've had minimal problems.
The pc I use now is an off the shelf HP, no special build or anything like that. I'm not an IT guy and I don't do tweaks, I'm just a guitar player. I just try like hell not to put anything weird or shady on my machine (not saying anybody here does, just sayin')
I have added memory (16 gigs) to my pc, and I use 3 different drives (one for programs, one for audio, one for samples and such). I try to keep my drivers up to date, but I don't use anything "cutting edge", no beta drivers or programs, etc. My interface is firewire and my pc doesn't have a TI firewire chipset.
I bought the best interface I could afford, after doing a lot of research and price shopping. I only use plug ins from established, reputable vendors. And although I'm running the 64 bit version of SONAR I use a lot of 32 bit plug ins.
My pc is hooked up to the internet and a wireless home network with a printer, two video game consoles, a DVR, and a TV.
I use a midi keyboard controller and a Behringer control surface.
Most of my projects are anywhere from 30 to 50 tracks with audio and soft synths and lots of plug ins.

I almost NEVER have any crashes, and when I do I've found they're usually caused by operator error.

I'm not saying all this to refute anything anybody else says or to be a smartass. I don't want to butt heads with anybody. I truly believe the folks who have problems are genuine in what they say and I hope they can get SONAR working for them or can find a DAW that is everything they look for and that makes them happy.

I just wanted to point out that it is possible to have SONAR work in a steady, reliable fashion without spending big bucks on a special build or doing some kind of voodoo incantations every time you fire the thing up.
And I certainly mean no disrespect to people like Jim who make such fabulous machines (wish I could afford one)

Happy New Year folks, hope the coming year is full of happiness and great music for you all.

Hallo, rscain.
 
You raised several interesting points there, but one that particularly stood out to me - using an off the shelf HP without any tweaks.
 
One of my students, who, in a previous life was a programmer and IT specialist, keeps telling me that the reason my DAW runs so smoothly is that it was all designed to work together, and I have not interfered with it too much.  That is why he thinks it runs so well.
 
Not my opinion, just his, but it has a ring of truth to it..
 
 Oh, I don't think my firewire card is TI chipset, either.

Beepster


Hmm... Have you switched to X2 yet on your big rigs, Danny? I had to totally stop playback to insert, move stuff around or even make adjustments in the PC with X1. Now I seem to be able to do all that while the track is playing without any real problems. That to me was a major bonus. I know you were holding off (and for good reason... that's your living) but I found the new audio engine is rockin'. Still though there are other things I'd be concerned about if I were in your position. 

Just curious is all. Cheers, man and happy holidays.

Yeah Beeps, I have it installed on the work-horses. I too noticed the difference you mentioned, but when you run a few things at once with stuff going on in the background, though we have a near gapless audio engine, I'd still rather have one that never shuts down. It all depends what you try and run in real time and how intense the VSTi may be. Some of these new drum modules you get in say, Kontakt, have all their own effects running in them which really ramps up CPU. Just one of them is pretty intense on even a good system. Add a few, some keyboard modules and old audio engine spazzes from time to time. LOL!
 
Nah, I still have to stop the audio engine for certain things. Big module sample library loads and especially Steven Slate 4. I know that this is most likely an issue with Slate, but their support is un-responsive because they are making too many things at once. I know one of their beta testers really good. He told someone at the company about my issue, asked them to help me because I'm a friend and they still didn't lift a finger to help.
 
But that said, the issue I get with the module....only happens in Sonar. I've just found myself saying a lot more recently bro "it only happens in Sonar". Company I work for, AcmeBarGig. We released a new guitar plug called HeadCase. The owner claimed he tried like heck to get a developer version of Sonar to no avail. To this day, our plug takes 11 seconds to load in Sonar. Add another instance, that's 22 seconds before you see your project...and so on. All the other DAW's, not a problem.
 
This is the stuff I'm talking about. Why doesn't this stuff happen in the others? I can make things work in Adobe Audition for God sake that sometimes don't work right in Sonar. At times it reminds me of a chick that you have to tread softly with. Watch every little thing you say or she will explode on you. I don't like having to be so delicate. In the others...bring it in while it's running...smack it, change your audio drivers while audio is playing, punch it in the mouth, elbow it in the head...it won't crash, glitch or shut down. And I know less than 1/4 about those DAW's compared to what I know about Sonar.
 
That said, I don't like how those DAWs lack the things we have in Sonar. All my track templates and project templates are necessities. Stuff in pro channell...heck, even having a pro channel is awesome. So there are pro's and cons...but there are definitely mechanics and aesthetics in the others that seem like they are better in terms of the ease of use and being a bi more well-oiled.
 
Realistically speaking....and this is an honest question....I wonder if the things we speak about on here are the reasons some plug companies like UAD and VSTi' makers do not test on Sonar? It's not a priority to them for some odd reason or we're just not popular enough in the food chain for that? Whatever the case, we should probably fix that. Anyone working at Cake that finds out that a company (especially one like UAD) is not testing with us, should call and find out why as well as what needs to be done so that we're considered. Ever notice even ad's are not including Sonar now? Go on Sweetwater or some site that sells software. See how many times they name PT, Cubase, Logic, Ableton etc etc and Sonar doesn't show up. Sometimes I see Sonar...most times I do not. I think we're popular enough but maybe Cake needs to pay a fee to get a mention when software will work on it? Who knows in this corrupt world. Happy holidays to you too brother!
 
-Danny

I hear ya, Danny. I'm obviously not doing the super intense stuff you are but it is a little worrisome to hear that if I did end up in that position I might have similar problems. I am definitely babying Sonar far more than I ever did with the Steinberg stuff. Never had a crash or even any glitches with that old system and I didn't even know what I was doing. Overall though I think it's a good fit for me and perhaps all the quirkiness is a blessing in disguise. I'm learning FAR more about digital audio than I would if nothing ever went wrong. lol

Cheers.

Which Steinberg products and versions have you used Beep.

I lucked upon a Nuendo 4/5.5 license and it gives me way more problems than Sonar. Not to mention the seemingly random window resizing.

Beeps, you never know. Every system as well as how you use it *can* come into play but it doesn't mean that it will. There are guys running way more things in Sonar than me that aren't having any problems. I've done the best I can over the years to make it as stable as possible though. Between shutting down running programs that shouldn't be running, tweaking system stuff, learning from the great Jim Roseberry, the people on this forum and of course even the bakers themselves. I have good results with Sonar or I'd not use it. But for sure...it's a bit picky with certain things and in other situations, I have to baby it.

Jerry: well said and I agree.

backwoods: I never mention Cubase or Nuendo because I too have had nothing but problems with their stuff. Try asking a question on their forums and see how long it takes to get an answer. LOL! Though we have our quirks like every DAW does, this is still the best one for me....flaws and all. I just wish sometimes that we didn't have to treat it with kid-gloves and it is good to talk about the inconsistencies without being bashed on....as well as listening to the success stories from guys like rscain and Robert Bone. I'm actually a success story myself really...but over the years, when you get forced into using some of these other DAW's, it a lot easier to weigh some of the pro's, cons and things that just appear could make a difference in making Sonar better. :) Good talk this was in my opinion.

-Danny

Its a software application that runs on windows doing very complex things.  Its gonna crash!   Save your work regularly and make sure you use versioning.  I've working in my friends pro tools studio and it freezes all the time during recording which has never happened to me in Sonar so get used to things going down.  It IS the nature of the beast.   I've never had any issues with any of the patches upgrades ad I'm running on 2 windows 7 machines, 32 bit and laptop running 64 bit.   SAVE SAVE SAVE!

Did you ever try to quantize MIDI in Sonar? All other DAW make notes streight. Sonar masses everything up. It must be me, but I could never make quantize work.

 
Vlad, it may be the way you're executing the midi quantizing. Sonar to me is fantastic in this aspect. I've never had a problem with it. Now Audio Snap for audio files....way too complicated for me. By the time I get done messing with that, I'd be better off re-recording the track myself. Way too confusing and time consuming in my opinion and my brain doesn't have the patience for that learning curve. But midi has always been great for me. You can't just grab an entire file and quantize it...if that's what you're doing. You need to literally look at what may be 16th's in a line and what may be 8ths or 32nd's etc.
 
For example, a drum track. For most things, 16ths on kick, snare and hats will be ok to quantize an entire file. But if you have any snare ghost notes or triplets on your kick, rolls around your toms and other accidentals within your playing, 16ths will cut out all the human feel stuff that is not 16th notes. When I do a kick drum, I only work on the kick drum lines that are 16ths. As soon as I have a double or triple kick in a passage, 16th will no longer work, so I have to change to 16th triplet or 32 etc. But you can't just hi-lite a clip and quantize. Each part *may* need a specific quantize setting for the part that is played. I don't know of any DAW that magically quantizes to one setting while adjusting the others automatically. Meaning, set to 16ths and it will auto-take care of 32nd's and keep them at 32nd's. This is impossible, know what I mean? So you may need to take a look at how you're using midi quantize.
 
-Danny

To make a general comment.
 
I think  Jim R.  is spot on with his comments in his post in this thread.
 
If  the OP's software has been unstable / problematic for some many version, it is  virtually certain that Sonar is  not  the issue.
 
Where I do have some sympathy with the OP is that - as I have stated before - we use both Sonar X series and  S1 V2.5 in our studio.
 
In terms of  feature richness  &  overall maturity, Sonar  X  is excellent.
 
In terms of sheer rock-solid-stability, with the recent release of  S1V2.5  Presonus's    DAW audio engine is now in a league of its own.  We do all our work at  88.2 / 32 Bit / 48 Sample Latency with RME Hardware and run on 2 x 4.2gig Hex Core i7 systems and it is not uncommon for CPU load to be sitting regularly above  %60 .............. no matter what  we throw at t,  S1V2.5  simply just does not fall over or glitch .....and I'm talking sessions which last  5 - 6 hours at a time with no breaks.
 
I'm not stating the above to say one is better than the other because overall, each have their own strngths......... if absolute audio engine efficiency is not your priority ...... not much even gets close to Sonar X .... its horse s for courses.
 
Tim
 
 

I think people have a bloody nerve and shows the state of their arrogance to point the finger at a person cos the software that they are using doesnt work for them. How arrogant can you be to say that it is their fault. Come of your arrogant high horse... similar to buying a pair of shoes and saying that the shoes are hurting your foot the sales person says it not your shoes but its your feet..stop complaining and know how to walk in them. Arrogant small minded and quite frankly dumb! Some of you have good reputations but the mindset shows that your knowledge in one field doesnt give you credentials...continue to be a big fish in a small pond and stop speaking out on behalve of others if you know you are small minded... If you never knew you was small minded now you can thank me for opening your eyes to the fact that you have delusions of grandeur. You can thank me by replying or send a check via paypal! The arrogance of some people....

@joakes... Yeah, squeaky wheel and all that. Still I'm not proficient enough to deal with any more weirdness and X2 seems to be running okay as is. Cheers.

@backwoods... I was on version 2 with Wavelab (forget the version) on the side. Lots of basic workflow features I'd like to see from that in Sonar. The way it handled takes was really really nice. Right click and there were all your takes. Select the one you want and it popped up to the top for editing and muted the rest automatically.

I think people have a bloody nerve and shows the state of their arrogance to point the finger at a person cos the software that they are using doesnt work for them. How arrogant can you be to say that it is their fault. Come of your arrogant high horse... similar to buying a pair of shoes and saying that the shoes are hurting your foot the sales person says it not your shoes but its your feet..stop complaining and know how to walk in them. Arrogant small minded and quite frankly dumb! Some of you have good reputations but the mindset shows that your knowledge in one field doesnt give you credentials...continue to be a big fish in a small pond and stop speaking out on behalve of others if you know you are small minded... If you never knew you was small minded now you can thank me for opening your eyes to the fact that you have delusions of grandeur. You can thank me by replying or send a check via paypal! The arrogance of some people....

Not arrogant at all... (trouble-shoot the problem without emotion)
X2 isn't constantly crashing for the vast majority of users.
If the app *is* working well for the vast majority of users, what explains the difference?
The differences are hardware/configuration... and the way the application is used.
The X2 code is identical in all cases.
If you're having major stability issues with X2, they *can* be resolved or worked around.
Might mean rebuilding/reconfiguring your machine... might mean changing workflow or plugin choice.

@Jim "Might mean rebuilding/reconfiguring your machine..."


I agree 100 percent.
He needs to level set from scratch and start over completely IMHO if he is looking to get to the bottom of it.


Too many things have been done along the way and at this point who knows what state the hardware and software and BIOS configuration is in.


Like I said, buy a new drive and start fresh or use something like Clonezilla or Acronis to create an image and do the same.


This will at least give him a clean baseline to start from.