sojournx don't quit now!!  These guys are really willing to help you!!  I've brought problems here and they've managed to sort them all out.  Hang tough and see if they can't get you up and running.  SONAR is a great piece of software and worth the effort.

"I am running win8.1, no other attached devices or audio sources. I am running all native 64 bit plugins and have gone through the AISO/WASAPI/MME/WDM/KS driver modes(my system definitely does not play well in the sandbox with ASIO "
 
This was all we needed to know. But oddly enough he is saying he can use X2?? 

Cactus Music
"I am running win8.1, no other attached devices or audio sources. I am running all native 64 bit plugins and have gone through the AISO/WASAPI/MME/WDM/KS driver modes(my system definitely does not play well in the sandbox with ASIO "
 
This was all we needed to know. But oddly enough he is saying he can use X2?? 

Aaaah - but what ASIO driver was he trying to use?  It is not native to Windows, so SOMETHING put a set of ASIO drivers onto his system.  I would like to know the SOURCE for whatever ASIO drivers he tried was.
 
And until he starts answering some of the questions put forth, he will continue to spin his wheels, as far as getting any help.  I have been helped/rescued COUNTLESS times by others in these forums, and that is by FAR my biggest motivation for trying to help others.  But until we have an OP actually willing to engage in the analysis and resolution of his issues - we can do NOTHING but speculate.
 
Bob Bone
 

Bob Bone has an excellent track record for fixing difficult problems. I would listen to him. 

Guys! :-]
Wow, I am thankfully overwhelmed at the helpful response and I promise to read and respond asap. It has just been a long several days of work (including the weekend) and just have not had the time to respond and/or apply all of the helpful suggestions.
If I am lucky, my schedule should abate in a couple of days and I am looking forward to resolving my issue(s) with all of the awesome feedback. Glad I took the forum root before bailing altogether. Have to admit, it's like a rescue team here and I am so appreciative for you all.
Give me a couple days and I will take in all the advice and keep you posted on the progress/results.
 
Michael Lawrence  :-]
 

And answer all the questions to my best ability!
 
:-] M

Welcome back! The behavior you're experiencing is anomalous, so all we need is enough data to figure out the anomaly (including operating system, whether you've updated Windows recently, whether you're running 64- or 32-bit, your graphics card, etc.). Horsepower alone is not enough; the horses have to pull the cart in the same direction.
 
Also remember there have been many differences in the world of computers since X2...like VST3 support, which affects plug-in handling.
 
Don't be too hard on support. I don't think Cakewalk realized how many new SONAR users would come on board with the lifetime updates. They're frantically trying to hire, but it's hard to find good support people, and training them takes time. Fortunately,  this forum really does excel in terms of peer-to-peer support and helping others solve problems. There have been countless instances of people who were ready to throw their computer out the window, and SONAR with it, only to find out that fixing some little issue solved everything.

Hey Michael,
 
Stick with it man...wonderful help on this forum here.  Here's hoping you find the solution.
 
Donny

I need a success story right now. Fingers crossed. 

Anderton

pwalpwal
i find this the most curious repeated statement - how could one driver "interfere" with another? it might be worth posting this assertion on their forum to find out?

I know this can happen because I was doing a presentation for New Bay Media, and there was another presenter who had just installed drivers for a new interface (a TASCAM US-366) on his laptop. He had previously used ASIO4ALL on the laptop and it was installed. He had to set the latency at 1,024 samples for the US-366 to avoid crackling, and he just assumed the 366 had horribly written drivers. Interestingly I was also using a US-366 on my laptop, but was getting about 18 ms of latency. When I saw he had ASIO4ALL on his machine I uninstalled it, and then he got the same performance with his US-366 as I did.
 
Why? I have no idea. I've mentioned this to a few other people and some of them recall having similar issues happen, albeit rarely. Granted this was a while ago, maybe there is a new version of ASIO4ALL that solves this but to me, the optimum situation seems to be:

 
this would be useful info for the developer of asio4all
 

If you don't have dedicated ASIO drivers, use ASIO4ALL. 
If you have dedicated ASIO drivers, don't use ASIO4ALL. 
 

 
totally agree with this
 

At one point I had ASIO4ALL installed on one of my laptops and the only problem I had with it was no matter what I set the latency to, eventually there would be crackling and dropouts. If I changed the latency, even if I made it faster, the problem would go away but then it would always happen again 5-10 minutes later. I've used ASIO4ALL in many setups over many years, and I'd guesstimate that it was fine 25% of the time, and problematic 75% of the time.

again, useful info for theirdevelopers... i wonder if it's anything to do with how the host app enumerates the available (asio) drivers, or initialises the selected one? certainly there was such an issue back in the day with X1 when (iirc) "optimisations for roland devices" broke lynx device compatibility, i think the first "hotfix" was released to fix it
 
and this is worth repeating:
 

If you don't have dedicated ASIO drivers, use ASIO4ALL. 
If you have dedicated ASIO drivers, don't use ASIO4ALL. 
 

 
now here's tom with the weather...