lingyai

Resonant Serpent
Your daw computer should be set to where it never sleeps and drives never stop.

Meaning the DAW PC should be on 24/365 for as long as I own it? 
 
Where did you hear this?

This has been the default for operating daw computers for as long as I can remember. I started doing this in '96, I think. Maybe a bit later. I don't understand why you wouldn't just shut it down when you're not using it. Several guides for optimizing computers for audio show that you shouldn't use sleep.
 
http://www.sweetwater.com...n-guide-for-windows-8/

Windows has never been elegant at power management and can easily drop the ball when coming out of hibernate/sleep. Even on a laptop these should be disabled when in "DAW mode" and the laptop plugged in.

lingyai

robert_e_bone
I don't know if it is stated anywhere, but sleep mode and Sonar do NOT get along - never did.
 
Many of us seem to go into power management options and turn off all sleep mode stuff.
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks Bob, though again, it worked before fine. Can you imagine why this might have started now?
 
If you avoid sleep mode, does this mean you fully power down when finished a session, and boot up when you want to resume working?  Or do you just leave your PC on?
 
I've never encountered a program which demands this kind of treatment.
 
Zarrg, thanks for your post as well -- I'll check and see next time if what you say is the case. 

Yes, I fully power up/down to avoid all such problems.

I don't think sleep mode vs. full start have any difference considering the aging of the machine.
AFAIK,  the old thinking that starts wear down the PC is based on the actual fysical things that take place - HDDs speeding up from stand still and warming up etc.
When a machine has reached the end of its life span, the final failure usually takes places at that very moment of the biggest strain, and so people think it's the starting that causes the failure.
Those very same things happen when you wake it up from sleep mode (assuming you have HDDs :o) The only difference would be not needing to reload memory and start software, which in itself doesn't matter. With an SSD
there are practically no moving parts that could be affected By daily restarts, I assume.
 
I've had so many problems with sleep mode, not only with SONAR, that I quit using it long ago. I think there are even differences between PC:s.

Zargg71
Hi. I am just guessing that SONAR.exe is still running in the background, and has lost its connection (due to sleep mode). Try killing it (SONAR) in task manager, and reopen SONAR. 
All the best.

did you try this?

What I've found from sleep or hibernate mode is this:

• Make sure all your drivers are up to date, and have been tested on your OS. Sometimes the latest driver hasn't been tested for the current version of Windows and therefore isn't as likely to work in all conditions.
• Even then, don't leave the DAW running when the computer goes to sleep - assumptions made about device availability that hold true during normal operation may not hold true during the first few seconds of a restart. (I appreciate the original poster isn't doing this - I've included it for completeness)
• When the computer wakes up, sometimes the audio subsystem will be in a broken state and you'll have to restart it via Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services > Windows Audio > 'Restart the service' before playback works

I use Sleep mode a lot (technically Hybrid Sleep which gives most of the benefits of both Sleep and Hibernate), and I find myself having to restart the audio driver often. I believe this is a problem with the OS, and/or possibly with the hardware, because I have seen this with different audio interfaces (Scarlett 6i6 USB and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 PCI card). And if the Windows audio service is not running properly, this can result in applications being unable to execute properly and hanging, sometimes before they even start up properly, which is what could be happening here.

So, why not just shut the computer down? Leaving it on doesn't extend the life of the machine. That's an old myth from the 486 era. Several studies have shown that turning the machine off if you're not using it for an hour or more is what actually extends the life of the computer. Also, the more your physical memory gets used up, the larger the page file that's used by the OS, which also affects performance. I reboot between large projects that use a lot of samples to clear my ram, and don't seem to have near the problems others have with programs.

Resonant Serpent
So, why not just shut the computer down?

• It takes longer to reboot than to wake from sleep
• It means saving everything in every other program I have open, and restarting them when I reboot, if necessary
• In my case it also means reaching under the table and fumbling for the power button

pwalpwal

Zargg71
Hi. I am just guessing that SONAR.exe is still running in the background, and has lost its connection (due to sleep mode). Try killing it (SONAR) in task manager, and reopen SONAR. 
All the best.

did you try this?

Yes. Zargg was right. Thanks Zargg!

kitekrazy1

lingyai
Hi, 
 
As per the title. This just started the other day. Something which preceded it -- though I don't know why it would matter, but still -- was me opening a Hopkinton project in X3e. (There were no problems running it in X3e, the project was simple and did not involve any post-X3e functions). This problem is not specific to this file or any of its later versions; it's a global Sonar problem. 
 
To clarify, I don't mean putting the PC to sleep while Sonar is running. I mean, if I boot the machine, I can use Hopkinton, save close, exit, then put my PC to sleep, and wake it up, but then cannot launch Hopkinton in any way. Clicking the Sonar icon in my taskbar, a SPLAT shortcut on my desktop, or even the SONARPLT.EXE itself have no effect. Double clicking on a Hopkinton file  in Windows Explorer give me an hourglass for an instant, then nada. 
 
I can reboot the PC and then launch Sonar as usual.  But I put my PC to sleep, vs. shutting down, for a reason -- I don't want to reboot unnecessarily, as I'm told this can age a PC.  Hopkinton already requires enough reboots to workaround other problems for me, gets really old in fact, so I would really want to tackle this one at least.
 
Can anyone advise? 

There's not enough proof to verify this.  Best solution on a desktop is to never use sleep mode. 
 

this used to be the case; power on/off ages the mobo components faster (plenty of proof of this) but in the modern pc world of today, with better components, we tend to upgrade before this becomes noticeable/an issue, so it's not as worth doing as it was 15 years ago