Thanks Anderton for the details. I'll be checking out the grouping options. I just never looked at that closely enough for this particular purpose.
 
Alex, but consider this... If you need to mute some tracks just to prevent overloading your CPU, what do you do if you actually want to unmute all of your tracks? Do you pick which tracks are the least important and mute those? How do you listen to the full song?
 
The point is saving CPU cycles by playing musical chairs with mute buttons doesn't make sense because if it gets to that point then your system is seriously overloaded and can't handle the full song. Freezing is a better solution than muting.

I was simply answering your first question Steven, that would be a specific use case in regards to Sonar behaviour and would make sense in terms of Sonar design to minimize CPU workload. What is actually best practice or what works better for users workflow is another thing... Consider live recordings for instance...
 
Cheers...

Anderton
So, with people running CPU-hungry synths like Diva etc., having "all MIDI all the time" seems like it could be problematic. Of course you could go in and manually mute MIDI tracks to mute the audio and preserve CPU cycles, but then you're just basically duplicating what happens now...or mute only the audio but keep the MIDI data, and pay the CPU penalty.
 
Comments?

Anderton, the amount of CPU you may or may not save by muting a synth is such an unknown. It makes more sense to use the freeze function, which was designed specifically to save memory and CPU resources. Having to mute tracks to prevent glitching also has the big disadvantage that, well, you can no longer hear the track, but you were forced to mute it because you ran out of CPU cycles.

SilkTone
Alex, but consider this... If you need to mute some tracks just to prevent overloading your CPU, what do you do if you actually want to unmute all of your tracks? Do you pick which tracks are the least important and mute those? How do you listen to the full song?
 
The point is saving CPU cycles by playing musical chairs with mute buttons doesn't make sense because if it gets to that point then your system is seriously overloaded and can't handle the full song. Freezing is a better solution than muting.

However, it's not always the case that all instruments will need to play back during the course of a mix. You might have three or four instruments loaded with similar yet different parts during the recording/composition process, and toggle between them at various points to decide which works best in the arrangement. Suppose these are all fairly heavy-duty in terms of CPU consumption. With the current setup, you won't really have to think about CPU as muting the audio reduces the CPU drain. With "All MIDI all the time," you'd have to not only mute the various instruments individually, but also delve into their folders and mute MIDI as needed in case the CPU was red-lining.
 
Either that or increase latency, but usually when recording I want the lowest latency possible because I'll be doing things like vocal and guitar parts.
 
I don't know how typical I am, but I often end up with fewer instruments in a project when it goes to the final mix than were in the project during the composition process for the reasons given above. Had the current mute/solo protocol not been in effect, I probably would have run into issues in several projects. So it's also important to consider what is going to provide the best user experience...having a more seamless MIDI experience, or having to manage CPU consumption issues should they arise. 
 

Anderton,
 
I still maintain that mute/solo buttons should not play the role of managing workload, but I'll agree that in some cases it might help.
 
But ideally there should be a way to unlink MIDI and audio buttons for the purpose of making playback during mute/solo operations seamless. Ideally a per-track setting would be welcome. They can default to linked, then one can unlink them if necessary. And maybe even a global setting that says new tracks should default to either linked or unlinked.

Still missing my point though, any DAW worth it's salt is going to find ways to automatically reduce CPU load...
 
It might be an interesting option to have in preferences though assuming it makes a real world difference for some.
 
Cheers..

SilkTone
But ideally there should be a way to unlink MIDI and audio buttons for the purpose of making playback during mute/solo operations seamless. Ideally a per-track setting would be welcome. They can default to linked, then one can unlink them if necessary. And maybe even a global setting that says new tracks should default to either linked or unlinked.

I understand totally, but this begs the question of how many preferences and options are going to be built into a program, and how complex the setup for tracks should be. Offering multiple options for a very fundamental feature works against the odds of it being implemented. Prioritizing is also an issue. I'm sure thousands of people have preferences they would like to see, but would others want those same preferences? There was another thread asking for more streamlined preferences.
 
At some point, I think it's necessary to decide what qualifies as best practices, implement that, and if an existing toolset allows for workarounds for minority situations, that's sufficient. Creating additional layers and options runs the risk of making the program more daunting and ultimately, more difficult to use. For example, it appears you didn't know about Quick Grouping, which was an immensely powerful option introduced in prior versions of Sonar. My "tip of the day" thread garnered a lot of "I didn't know that" responses. Sonar is already an extremely deep program. I'm definitely not saying Sonar should do a Final Cut X and be dumbed down, but ideally every addition - and also, every legacy decision - needs to be evaluated under the lens of "will this make for a better translation of musical inspiration into physical reality?" 
 
As Noel pointed out, this design decision was made 12 years ago. Back then, the best practice probably was to conserve CPU resources wherever possible, with the tradeoff being a less seamless MIDI experience under some circumstances. However, with multicore computers and faster processors, it may very well be that the best practices have changed, and that the average Sonar user's computer has no problem with "all MIDI all the time." If so, then just make that the default and if some people have issues with older computers, the tracks can be frozen or rendered. IMHO I don't think there would be any need for a preference; just unlink them and say "we have fast enough computers now for the majority of users" and be done with it.
 
Of course, there's also the question of feasibility and importance to the user base in terms of prioritizing. Personally, i have a screaming 12-core machine and can cope with "all MIDI all the time" so this would be not only be okay with me, but like you, I would probably find it preferable. However, it's also important to be sensitive to users with less powerful machines.
 
Cakewalk is now aware of this issue, and there is a dialog going on...so we'll see what shakes out. Meanwhile, there are some pretty painless workarounds. 
 
 

Makes sense though to design a product as lean and as CPU efficient as possible by default then open up via preferences if needed. It prevents the app design going haywire (suddenly becomes bloatware after developers chuck in one resource hog after another) plus it's likely reviewers will test performance of the app using the defaults.

CakeAlexS
Makes sense though to design a product as lean and as CPU efficient as possible by default then open up via preferences if needed.

No matter what the preference is, to mute a track's audio you're going to have to click on something - so just mute the instrument's MIDI track instead of its audio track. The only downside is it's an extra click if the track isn't already selected. But that also gives the option of doing it on a per-track basis. 
 
But...it would be really cool to have adaptive programs! So Sonar would analyze your system specs, decide what you could get away with, and set up preferences accordingly. If you started going nuts with virtual instruments and the CPU started going crazy, a dialog would pop up that said:
 
You're running out of CPU power. Would you like to:
 
Increase latency to the next highest default
Freeze all virtual instrument tracks you haven't edited in the last 30 minutes
Freeze all virtual instrument tracks you haven't edited in the current session
 
That would be interesting...

Problem with that is a performance monitor would also be a resource hog so again it would need to be an option in preferences. Nice idea though.