I don't know about you guys, but it seems like the more I use CTRL-S, the more stable Sonar is.

I'm glad auto save is not a default. I imagine this is because the bakers determined we would all complain if it was! 
 
And you should do something about the crashing! Sonar should not ever crash. That should be in the past unless your using an older version and possibley a PC that needs some tweeking. 

I would most definitely not want Auto Save as default. There are far too many "helpful" features that are default (and more creeping in all the time) that I have to disable/keep track of as it is.
 

BobF
I don't know about you guys, but it seems like the more I use CTRL-S, the more stable Sonar is.

Possible. Maybe just the act of saving gives Sonar a chance to do some background housecleaning as it writes to disk whereas not saving for long stretches allows all the little 1s and 0s to get freaky deaky.
 
As you can tell I am a highly trained computer talkin' dood so I totes know whut I'm talkin' about.

Cactus Music
 
And you should do something about the crashing! Sonar should not ever crash. That should be in the past unless your using an older version and possibley a PC that needs some tweeking. 

Naw, these things happen when you do certain things and/or push the program/system to the limit. I think a huge part of an efficient digital musician/producer's workflow is managing the project and tasks in such a way that you don't ram something down its throat that it can't handle. That comes with simply working with the program and finding out the reasons why things happen.
 
I'd imagine you've been doing this long enough that you don't do a lot of the stupid sh*t I used to do (and still occasionally do) that causes crashes/glitches. A lot of this stuff would happen on other DAWs too... but maybe while doing different stuff.
 
I never had any crashes with my old DAW but I never did ANYTHING beyond simple audio tracking and the only effect I used was the included EQ. I didn't even create busses because I didn't even know WTH they were. I'm sure if I did some of the stuff I do now I'd be crushing that system regularly.
 
Then again it's one of those DAWs that costs well over a grand so maybe a little more stable than the $500 range ones like Sonar.
 
And let's face... Sonar is now pretty solid and generally getting more solid all the time but stability still isn't really its strong suit (compared to maybe 2 or 3 of the competitors) which is why you gotta be a little more careful with it. If the Bakers keep up at this pace though and don't get off track of those stability improvements for the sake of tossing out flash and dash then it'll definitely start outperform the others on the stability front (and from what I hear the others are seemingly going backwards in that regard).
 
Meh... just ramblin'. You know what I mean.
 
Cheers.

BobF
I don't know about you guys, but it seems like the more I use CTRL-S, the more stable Sonar is.

This has been brought up before.  (Someone theorized that saving did some sort of clear or reset on a cache/buffer somewhere).  A few users seemed to agree, so there might be something to it.

I like what Sony Vegas does. When you save, it saves a new file and adds a .bak suffix to your previous save. So you can always go back to the version that was saved before your most recent save. Also. this limited type of auto-save happens only when you're saving anyway, so it doesn't interfere with the workflow.
 
Given that Vegas is not the most stable program on the planet (not a knock, my projects often push it to the limit) this has saved me more than once. Actually, way more than once...
 
With SONAR I have auto-save enabled based on number of edits, not time period. That seems to work best. Since Platinum I haven't lost any work so I haven't had to go back to an auto-saved version, but it is a nice security blanket.

If you don't like autosave by default, you can just disable it and it won't come back until you reinstall the software. I was thinking more about people who are interested in Sonar and download the demo. Maybe they find the program very easy to use and start recording some tracks which they think are going to make a good song. Then they do something stupid or they didn't set up preferences correctly and the program suddenly crashes. They start complaining in some other forum that Sonar is very unstable and doesn't even autosave the project...

I don't think the demo can save or export, so it probably can't autosave.

I used to used auto-save, but did not care for not knowing when it would do its thing, and that was fairly annoying, so I developed a habit of doing a Save As to create a backup of the whole project folder, right before a session where I knew there were going to be major changes.  I would also do CTRL+S to save the current version of the project right before any significant edits/changes, and again after being happy with the results of those edits/changes.
 
As a result of adopting the above, I have never lost any significant amount of work for any project.
 
Bob Bone
 
(edited to fix spelling goofs)
 

robert_e_bone
I developed a habit of doing a Save As to create a backup of the whole project folder, right before a session where I knew there were going to be major changes.  I would also do CTRL+S to save the current version of the project right before any significant edits/changes, and again after being happy with the results of those edits/changes.
 
As a result of adopting the above, I have never lost any significant amount of work for any project.
 
Bob Bone
 

This is how I work (lately) Have not lost anything since SPlat