Man, can I relate!
It's getting to the point where every single time I try to work on my music I only wind up frustrated with another software glitch.  It's getting to the point where it's not worth it.
 
Time to give up music and take up painting.  Seriously!
 
John B.

I couldn't do this on my own. I finally met a singer/songwriter guitar player, and we hit it off. I play bass, do the recording in Sonar, add drum loops and edit/arrange etc. John happens to know eq for mastering, and I have videos and you guys to help me out with Sonar. This weekend I am experimenting with taking one really nice sounding acoustic track and clone it and change that track to a 12 string, instead of just doubling.
 
All that to say,most of my issues since starting 3 months ago, have been me making things harder than need be. Sonar has never crashed, and I haven't had any audio engine freezes since I got a new CPU fan.
 
For a week or two or three, I had a hard time understanding the manual, until I watched the video, and then it still took 3 times through the videos before the fog broke. I'm not gonna be singing "I Can See Clearly Now" for a while but some of the fog has lifted.

Sadly many don't realise that the DAW is another art form to add to your musical art. It's a whole other job/craft that takes people years to learn and a lifetime to master. Don't expect it will all come so quickly. This is not a reference to the OP, just a general comment on the ease/lack of ease in use of technology to advance our musical dreams.

Doktor Avalanche

Kylotan
6) Clean up your computer. I don't subscribe to the "only use the PC for audio" belief - a desktop computer set up properly is capable of performing pretty much any task you throw at it. But be aware of competition for its resources. You may need to close other apps while working with Sonar, and you may need to ensure fewer background processes are running. Some people see a benefit by switching off wireless cards or other network drivers (because they can compete with Sonar for rapid CPU use). Similarly, programs like Flux compete for the graphics card, Crashplan competes for disk access, and so on.

Good advice. But I totally disagree with (6), the specific point that you should be able to install other software... You can of course, but the less software you install the better it will be. Every qualified IT pro should know this.

Software has dependencies and can screw up other software dependencies. If you want a reliable DAW set up then use recording software on one windows installation only, and other related apps. Avoid installing office, counterstrike, flappy bird, visual studio etc. Also if you can avoid upgrading windows, do a clean install.

 
I think you're being sold scare stories. Sure, software has dependencies, but that rarely means that it affects other software or the other software's dependencies. About the only times when one piece of software affects another is either (a) when that software is performing something regularly in the background like disk indexing, backups, or colour management/screen calibration, meaning competition for resources, or (b) is intrinsically low-level software that affects how the operating system works, like things that integrate into Explorer, different window managers, disk encryption, etc. There's also potentially an issue over how much free memory you have, but the size of other programs in memory tends to be an order of magnitude lower than what Sonar's plugins tend to use anyway.
 
There are hardly any situations when installing a piece of office software will have any effect at all on how well an audio program works. It sits on the disk doing nothing until you run it - or at worst, it has a 'quick start' program in memory which also does nothing, except consume memory, until you run the main software. But there is virtually no way that one piece of software can ever make a second piece of software crash unless that second piece already has a bug, because the processes operate in different memory spaces.
 
On this PC I have Sonar, FL Studio, REAPER, but also office tools like Open Office, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, development tools like Visual Studio (two versions), Android Studio, and PyCharm, Steam and about 50 games, etc. I even leave half of these open while working in Sonar. And reliability is not a problem. The only issues I've ever had from other software are from F.lux which gave me audio dropouts due to it continually querying the gfx card (and they do touch upon this in their FAQ, to be fair).

I think you're being sold scare stories. Sure, software has dependencies, but that rarely means that it affects other software or the other software's dependencies. About the only times when one piece of software affects another is either (a) when that software is performing something regularly in the background like disk indexing, backups, or colour management/screen calibration, meaning competition for resources, or (b) is intrinsically low-level software that affects how the operating system works, like things that integrate into Explorer, different window managers, disk encryption, etc. There's also potentially an issue over how much free memory you have, but the size of other programs in memory tends to be an order of magnitude lower than what Sonar's plugins tend to use anyway.

 
I tend to agree. But it is a good idea to check what processes are running with Task Manager (or for detailed info, ProcMon). Check what processes are set to run on startup and disable everything that is unnecessary. Anything in the system tray is suspect.
 
I purpose-built this PC as a DAW and have had very few issues with it, but it has enough power to handle what I need to do. I did have many issues with its predecessor which was under-powered. I have Office and other programs installed and I  use the PC to connect remotely to my office PC when I work from home (I too am am a programmer / architect). I will not install any development tools on this PC. I use fairly resource-hungry orchestral VSTs like Hollywood orchestra so when I'm working on music, I make sure file synching is disabled, things like that. My AVS also has exclusion rules for the folders / drives that Sonar reads from and writes to.  It works for me anyway.
 
One item for programmers: I would not install SQL Server or SQL Express on a DAW. Not unless you are willing to disable all of its services except when you are programming. That was part of my problem with previous PC (and it was under-powered to boot).

I have a windows 8.1 box that I use for sonar as well as other things. However, in order to keep it "pristine" for sonar.. I only have two apps installed on 8.1. 
 
1. Sonar
2. Oracle VirtualBox. It's a free virtual machine platform.
 
Then I create a virtual machine in virtualbox and use that for everything else. When I want to do music, I shut the virtual machine down and use the base computer. 
 
That allows me to use my machine as an overall computer to do just about anything while also keeping it dedicated for sonar. 

My system was stable for almost a year then, out of nowhere, it changed.  It started after I tried to install EZ Drummer 2 update.  Then all hell broke loose and I'm having issues every single time I try to run my DAW.  The latest is input/output issues.
 
To me, the perfect DAW would be a standalone unit by Tascam or Yamaha or Fostex or something like that but would have the ability to run plugins and sample libraries like the PC based systems do.
 
PC seem to struggle with the fact that they're PCs first and DAWs second.  Standalone units only do one function-Record music.
 
JB

I have two C: HDD's on my PC. The first has a Windows install and all the programs I, (and every other family member), need to run on a daily basis, (Office, Email, Photoshop, GAMES, Etc, Etc,). The second HDD has only a Windows install and all programs needed to run Sonar.
At the beginning of a music session, I unplug the first HDD and swap it for the second HDD. This may seem a little extreme but it works, I basically have two computers in one. It takes about 2 minutes to power down Windows, do the swap and reboot. It has the added advantage of having a clean boot to work with as well.
This won't be a solution for everyone but if you have a computer that everyone in the family uses for their everyday work, schoolwork, games, and just plain fiddling, it works a treat and keeps your music install totally separate from any other issues that are C: drive related.
There are disadvantages to this method. If I suddenly need to fire off an email to support, or I need to use any other program that's on the first HDD, then I have to power down, swap drives and reboot. I have to be very careful what changes I make to my D: and E: drives to make sure they work with both installs. But I don't think I would have a working Sonar install if I had to share my C: drive with my kids and the internet at large.

So.....some folks have to jump thru hoops for a stable system, and others have no issues using their pc for multiple tasks, as I am...
 
Somethin's fishy, and I'm guessing it's not the program.
 
I do know that over the years, my most stable systems have been Intel based. Since moving to that platform exclusively(Mac & PC), I have few problems with software and OS.
 
PS - I am a retired desktop tech(last gig at Universal Music Group til 6-11). I was certified thru Win 7 Enterprise and OSX Snow Leopard). So I may be 3 years out of the business, but I've spent more than a little time with this stuff. Just not Sonar!

Anderton
SONAR is extremely reliable in my setup...but it's on a computer that's dedicated to music. I treat it like an appliance, or an MCI 24-track for that matter. I never expected to watch movies on an MCI 
 
I've certainly used programs that act the way you describe, and X1 wasn't exactly robust. But if someone has consistent, deal-breaker issues when running SONAR, that's not the norm - or this forum would be filled with pitchforks and torches. The solution is out there somewhere...and the last straw is that it's usually some simple thing that if only you had known about it sooner...

+1.
 
I feel the OP's pain as well; I am certain that anyone who has used any DAW
for more than a week has experienced what he describes.
 
I have given up trying to blame/narrow down any one thing for the reason Sonar glitches/might glitch/crashes
because the reasons are so numerous that the rabbit whole you end up in precludes any work
getting done(previously stated). If it's mission critical (clients waiting/watching) just do what gets you through...
 
I have embarrassed myself a few times by stubbornly make trying to make Sonar "do something it did yesterday
how I wanted Sonar to do it" when I KNEW there were ten work-around's.
 
Thank GOD that I am finally experienced enough with setting up my system
[read "make all the ****y little hardware and software parts sit together and make nice"]
that almost 90 percent of my most prevalent problems just come down to "pilot error".
 
I also agree that a discrete, DAW ONLY computer will get you better results faster.
(Imagine never having to worry about virus scans interrupting a rendering, or WIFI
causing wait states at just the wrong time.)
 
Mel