Does anyone know what's happening when the response and general performance in a project begins to deteriorate over time? Example: Click to put the cursor somewhere and it doesn't appear instantly. When that happens I know the machine is beginning to drag it's feet but I'm not sure why.
Machine is: i7 3.3 quad core Intel chip, 12 RAM, 4 terabytes. Sonar 8.5.3, Win 7 Ult, nothing else running.
 
Thanks - rev

This starts happening to me the more tracks/clips/takes I record. This is why as I work I'll trim things down by creating comps of stuff I think I'll use as finals, put them in a new track and Archive (and Hide) the originals.
 
Also much of it seems to be due to HDD lag. It's trying to ready a ton of info so it takes it's sweet arse time starting playback and whatnot. I find slightly increasing the Read/Write cache helps (but currently I'm doing everything from a single drive which is foolish... I need to set things up use my second drive but have a lot of cleanup to d first).
 
And if you aren't tracking you might as well increase your interface buffers as latency does not matter when not recording. This helps things stay reasonably smooth as far as editing/navigation/mixing/etc. The only downside really with increased buffers is playback does not start immediately but other things happen faster/more reliably.
 
Just how I do things. I create pretty massive, audio based projects so managing what is and isn't necessary becomes kind of crucial after a while.
 
You could be starting to experience project corruption too which is a good reason to keep a lot of Save As points to return to. I've also started sometimes creating completely new projects and importing comped/edited material into it to continue working if I feel the original project is getting too out of control or starting to corrupt.

Thanks dude, good words but this isn't a performance issue as much as a slow degradation of performance.
 
I may not be adding tracks, data or audio, it just starts to slow down the more I work in the project. I'm very often doing exactly as you suggested as well as taking out VST's as soon as I've finished with them and supposedly relinquishing the resources, so the project should be getting leaner and contain less stuff to process as time goes by.
 
That's the puzzling part. It's as though processes are accumulating or resources are diminishing just as a function of time in the file. I don't think Consolidating would help because Sonar only reads the stuff that's in the file, Consolidating only helps save storage space.

Could be a RAM leak by a plugin. Open the Task Manager and watch Processes|Memory. Watch the Sonar executable and see if it starts growing slowly in size and doesn't stop. I've seen a plugin cause this in older versions of Sonar before.

hmm... yeah, doing some housekeeping should really get things moving along better but I know personally from having projects that go on for aaages (like steadily added to over a year or more) they can start getting just odd in general. That's why I mentioned starting a new project and exporting/importing all the tracks. It's kind of drastic and in my case really not all that necessary most times but it certainly makes things snappier and considering how nutsoid I go with track and experimenting starting with a reasonably clean slate (with only the good stuff) is nice.
 
But a perfect example of when this has been actually quite necessary for me is a couple times when using CWB's that were sent to me (one very recently). As I worked it just got wonkier and wonkier until I feared the project was going to be toast. Got it all out of the original CWB and into a fresh project and all was well. I may do this for older projects I started in older versions of Sonar to avoid cross version oddities.
 
Honestly I don't know specifically why projects slowly get weird (I'm not a tech) but I can only imagine that constantly writing and retrieving that amount of 1s and 0s a few of them are going to start falling through the cracks or getting all flip flopped. At least with a new project, raw waves and freshly loaded FX/Instrument presets (I make sure if there are settings/sounds I want to keep they are saved) the actual project part is clean and fresh on disk. Then I can continue destroying it over time. lol
 
Check into that RAM leak thing though... and really you should not have to do what I just described. I just find it helps and it makes me feel a little safer. Also less clutter is always good when you're a spazzy, disorganized weirdo like me.
 
Cheers.

Do you have something like Microsoft Security Essentials running to make sure you don't have spyware on your PC?
 
The most noticeable indication of a spyware infection is processing delays.

Not sure if that is the problem but I agree definitely worth a go...
The best app for that by far (uncontested) is malwarebytes which you can download and use the scan for free.
You also need to use a virus scanner such as AVG or security essentials.

I am very interested in security software.  Some of them slow down your system almost as much as the spyware (!) which is why I started using MS Security Essentials (which is free).  But don't go by me because there are probably better products and I am no expert.

Malwarebytes is free and does not stay resident in memory unless you buy the pro version (which is extremely good btw) which will do scans on the fly. It's perfect for one off scans and certainly won't slow down system. You also need to run a virus scanner alongside it.


I don't see any excuse for not running at least a virus scanner nowadays such as security essentials etc, most machines have plenty of memory and processing power, you just need to exclude the Sonar application and working folders from the realtime scan.

Malwarebytes found a couple of PUP.Optionals and the problem seems to have gone away now. I can't say for sure because I generated audio and took a bunch of VSTs out of the project. Either way, all is well.
 
I've often had to move everything to a new project as Beepster said above but I use it as a last resort...