LJB
......... as an 8+ hour per day, 7 days a week professional user of Sonar Platinum ..............

OT, but how do you do that? I struggle to get through two hours without severe brain fade. 
 
PS: It is a serious question LJB, I am not trying to be a smartarse.....

FWIW, I worked in Dorcherster for about 8 hours on Saturday and 5 hours on Sunday and the only crash I had was when I tried to open an old project whilst I had my current project open. I just wanted to copy one measure of audio to drop it in my new project.
 
After a restart of SONAR (not computer) the old project opened just fine as did the new one.
 
+1 FWIW - I've had this same thing happen to me in X3, X2 and X1. Yet at other times I can sucessfully load two or more projects. Maybe be track/vst related.

bapu
FWIW, I worked in Dorcherster for about 8 hours on Saturday and 5 hours on Sunday and the only crash I had was when I tried to open an old project whilst I had my current project open. I just wanted to copy one measure of audio to drop it in my new project.
 
After a restart of SONAR (not computer) the old project opened just fine as did the new one.
 
+1 FWIW - I've had this same thing happen to me in X3, X2 and X1. Yet at other times I can sucessfully load two or more projects. Maybe be track/vst related.

Okay... that's a little more encouraging.
 
Hope all is well in Bapsland.
 
Cheers, bud.

FWIW, I was having all kinds of issues with Plt not loading certain projects....it would hang no matter what I tried. Contacted support (great job Joey, thx again) and everything is good. I removed all instances of visual c++, reinstalled Dorchester and bingo all is well. I also didn't realize that my CPU is 2 generations below mininum spec for Plt (AMD A8 instead of A10) and I'm still running projects with 30+tracks and lots of plugins. The VSTi that I use usually get bounced to audio as soon as I get them where they have to be and the synth tracks are then archived....old habits from days gone by ;-) 
 
Morale of the story, Cakewalk tech support is top class! 
 
Now, back to making music............

FreeFlyBertl
Upgraded to Dorchester last night on the main DAW ...
 
I find it really cool that 2 major issues with mix recall I posted got improved: batch export using mix recall of time selection (collapsed folder bug) and optionally excluding FX rack from mix recall for faster load times (feature request) :-) thanks a lot.
 
Yet, I also pulled in a template hosting 5 synths (1x element, 2x zta3, 1x FF, 1x absynth) and it crashed an almost virgin new project ... and when trying again it crashed it again ... 3rd time around it worked (don't ask me why??) ... and I get the occasional crash when exiting/closing projects (which sometimes even require reboots) ... so talking about stability I'd appreciate this to be the focus ...

 
I'd be very surprised if the crashes you are having are specific to Dorchester or just coincidental. Can you or anybody who have had crashes please post the CWBRN numbers so I can investigate?
Stability has definitely been the focus - look at the bug fix list in Dorchester! Of course there is a chance of something new to break but in this case I'm not convinced yet that its a new issue or coincidental.

Just another "everything working well here" post to add to the chorus.   I'm running a Q9300 w/ 8GB RAM, 1GB ATI Radeon card, all 7200 RPM HDDs and Win7 x64.  And with this, uh, "mature" setup, SPlat feels very similar to X3 overall.  I also haven't noticed any real performance difference between one SPlat release and the next, and even that's subjective.   Maybe a few seconds here and there during initial project load, or it could be my level of patience at the time.   Really hard to gauge.  
 
Oh, and all of my projects include VSTi and audio, some leaning more towards one direction than other, but always a mix and always at least 3-4 VSTi; e.g., Kontakt, AD2, AK, DP/Rapture, etc., and lots of PC modules and FX Chains.  
 

Can we call it Dorkchester now then?
I've been wanting to so badly because I guess I must be so immature. :-)

lfm

SteveStrummerUK
 
Edit to add: If I reopen the same project immediately after closing it, it takes less than 15 seconds to open.
 

 
Can't help but think that read cache helps a lot there.
And even disk issues, like defragmentation and chkdisk should be run.
 

This point is a good one, since I am often remiss in defragging my HDD (do not defrag an SSD!). I had a program (not SONAR) which regularly updates and installs its piece parts anywhere it chooses. Just last weekend I defragged/consolidated data on these drives and load times for all programs dropped substantially.
 
As things are written to disk, it is often in an easily accessible position for the heads at that time. When reading ALL of these piece parts for a load, the heads may be going all over to retrieve/assemble this data. Defrag/consolidation can have a dramatic effect for this, especially if the HDDs are higher capacity.

Anderton
One comment about load times: it sure seems that Windows itself takes a looooooong time to boot fully. After I enter the password, I go do something for 5 or 10 minutes. A project that can take a minute to load right after turning on the computer can take 10 seconds a few minutes later.
 

Hmmm not sure Craig about this.  I have just built a new Win 7 64 bit machine with a Samsung SSD as the C drive.  I get to the desktop in Win 7 in 23 seconds.  (Note I have done many tweaks though and not allowed any unnecsaary programs or background operations to boot up, ie have disabled lots of things that you don't need)  And Windows seems to be ready for action from that second on.  For me there is no difference 5 or 10 minutes later.
 
Studio One can open a huge session with many many tracks loaded with VST's and plugins in under 5 seconds flat and I mean it.  (2 seconds in most cases!)  It is so fast it is rude.  I still have a normal audio drive and the audio is being loaded up from that.  I guess the SSD might have something to do with the VST's and plugins though.  That is probably where the speed jump comes in.
 
They are fast and I mean fast. Samsung make the best I believe. After working with this I dont think I will ever go back. My other machines feel slow no in comparison. It shuts down in 2 seconds too.!

perhaps the issue is a combination of dorchester AND rapture pro? I'd be interested to know how many of those who upgraded to dorchester and are having problems, also upgraded to rapture pro which IS giving me issues!