I have 3 main issues with Platinum
 
1. Closing Platinum often hang without shutting down the application. Several times now, when I close Platinum, it sytays around and I have to manually kill the process in Win 8.1
 
2. This also goes for closing projects - Platinum will just hang with a spinning circle and does not recover. I have to force the Platinum process to close.
 
3. When having to force Platinum to stop it's process I lose all project history. I had several project opened and worked on. Opening the project dialog to work on other projects, I see a full list of projects. When the processes have to be forced, all of that history is removed or not saved.
 
No real big issues encountered yet, but these do irritate me.

If I remember correctly that is an audio driver issue,  but don't take my word for it.  Something to do with Sonar waiting to be told the driver has been released correctly or something but the driver doesn't respond as expected.

rme are reputed to have amongst, if not, the best drivers around, and sonar has caused driver issues before (lynx around x1 time) so not necessarily the drivers...
 
for an external device, the power-cycle workaround might be faster than waiting...

I've been happily surprised by platinum. Zipping through some mixes in the last few days. I find there are some minor but nice smart tool enhancements that help. Specifically being able to grab slip edit or clip fade handles more easily without zooming.

Using keyboard shortcuts to quickly close and open projects last night, I did see a hang and had to restart sonar. I was using my RME.

This morning, within a 20 minute period, I got hung closing projects and SONAR 5 times. That is 5 times too many for my taste.
 
RME is rock solid with their drivers. I would find it very odd that the fault is with RME.

I'm getting a crash message occasionally when shutting down Platinum.  I have an RME as well.  My issue could be more related to the Mackie MCU which has been fighting with Windows in SONAR as well as Studio Pro.

Well they are still releasing RME driver updates for some reason, so they can't be that rock solid (no software is)...
 
Latest driver here (only just come out), you must install the latest firmware for this:
http://www.rme-audio.de/e...nloads_driver_fireface
 
I got a dodgy plugin last week that appeared to work fine with Sonar X3E no issue, I opened up process monitor and found the plugin DLL was being accessed almost non stop... Waved goodbye to that plugin. Also I regularly have to update drivers when I get software upgrades.
 
If the driver update/firmware doesn't work why not play the project for an hour with/without plugins disabled to see if it crashes.

I, too, am having occasional crashes on exiting Sonar.  It has only hung once.  I normally just get a "Sonar is not working" message.
 
It's not a big issue, though, as I can restart it if need be.

X3E does not hang or go unresponsive with my RME.
 
I do not see why I should update the driver and firmware when I did it last week. Works in X3E and NOT Platinum.
 
Still irritating. I have had zero new plugin additions. I would rather be able to use the software I purchased instead of testing it for them to find out what the bug is. I could try safe mode to eliminate plugins, but again, X3E works fine. Some of the projects have zero plugins. 
 
Still irritated and committed to find out the issue but I would rather be able to just use Platinum, keep my history and be able to open Platinum without having to manually stop the Platinum process....

Guitarmech111
Still irritated and committed to find out the issue but I would rather be able to just use Platinum, keep my history and be able to open Platinum without having to manually stop the Platinum process....

Have you contacted support? Cakewalk did a lot of fixes for "close on crash." I used to have that problem but haven't since going to Platinum. It's possible that the fixes had an unintended consequence with RME. If RME has new firmware and drivers, i would definitely update them because Noel has an RME - he probably tested with the most recent drivers.
 
But I also wonder about FireWire and Windows 8.1. I weaned myself off FireWire a while ago, so don't have recent experience with it. IIRC there was something with Windows 8 about having to download legacy drivers or something...
 
It may have less to do with SONAR or RME than with how they react to something in Windows. That's why I think it might be worth contacting tech support.