I don't have this issue with my main desktop DAW, but I have a laptop that exhibits it. The laptop is fairly generic, uses a motherboard audio chip, and I use ASIO4ALL as the driver. It not for serious audio use, mainly I just wanted to try out a full-install of Platinum on a clean platform using CCC.
 
Sonar Platinum is set up to use ASIO and 'share drivers with other programs'.
 
When the Sound properties control panel Advanced tab is set to allow exclusive control and give priority to exclusive mode, I see that Sonar will not terminate. The GUI disappears, but the Audio Mixer shows Sonar, and Task Manager shows it running in the background. The ASIO4ALL traybar icon has disappeared along with the Sonar GUI.
 
I need to terminate Sonar manually to use it again.
 
However, if I uncheck the 'Give exclusive mode applications priority' in the Sound control panel, Sonar terminates properly.
But if I do that, ASIO4ALL shows the driver as 'in-use' and won't enable the audio output. I've fiddled around with all the driver modes in Sonar - MME, WDM/KS, and ASIO. I get the best results with MME but that is 32-bit and the driver depth becomes 16-bit, whereas the Realtek driver is really 64-bit and supports 24-bit audio.
 
Maybe I'm doing something wrong here. Getting the audio to run is still somewhat flakey unless I use MME. I need to reset, the MIDI and turn on and off the audio engine sometimes to get the MIDI drivers to work. For MIDI I use a 'MIDI virtual piano keyboard'  (VMPK) running through LoopBe30 v1.6. This is a work in progress, maybe someone else has run into this with consumer-grade appliances.
 
I'm tempted to get a cheap USB audio interface, but that sort-of defeats the portability and simplicity of a laptop.
 
Laptop specs:
Gateway (Acer) Model: NV570P29u-53334G50Mnik
Windows 8.1 64-bit
Sonar Platinum 64-bit
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3337U CPU - in high performance mode can hit about 2.7 GHz
8 GB Ram
Touchscreen
Motherboard Audio: Realtek ALC3225 driver 6.0.1.7027
LoopBe30 v1.6 - virtual midi ports
ASIO4ALL v2.12 - ASIO driver

I believe the issues here are due to ASIO4ALL, and not caused by Sonar.
 
Many many folks have had issues with ASIO4ALL - sometimes just literally having it installed on the computer, even without specifying it.
 
While some number of people are able to use it and Sonar together, it is in my opinion at best a band-aid, and frequently an impediment to stability.
 
If you DO use it, I would suggest you only have Sonar point to ASIO4ALL, and NOT have the Windows Default Audio Device set to also use ASIO4ALL.
 
Bob Bone
 

OK, that makes sense.
 
When it works ASIO4ALL gives me 24-bit support, but getting it to start is a nuisance.
 
This laptop is new and I updated all the drivers when I bought it, but I did discover a newer Realtek driver (release 7.25: driver 6.0.1.7246) on the Realtek website that's not on the Gateway/Acer website, I'll install that and try again.
 
If I still have issues with ASIO4ALL, I'll try other different settings again, and perhaps uninstall it.
 
As I said, this is by no means my primary DAW, but it would be nice to make it as similar as possible  to my main DAW.
 
I'll re-post my results when I get this sorted out.

Kill ASIO4ALL if you can...

Yes wasapi mode works much better with realtek.

I managed to get ASIO4ALL to work on a Lenovo laptop years ago, but it was hard work configuring it. On a more modern Acer it was hopeless.

If you want a reliable DAW laptop you need one built for the job or something like a high-end HP Z series (there's an article on Cakewalk's website somewhere where they say which model of that series they use and it's far from cheap). Plus an external USB interface. Then beat the PC's bloatware, bluetooth and wireless networking into submission.

Or just get a Macbook and run Logic.

swamptooth
Yes wasapi mode works much better with realtek.

I uninstalled ASO4ALL and gave WASAPI a chance.
 
It works OK, but I still need to terminate Sonar after I quit, or remove the exclusive mode setting and start audio manually.
 
I will rarely use this notebook for audio, so I will just live with this for a while.
 
It looks as if the Realtek hardware service takes over the audio at startup so I need to either share it or use Sonar as the exclusive user.
 
Maybe I will try disabling the Realtek Hardware service - I think that is just used to allocate special effects and reverbs.
 

Try disabling Windows sounds. If that uses your sound device, whatever it it you will be locked into 16 but 44.1 kHz because that's what windows sounds are set to and windows gets first grab at your sound device.

arachnaut
Sonar Platinum is set up to use ASIO and 'share drivers with other programs'.

 
Hi Jim,
 
If you are still having problems on your laptop, try disabling the above setting.  It doesn't work they way it sounds like it would, but actually quite the opposite.  It could be that while the audio driver is in use, SONAR is expecting to "connect" or utilize it once it is freed up.  With 'share drivers', SONAR gives up or "lends" the driver for another program to use.  However, if this is unchecked then SONAR can still utilize the driver as well as the any other program because, in this instance, SONAR does not have exclusive control of the driver.  So, both programs can use the driver at the same time.  I hope i am not confusing you.  Just think of that setting doing the opposite of what it implies.
 
Again, you may be well aware of this so please excuse my post.
 
Kind regards,
 
tecknot

This is getting stranger and stranger. The Mic input is 16-bit and the Realtek internal mixer is 16-bit, but the audio chip is a 24-bit DAC which seems bizarre.
 
I've tried enabling and disabling things in various ways. I always restart after a change to be sure the system initialized with that state.
 
When I disable the Mic and system sounds and then start Sonar, there is a constant loud random noise on the output which does not show up on the Sonar output bus (set to -90db).
 
Under some settings Sonar will only come up in 16-bit mode even though the Wave Profiler lists things properly. That may be when the Realtek mixer and Mic are enabled as inputs. In some of these settings, the output bus will show fluctuating white noise at about -80db.
 
Since I rarely will use Sonar on the laptop (as I mentioned it was mainly just an excuse to download a clean install of Platinum without messing up my major DAW desktop) I think I will cop and and just kill Sonar upon exiting. All other settings seem to be worse.
 
I really need to get back to the main DAW and set up Platinum there.
 
For the record, though, here is where I left things:
 
In the Sounds Control Panel:
----------------------------------
 
Speakers - Realtek High Definition Audio; 24-bit, 48kHz; Exclusive mode boxes both checked. I think this is the default.
 
Mic and Mixer - default settings - 16-bit, 48kHz.
 
Windows Sounds - default sounds settings, Play startup sound.
 
In Sonar Platinum:
-----------------------
 
Audio Devices - only the Realtek Speakers are selected, Mic and mixer not checked.
 
Device Settings - Audio bit depth 24; 64-bit Audio engine (I do use 64-bit Wave files); 48kHz sample rate; 624 samples (13 ms buffer size) - (from Wave Profiler)
 
Playback and Recording - WASAPI mode, Pow-r 3 dither; Share drivers; Use multiprocessor engine; Use MMCSS; Always stream through FX
 
With these settings I can share my DAW projects with the laptop and use my virtual MIDI devices: VMPK - keyboard; VMIDIJOY - joystick controller; Fractal Tune Smithy midi generator - through LoopBe30.
 
Sonar will not quit on closing in this case, but it the simplest arrangement I can come up with for now. All the Sonar threads left dangling are waiting for something in the audio drivers. Waiting for many minutes is to no avail.
 
The laptop audio drivers are the latest as of yesterday - Realtek HDA release 2.74 driver 6.0.1.7246
All other laptop drivers are up-to-date according to Driver Detective, Acer and Gateway website and Windows Update.
 
In all other issues, Sonar Platinum works great - the Touch screen is kind-of cool to use on the mixers.
 
I have no laptop issues with anything else I use. The base OS was ruthlessly excised from vendor bloat. Only the power handling and touchpad drivers were left over. I image with Acronis, do not use Restore points, removed the Recovery partition and installed Linux there to have an emergency (non-UEFI) boot. I use Perfect Disk for defragmenting. Ethernet and Bluetooth disabled, Services optimized per Black Viper advice (http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-8-service-configurations/)
 
The system is much faster than when I bought it a month ago.