Let's just try to play nice. We were ALL newbies once.

 
Yes we were. But that didn't give me or anyone else the right to wade in wearing my size 12's with guns blazing, attacking Cakewalk, their staff, users or the program itself.
 
Surely as a rank newbie, you tread carefully and try to be conciliatory until you do find out what the crack is with a particular forum.
 
If it wasn't for the the likes of Bitflipper, John, Bapu & CJ I was ready to throw the towel in myself over what were nothing more than little niggles (in retrospect) and that was after reading Scott's Sonar Power book from cover to cover before I even launched Sonar.

Beepster
lol... you must have missed my little meltdown when they released X3 leaving X2 all wonky. I was not amused. All is well now though... because I'm on X3.

I missed the meltdown, yes.
If it were not for AD2 I think I may have stayed with X3E at least for a while. I was not privy to the X3 late adopter AD2 upgrade (a little annoying). I had also bought all the pro-ch stuff that was not included in X3(a little annoying).
I do think though, that the $125 I paid for the platinum upgrade was worth it for just the AD2 plus the 3 ADpaks.
The jury is still out for me but I am not convinced that platinum lives up to the promises of the new development paradigm. Seems like a lot of bugs for what... 10 months since X3E.

jatoth,
+1

Funnily enough I'm using the original AD version from the initial X3 release on my current project and I think it sounds great. XLN AD was going to be the drum solution I was going to actually purchase to round out my instrument package for my specific needs (Session Drummer was just not quite as powerful as I needed) but got turned on to BFD. The fact they added it was very impressive to me and now I have both. Absolutely brilliant.
 
I would definitely like to get my hands on AD2 and those free AdPaks but it sure ain't holding me back at this point. If I was still just starting out though that would have been an UNBELIEVABLE boon to my little upstart studio.
 
TH2 was another addition that really twisted my mind. That was another case of Cake tossing something in that could have saved me some cash if my timing wasn't so crummy because I had JUST dropped the coin on GR5 which I barely even look at anymore. Whoops.
 
PS: The addition of the Tape Sim really helps with getting a slick overall drum sound too as well as bass. Just a really REALLY useful release in general for my needs. Don't even get me started on speedcomping. So cool.

I had put X3E on my I7 laptop when I first got it. I tried playing some existing projects and it was OK.
A few weeks ago, I tried my guitar with it with the intention of using TH2 for practice with headphones.
I had an absolutely terrible time with the laptop audio-in and Sonar. The laptop has WDM/KS and WaveRT and I spent like 2 days trying every driver mode and combination trying to get audio-in working. I finally gave up and tried ASIO4ALL (yeah, I know) and it immediately worked. 
Maybe a baker can explain to me why ASIO4ALL works as a converter between Sonar and WDM but Sonar cannot interface directly with WDM/KS in many situations. What does ASIO4ALL know that Cake does not?
Anyway, I tried TH2 in an attempt to get close to the sound of my outboard gear and wound up going back to GR5.
Beep, are you using the TH2 that came with X3P or the full version?
Maybe I need to play with it more. I have heard only good things about it.

Oh... yeah I bought the full version. As nice as the included version is it is severely limited especially compared to GR5. Sorry I should have been clear on that but they did give us a massive discount on the upgrade.
 
However I have been playing around with using TH2's cabinet settings and features to do all sorts of crazy stuff so here's something you might try...
 
Use GR5 to get a nice sound (but ignore any kind of cabinet/room stuff) then use TH2 further in the chain or on a bus with JUST the a cabinet (as in delete any heads in TH2) then tweak your room/mic/cabinet settings in TH2. That way you get the plethora of amp sounds from GR5 but the slick cab/room/mic features in TH2 (which are severely lacking in GR5 IMO).
 
As far as ASIO4ALL... yanno I've recently been in a position where I was screwing around without an interface on my laptop and was having a heck of a time no matter what driver mode I was using. I installed ASIO4ALL and things were a LOT better.
 
Obviously an interface is ideal and that's why people wig out about ASIO4ALL around here because it is NOT a suitable alternative to having a proper interface BUT if you simply do not have one around then it seems like that's a pretty good option to try out.
 
Also it seems to me they have really done some work on ASIO4ALL since I first encountered it a few years back (or I just was not paying attention back then).
 
Mind you Sonar brings my laptop to its KNEES so these experiments were using another DAW who shall remain nameless. My lappy is POS though. Yours is likely much more suited to the task.

Beepster
Mind you Sonar brings my laptop to its KNEES so these experiments were using another DAW who shall remain nameless. My lappy is POS though. Yours is likely much more suited to the task.

Yes my laptop is actually much more powerful than my studio desktop , plus I added an SSD to it.  I was waiting for the next Sonar to upgrade the studio PC.  The laptop  has the Conexant HD audio chipset AND win 8.1 though. I think this may be part of the problem.
I tried other audio interfaces too, like a little generic dongle (looks like a bluetooth adapter) I use for my older laptop and also a guitar to USB cable. Sonar would have none of this without ASIO4ALL. With ASIO4ALL and the Conexant audio, the WDM and WaveRT modes work at any available bit-rate and with a roundtrip latency of 8 ms @48K. WIth Sonar set for ASIO of course.
I will give your TH2 suggestions a try. The lite version only has limited effects so I may look at the full version.

microapp

Anderton
The only drawback I've found is that SONAR is very picky about its Windows environment. Its code has hooks deep into the operating system, which is one reason why a Mac version will probably never appear (although of course, it runs great under Boot Camp). To SONAR, a Windows computer is like a combination lock - when all the tumblers are in place, it opens up. But that's why this forum is so great - because odds are someone has experienced whatever problem you have, and can offer a solution or a workaround.
 
There's a reason why this forum is considered one of SONAR's outstanding "features"!

Craig,
You make it sound like Sonar's pickyness is a feature. 

Not sure if that's meant as humor or not...if it was humor, I apologize but if you meant it, i called the pickyness a "drawback" and said "But that's why this forum is so great - because odds are someone has experienced whatever problem you have, and can offer a solution or a workaround. There's a reason why this forum is considered one of SONAR's outstanding 'features'!"
 
It's the FORUM that's the outstanding feature. That's you guyz 

Anderton

microapp

Anderton
The only drawback I've found is that SONAR is very picky about its Windows environment. Its code has hooks deep into the operating system, which is one reason why a Mac version will probably never appear (although of course, it runs great under Boot Camp). To SONAR, a Windows computer is like a combination lock - when all the tumblers are in place, it opens up. But that's why this forum is so great - because odds are someone has experienced whatever problem you have, and can offer a solution or a workaround.
 
There's a reason why this forum is considered one of SONAR's outstanding "features"!

Craig,
You make it sound like Sonar's pickyness is a feature. 

Not sure if that's meant as humor or not...if it was humor, I apologize but if you meant it, i called the pickyness a "drawback" and said "But that's why this forum is so great - because odds are someone has experienced whatever problem you have, and can offer a solution or a workaround. There's a reason why this forum is considered one of SONAR's outstanding 'features'!"
 
It's the FORUM that's the outstanding feature. That's you guyz 

It was meant to illustrate something serious in a humorous way.
Yes, you say the pickyness is a drawback, then you blame it on Windows and the fact that Sonar has 'deep hooks into the OS'. I don't really think interfacing with audio drivers is deep hooks into the OS even with kernel mode drivers. The very fact that there are drivers in WIndows is to prevent needing hooks deep into the OS.
This seems to imply that Sonar has some kind of secret OS sauce that if applied correctly will yield superior results. All DAWs and all audio programs are presented with the same audio driver interfaces in Windows on a given system so it is kind of a level playing field from the DAW point of view.
A few posts back I described trying to get Sonar to work on a fairly high end laptop. I could not get it to work until I added ASIO4ALL (I am not a big fan of ASIO4ALL) . If an outfit that gives away their program has figured out how to make an ASIO to WDM converter that works in cases where Sonar fails completely why cannot Cakewalk look into this? Seems like it would go a long way towards eliminating the pickyness.
And yes I know about resources, priorities, etc. But this is a stability/compatibilty/robustness issue that affects the overall perception of Sonar as a serious professional DAW. It should have very high if not highest priority.
 
 
 

I think there's quite a bit more going on than just the audio drivers though. It's graphically intensive, lots of back and forth between the drives, RAM, CPU, etc and it's gotta store/keep track of a pretty nutsoid amount of information.
 
Also there are a lot of annoying Windows default settings these days that don't even really make sense to me even for basic users who just use their rigs for intertubing and emails. Of course everyone with a bit of knowledge is getting in there changing stuff and everyone's system hardware is different. It's amazing this stuff even works at all.
 
Stability should definitely be priority one at this point but it does really seem like that is the case. They do however have to provide curb appeal so it's a delicate balance for a small company. Having a stable and apparently supportive backer like Gibson will hopefully help. I don't know what the heck Roland was up to but as soon as they were out of the picture it was like night and day on so many levels.