Hi Everyone.
 
I am having my first showstopper issue with Sonar in a long while,  and its a corker!  I have been editing 140 projects for the last 6 months for a show that I am about to tour. All was well up until the last 4 weeks when we began production rehearsals, with the whole show loaded into an enabled playlist, each set to  'wait for keypress'. Certain files are causing Sonar to crash, but ONLY when they are played back in an active playlist with a song loaded before and after. The projects begin to play, but as soon as the next song starts to load (as it does automatically on an enabled playlist) the currently playing project (which is the 'corrupted' file) gets stuck in a loop and sounds like a stuck CD stuttering. Then the dreaded reset button appears and Sonar crashes in a noisy heap. The only way to close Sonar is via task manger. The same files play back perfectly standalone, outside of any playlist. They even playback in a playlist if they are the first song loaded. Between 2 other files, however, disaster strikes.
 
At first it seemed that random files were being corrupted  and the only way to fix the problem was replace the file with a backup and redo the edits. Last night I went through the entire playlist and replaced any problematic files with earlier versions - all files played in a playlist back without a problem. After making small changes at rehearsal today, infuriatingly 3 files had again become corrupted (on a different pc, with different interface and HDD) Tonight I did some troubleshooting and discovered that, thankfully, even the seemingly 'corrupted' files played back fine in playlsts using Sonar 2016 - 03. They did not in any version after that.  I can absolutely confirm that whatever the cause of these playlist woes, they began with 2016 - 04. 
 
Note that this only occurs when the seemingly randomly corrupted file is played back in the midst of an enabled playlist - you know - when you are on stage! I have tried the files on 3 different laptops with the same result. 
 
Any ideas would be very welcome!  I really hope someone from Sonar chimes in on this as it seems to render the playlist completely unpredictable and thus useless for any serious use from 2016 - 04 onwards. 
 
Thanks!

Hello guys,
Just spend days on the problem described above. Files on their own, no problem. In playlist when starting a song, randomly disaster strikes during start of song while sang above is being closed and song below is loading.
As these are shows with hundreds of people attending, things could not be worse. And as I'm using Platinum, I can not play these files in a previous version.
I found that the problem can be minimized by double clicking each song in the list so that the song is already loaded into memory. This has saved the day for now, but I'm very nervous and would appreciate any tips.
Tx, Tony

Hey TonyDecap. Welcome to the forum!
 
I eventually tracked this issue, which only showed up upon playback in a playlist, to being caused by using unextracted FX chain presets on tracks. It was a bug introduced in 2016 -04 and present for a few releases. The workaround is to right click on any FX chain presets in the FX bin, extract the effects then resave the project. I believe it was resolved in a later release but I still extract FX chain presets out of habit now.
 
I did post the workaround in the problem reports forum but neglected to do so here.
 
Hope this helps!

Hi Bruce,
Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. Well, as I'm not aware that I'm using FX chain presets, it must be a different cause with the same results. I'm using the DXi TTS-1 (2x) and 2 VSTs. When the crash happens, I get this stutter for a few seconds, then the song goes on but I get the message that a fault happened with the TTS-1 and the program is unexpectedly terminating. If I click OK then the song stops and the program is terminated.
If it rings a bell, I really would appreciate any thoughts. Thanks again for responding and trying to help,
Tony

Hey Tony.
 
Obviously a different issue. I would strongly recommend that you freeze (or bounce to audio then disconnect) the vst synths and then save the projects for live use unless of course you are playing them real time. The playlist does not always get on well with projects that contain active vst synths as it not only loads the current song, but also loads the next on the playlist. 

I have never used FX chains in projects for live use. Just audio files with ProChannel EQ and MIDI to control external gear ... so would you guys expect me to be at danger of running into your issue(s)?

FWIW we were running all our playlist stuff on long tested projects using X3 ... mainly because it was well tested at our end and I did not want any update to interfere. I had only recently thought about letting go of X3 but hearing this I just may hold on to it ...???

Hey Rob.
 
I am currently running the latest version of Sonar and the playlist with an average of 24 tracks + FX and midi production triggers in each project with remote control amidst a fairly complex setup with zero issues. I am in production/rehearsals at the moment so am running the playlist 2-3 hours every day. The issue that started this thread was resolved by Cakewalk in the next update after I reported it. In short, no, I would not expect you to run into this issue. I suspect the issue Tony is having may be connected to the use of active VST synths in an active playlist, which I think is very brave in any circumstance. 
 
The only thing I would recommend is opening all of your old X3 projects in the latest version of Sonar, checking the audio/midi outputs and resaving them. You may find that some of the outputs in old projects appear incorrectly. Once saved in the newer version however all will be well.

tenfoot

The only thing I would recommend is opening all of your old X3 projects in the latest version of Sonar, checking the audio/midi outputs and resaving them. You may find that some of the outputs in old projects appear incorrectly. Once saved in the newer version however all will be well.

Save the project files with a new name just in case, so you know the X3 version is still intact. Project files are small.

Thanks. That's extremely valuable feedback. Much appreciated: -)