Sonar Platinum and V-Studio problem - "bounce to tracks" kills audio

 Hi folks,
 
I've been having an incredibly frustrating time using Sonar and the V-Studio 700 over the past couple of months (I have both the audio interface and control surface). I bought the V-Studio used from a friend, who properly cared for it (and had it serviced in 2013 by Roland), and its in great shape. Sonar Platinum integrates with it perfectly, but I'm experiencing the same bug with Sonar Platinum that I had with Sonar X3e: whenever I select a midi line and attempt to "bounce to tracks", Sonar goes silent after it processes the track in question.
 
Sonar will bounce the midi to audio, and the wave form will appear in the new track. But when I attempt to play it, I cannot hear anything. The audio meter moves as though it is playing normally, there is obviously playback going on somewhere, but Sonar is silent. The midi track in question is also silent, and shows the same symptoms: meters move, track marker advances, etc, but not a sound comes out. I've checked everything: muting on tracks, soloing, levels, midi settings, mod wheel reset, etc. As far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with gain staging, or volume, or whatever. Sonar simply will not make a sound. I've fiddled with Sonar's settings in every way imaginagble to restore the sound, without success. If I change the sample rate of the project in Sonar, then the audio will be audible again (but distorted, which doesn't surprise me), but Sonar will usually crash shortly after. Oddly, even when Sonar has fallen silent after a track bounce, windows alerts are still audible, and the V-Studio interface is still obviously functioning. But Sonar simply will not talk to it.
 
In order to restore audio I have to restart Sonar, and that only happens after a full system reboot. If I close Sonar and attempt to open it again without rebooting my computer, Sonar simply won't launch. When I look in the Task Manager, I will see the Sonar process still running, but won't respond to the end process command. The only way to kill it is to shut the computer down and restart it.
 
This happened today, on a fresh install of Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. When I upgraded to Sonar Platinum last week, I deliberately blew away my old system, and re-installed the OS into a brand new hard drive. All mobo drivers are installed, updated to the latest, and working fine, and there is nothing but audio software on this system; I've kept everything else off it -- no games, no other audio software, no antivirus, etc. The system is also isolated from my home network. I load stuff on it via USB keys. Basically, its pristine, and this install of Sonar is less than four days old. I've been slowly rebuilding my setup, reinstalling my sample libraries, testing Sonar's stability one careful step at a time. Tonight was my first attempt to bounce a midi track to audio. And the problem recurred, right on cue. I cannot overstate how frustrating this is.
 
I work in IT, and the computer system itself is all premium components assembled by me: Asus mobo, Core i7 processor with aftermarket cooler, a top-shelf Thermaltake 750w modular power supply, 16gb of premium DDR3 memory in matched DIMMs, Samsung solid state drives, Antec Sonata III case with silent fans (and I'm careful about airflow and cooling). Most of the hardware is 6 - 10 months old, and before I rebuilt it as an audio computer, it was my mainstream work system. In the 10 months I've used it, the system has performed flawlessly with everything I've thrown at it -- except Sonar. I had hoped a fresh rebuild -- with an emphasis on making it an audio-only computer -- might solve the problems I was experiencing. It totally did not.
 
I am using the latest drivers for the V-Studio, and all the latest firmware updates are installed. My sample libraries are either Play libraries from East West, or Kontakt libraries from Native Instruments. I also have a few Engine libraries from Best Service. All my samples sets are full professional libraries that run in mainstream playback engines, and they too are all updated and properly installed. I have no third party VST effects installed, aside from the reverbs and processors that came with Native Instrumets Komplete 10 Ultimate.
 
This latest crash happened earlier this afternoon while working on a short soundtrack project, and after rebooting Sonar for the fourth time, I gave into my frustration and downloaded the latest version of Reaper and started work again from scratch. I completed the project in 3 hours. No hangs, no crashes, flawless. It all just worked.
 
I have a long history with Cakewalk products, and have been a happy user of Sonar from version 3 onwards. I love the intuitive design and interface, the sound, the included goodies, and everything else about it. Sonar is a great program, when it works, and I'd love to keep using it. But right now, that is simply not possible, and what worries me the most is that I think I've done everything I can reasonably be asked to do, in terms of setting myself up for success. I have a solid computer system with proven performance and stability, a brand new install of windows, a fresh version of the latest Sonar, all the latest updates and drivers, and the use of great hardware.
 
The results, however, are unusuable. And now I have no idea what to do. I've written to Cakewalk, and I'm waiting on their reply, but in the meantime, does anyone in the trenches have a thought about what could be causing this problem? Has anyone else experienced this, or something like it? I've searched the forums, but did not find anything. Possibly I am missing something obvious? 
 
Thanks,
 
Rob

Thanks for posting. It's good to know I'm not the only one! In answer to your questions: VS-700c and VS-700R, and Win 7 home premium 64bit. 
 
I'm curious what you do as an alternative to "bounce to tracks". I find that even on the rare occasions when the bounce process doesn't cause Sonar to go silent, it will still sometimes hang and crash the software. Have you experienced this?
 
I'm also curious what your conversion settings are. I did some further experiments last night, and tried working at a sample rate of 48k, and for the better part of an hour I was able to bounce midi to audio without anything going wrong. Previously, I had been working at 44.1k. I was too tired to keep going longer than an hour, but I plan to continue experimenting tonight. Maybe everything is more stable at higher sampling rates? 
 
Rob

Thanks, I'll take a look first chance I get. I don't think that is the issue (I don't recall ever checking that), but I'd be thrilled if it turned out to be that simple :)
 
Rob

Thanks for all the great input, folks. Oddly, and to my great surprise, at 48k I haven't been able to duplicate the problem and everything seems stable -- which is strange, since I am positive it happened at all sampling rates on my previous install. I've been playing around with it all night, and so far everything has been fine.
 
Previously, the bounce to tracks problem occurred regardless of what library or samplers I had running -- Kontakt 5, EastWest Play 4.2.2, Engine 2, Alchemy 1.55, etc. I usually have at least two of these running, and often all of them. I experienced the "bounce to tracks" problem regardless of which ones I was using. Yesterday's system crashes were mostly Kontakt 5.
 
I used "bounce to tracks" primarily when I was getting to final stages of a project. Once I was happy with the tracks that I had laid down, I was in the habit of basically turning off whatever effects I was using, and essentially printing the dry midi sound of each track to its own audio track, and then re-saving the project as an updated version, closing the synths and doing a final mix and edit with just the audio tracks. I always found it easier and more intuitive to mix, slice, shift, comp and apply effects to the instrumentation using audio tracks rather than midi tracks -- especially for stuff like cinematic percussion. Not very efficient, I know, but I like working that way.
 
Anyway, I'm going to try Sonar at different sample rates, and see if that affects how often the system crashes on me. But I'm feeling kind of encouraged, overall. I really appreciate everyone's input. 
 
Rob
 

Amicus717
Thanks for posting. It's good to know I'm not the only one! In answer to your questions: VS-700c and VS-700R, and Win 7 home premium 64bit. 
 
I'm curious what you do as an alternative to "bounce to tracks". I find that even on the rare occasions when the bounce process doesn't cause Sonar to go silent, it will still sometimes hang and crash the software. Have you experienced this?
 
I'm also curious what your conversion settings are. I did some further experiments last night, and tried working at a sample rate of 48k, and for the better part of an hour I was able to bounce midi to audio without anything going wrong. Previously, I had been working at 44.1k. I was too tired to keep going longer than an hour, but I plan to continue experimenting tonight. Maybe everything is more stable at higher sampling rates? 
 
Rob

I just installed the Platinum version to check put AudioSnap performance, and run into a similar problem. When I bounce AS'ed audio clips or freeze Virtual instruments, result would be a silent audio clip.
Then saw your post while searching for a solution, saw that you use Win 7 too. 
It occurred to me to change the SONARPLT.EXE's compatibility property to Win 7, and voila! Bounce to tracks etc all work now. Hope this helps.

Which version of BFD?
 
If it's BFD2 or lower you need to engage Offline Mode before doing a bounce or export

stinkydoom
Hey Bristol_Jonesey,
 
 
BFD2 never had a need to engage Offline mode before but it worked.
It helped a lot!!!!
Thanks!!
I would have been looking in all the wrong places.....LOL!

Glad it worked 
 
I always had to engage this mode when doing anything like bouncing, rendering, freezing etc in BFD2
 
A look at the resulting waveforms after a freeze and there were always chunks of audio missing resulting in choked cymbals and toms.
Strangely, kick  snare didn't seem to be affected, though their period by their very nature is a lot shorten than cymbals.