Sonar X1 stability - is it improved over 8.x?

I'll be honest here, at the risk of flames. I haven't been around the Sonar forums for a while because - well - I just gave up on the constant glitches and crashes under all releases up to and including 8, was disinclined to spend more money to go to 8.5 and switched to Reaper instead. That meant giving up a lot of sophistication in exchange for an environment that Just Worked.

I appreciate I am risking being flamed here but my experience has been that with exactly the same hardware and exactly the same plugins, I simply have never ever had even a single crash or dropout with Reaper. After more than two years, I just trust it instinctively. Coupled with this, more than two dozen upgrades have been made, for which no charge whatsoever has been made; indeed, my license for 3.x entitles me to upgrades all the way to the end of the NEXT full release without charge. (It's pretty much 'upgrade of the month', sometimes even more often. Not that I've ever had a problem but it's nice to see the quick turnaround on issues).

So the question is, are we any better off with Sonar X1?. I do miss some of the advanced functionality in Sonar, including the score editor - which, disappointingly, is apparently exactly the same as it always was with X1 - but if X1 was now rock-solidly stable I might be tempted to upgrade. My hardware is modest - a laptop with a UA25 as the audio device - and you would think that ought to be as stable as it gets given that Roland own Cakewalk - but I never was able to get Sonar stable on this, or any other hardware. In addition a number of serious unfixed bugs simply drove me crazy, the most serious being that instrument tracks have never worked properly. If saved as a track template and inserted into a new project, the levels to inserted effects are completely wrong - I raised the defect, it was never fixed. There were other issues where you had to split an instrument track back to audio and midi to get access to some of the MIDI parameters as well - extremely frustrating!.  Perhaps X1 addresses this, I don't know.

I'd like to upgrade, but, frankly, the postings I'm seeing about X1 don't look too encouraging. What's your experiences been with stability so far?

You will get people who love it and people who are very angry about it. That said, yes, I am better off with X1. It has been more stable i.e. smooth running with a mix of 3rd party instrument and fx on my machine.

It seems to depend on what you are trying to do and who you are asking.

Not necessarily true, I have a high powered machine running 30 tracks with multiple instances of UAD on every track, DPro, Superior Drummer multiple controllers and multiple monitors. Smooth sailing here.

Well all I can say is a  Q9500 isn't a machine its a graphics adaptor.

It really seems like people with little Sonar experience, lightweight computers and projects that don't push any envelope do well while people with mean computers, a ton of experience and projects that test the boundaries of what Sonar can do, don't.
I have a project I've been testing that is 50+ tracks, 100 or so effects, some synths, etc. In 8.5.3 it runs great at a buffer of 32 in X1 I have to run it at 128 or it stops every time I look at it.


This is a false assumption.  Granted, there are users who are having problems with X1; however, there are many others here who are having no problems with stability using X1 who, myself included, run equally large projects.

Player


It really seems like people with little Sonar experience, lightweight computers and projects that don't push any envelope do well while people with mean computers, a ton of experience and projects that test the boundaries of what Sonar can do, don't.
I have a project I've been testing that is 50+ tracks, 100 or so effects, some synths, etc. In 8.5.3 it runs great at a buffer of 32 in X1 I have to run it at 128 or it stops every time I look at it.


This is a false assumption.  Granted, there are users who are having problems with X1; however, there are many others here who are having no problems with stability using X1 who, myself included, run equally large projects.

You'll notice that I said it seems, and you would be one of the few exceptions to the rule so far.

Yeah two things. What is your machine so I know what you consider a high end machine? I thought my quadcore with 4GB was pretty top end last year but time flies. This at least compared to the numerous people running on laptops, XP and Vista most of which make up the people having problems.

Second, the thread just started and whiners tend to show up here more regularly than people who have things running well. That's all for now.

Middleman


Yeah two things. What is your machine so I know what you consider a high end machine? I thought my quadcore with 4GB was pretty top end last year but time flies. This at least compared to the numerous people running on laptops, XP and Vista most of which make up the people having problems.

Second, the thread just started and whiners tend to show up here more regularly than people who have things running well. That's all for now.

It was high end 2+ years ago. I also run 8.5.3 on a weak laptop with XP and it does really well. Won't be installing X1 on it.

Ok but you didn't answer my question. You referenced the fact that it doesn't work on high end machines and I am wondering what your experience is based on for X1.

aleef

10Ten

Middleman


Well all I can say is a  Q9500 isn't a machine its a graphics adaptor.

I'm sorry, You didn't actually list your CPU. You have a Q8200. Definitely not high end.
 
 
 
10Ten.. Why do you have to be such a snarky little sh*t, all the time on every thread..You are really annoying man..

I answered a question. If you feel like that is snarky so be it.

Stability seems to be the single most variable factor when it comes to people discussing DAW systems.

In my own case, I have an i3 system custom built by PC Audiolabs running XP Pro.

It have only been used for dedicated SONAR recording.
No internet, no games, no email, etc....

Running SONAR 8.3, I have NEVER in 2 years ever had a single freeze, BSOD or other crash.

I guess you would call that 99.9% stable.

I have been hesitant to upgrade to X1 because I see nothing in it that will help me because of the way I use the DAW.

I also dislike the new look .

But additionally I spent a day with a friend who has also been using SONAR 8.5 trouble free on an XP system and his upgrade was full of problems.

But others on here have a different experience and think X1 is better.

I suppose it is a complex riddle of hardware / interface / software interactions causing such different experiences.

Lanceindastudio


If I crash I dont need to reset my sound card driver or rebnoot- just start right back up cuz sonar "lets go" better now.

Big help for me

AFAIK Sonar has never been any different.

10Ten

Middleman


Ok but you didn't answer my question. You referenced the fact that it doesn't work on high end machines and I am wondering what your experience is based on for X1.

i7 950, GT240, high end RAM, drives, MB. New install of W7 I installed especially for X1. My experience is based on using Sonar since it came out, 100's of recordings and screwing with X1 since a few days after it came out.

So I have a quadcore and you have a quadcore. Why is mine not high end?

No, I'm not. You have faster ram, the core is not that must faster. I am just trying to understand why one 64 bit machine is considered high end and another is not when running Windows 7 x 64.