The Old Normal.cwt...A Tale of Corruption in SPLATville
Well over a year ago, I began experiencing what I thought was a random crash when using Sonar Platinum. It was a very distinctive crash in that there was a specific sonic identifier that occurred right before the crash. The identifier was that Stylus RMX would remain silent after the SONAR transport was started instead of playing like it should have. Without fail once I pressed stop, SONAR would immediately crash and the Cakewalk Problem Reporter would open. I reported the issue to CW support several times but never heard anything back, not even a request for more information.
Like I said, I initially thought that this was a random crash. However, last week I decided to see if I could force the crash to occur by repeating the last few things that I did right before the crashes occur. Luckily I was able to determine that the crash always occurred during the first playback immediately after I inserted a SECOND VSTI into the current project. My first thought was that it was a specific combination of plugins or soft synths that was causing the issue. After some testing, I determined that it didn't seem to matter which VSTI that I added to the project. SPLAT would always crash on the first playback after the SECOND soft synth was added.
This brings me to the custom 'Normal.CWT' template file that SONAR loads automatically when loading or creating a new project. As a lonnnnggg time SONAR user, my Normal.CWT is heavily-customized with the tracks, buses, synths and effects that I use most often. One of those synths is Stylus RMX. Obviously, I first suspected that the issue may be between SONAR and Stylus RMX. As a test I tried replacing Stylus with a different drum synth, Addictive Drums 2. Surprisingly, the crashes continued occurring even with AD2 replacing Stylus. At this point I begin removing other things from my Normal.CWT file, first effects, next synths, lastly tracks and buses. This was done with the expectation that eventually I would delete the offending plugin/synth and the project would finally start working as expected and no longer crashing.
Amazingly enough I was able to delete EVERYTHING except Addictive Drums 2. I now have a Normal.CWT file containing only one track and one buss that still crashes if I add any other VSTI and simply press Play on the transport. Naturally, it became apparent to me that the issue was somehow related to the Cakewalk template file itself. My original Normal.CWT file was created several versions ago, at least as far back as SONAR X1 and maybe even farther. This past weekend I began building a brand new Normal.CWT from scratch and so far have not seen the crashes return. As a bonus, I discovered that an issue that I was having with the Fantom VS synth in my V-Studio 700 audio interface also cleared up.
So I guess the moral of this story is...
If you're having weird stability issues and you're using a Normal.CWT that was created in earlier versions on SONAR, it might be worthwhile to bite the bullet and try creating a new one from scratch.
-e.B