Hi,
No dropouts or crashes here - X2a has been quite stable for me.  I primarily do audio tracking, but also use some soft synths and tons of plugins for effects.  My latest projects typically have about 50 tracks or so. 
Russ

X2a seems to be pretty stable here. I’m not using many 32 bit plugins and I usually bounce midi tracks (Mainly Kontakt 5) to audio before recording anything else.

gswitz
I don't get crackles and pops but I do sometimes crash Sonar.

I was seeing lots of little pops -- maybe 15 of them in a 3 minute stretch of recording one track to audio.  I thought maybe there was a problem with my mic or audio i/f.  They appeared randomly, not at punch points.
 
I don't think I have had this problem since I started using the FX disable button before recording.  I wish there were a way to designate some effects as being persistent, though.  I hate disabling the limiter.

cparmerlee

gswitz
I don't get crackles and pops but I do sometimes crash Sonar.

I was seeing lots of little pops -- maybe 15 of them in a 3 minute stretch of recording one track to audio.  I thought maybe there was a problem with my mic or audio i/f.  They appeared randomly, not at punch points.
 
I don't think I have had this problem since I started using the FX disable button before recording.  I wish there were a way to designate some effects as being persistent, though.  I hate disabling the limiter.

Take a look at the plugins your project is using - (the project with the pops and crackles and snorts and such).  It sound like you may be using one or more plugins during recording that were really meant to be used POST-recording (for mixing and mastering).  Some plugins are very CPU-intensive, and others have 'look-ahead' processing, and those 2 kinds of plugins are intended for mixing/mastering.  please list all of the plugins used in this particular project, and we can get to the bottom of this.  The easy fix is to swap out those effects for others - just until finished with the recording, and then you can swap back to the ones meant for mixing/mastering, and your dropouts should go away.
 
These plugins seem to be reported as causing cracks/props/dropouts during tracking: Concrete Limiter, LP-64 Multiband Compressor, LP-64 EQ and Perfect Space Reverb.  If any of these are loaded into the project at the time of recording, you may trigger problems with the audio (Rice Crispies - snaps crackle and pop, or dropouts).  So, again, swap out those plugins for reasonable replacements - JUST UNTIL FINISHED WITH RECORDING - and then you can put them back in when you are ready to mix/master.  Please note that there may be additional plugins that also cause these kinds of problems (possibly the Boost 11 Peak Limiter and Transient Shaper, and maybe others).
 
Hope that helps, please review the above, try swapping out plugs listed above, and post back results.
 
Bob Bone
 

X2a:  no crashes, no drops outs.  Works like a charm.
 
I am running an HP, off the shelf computer with no tweaks or adjustments of any kind. The computer has no software installed except for X2, Band In A Box, and whatever came with it.  It is not hooked up to the internet.
 
Win 7 Home
AMD 2.8 GHz processor
64 bit
8 Gig RAM
Many VSTs and VST instruments
Interface:  Tascam US600

 

>Take a look at the plugins your project is using - (the project with the pops and crackles and snorts and such).  It sound like you may be using one or more plugins during recording that were really meant to be used POST-recording (for mixing and mastering).  Some plugins are very CPU-intensive, and others have 'look-ahead' processing, and those 2 kinds of plugins are intended for mixing/mastering............ 
 
Bob Bone

Bob, I just wanted to say these are very wise words, sometimes we need to state the obvious just so we don’t forget it. 

No dropouts, very few problems at all.
PC spec as per sig.

2:43AM yes I do the same. Enable your Realtek or whatever in Windows as your default device. In Sonar, exclude it and only select the sound card and drivers you want SONAR to use. Works well. I keep a small set of PC speakers tied to my built in card just for windows sounds and for media player etc.

Dude Ivey
Since i started using 64bit plugins only i havent had a single problem with X-2a.

this has been my experience as well. 

2:43AM
Overall, things are getting better for me. I think that by completely axing all the 32-bit, crappy plugins from my arsenal and slightly increasing my buffer size did the trick. Of all the 32-bit plugins that I still do use, they come from reputable companies and seems to be coded well. Hence, I try to stay away from any SynthEdit or Synthmaker plugins unless they're from Variety of Sound, for example; they seem OK.
 
Also, most everyone's sigs omit their motherboards, and in my opinion, this is one of the most critical components in one's system, more so than listing several HDD/SSD's and/or their collection of dot-matrix printers. Not all motherboards are created equal. For example, I had to part ways with my beloved Gigabyte mobo (GA-EP45-UD3P) simply because it had inherent latency issues and was no-way compatible with anything related to music production. And since I run a slightly older system, Intel Core2Duo Quad Q9550 and had no intention to upgrade all components to an i7, I bought a new-old stock P5Q mobo and it made a world of difference. So in my opinion, someone that reports a great system based on their signature that doesn't list the mobo may only paint half the picture.
 

jb101
Like John, I use internal sound card for windows, etc.

Jb101, what does this mean exactly?  Do you somehow only run Sonar on your interface while Windows defaults to the internal? Maybe I should try this as some Windows apps force my interface from 48kHz to 44.1kHz, which results in silence and annoyance. This occurs despite the Windows default set at 48kHz, 24-bit.

What John has done, and I have done recently, is to set the default sound device for Windows playback and recording to the on-board sound chip on the motherboard, and to tell Sonar and stand-alone music applications (Dim Pro, Reaktor, etc.) to use our audio interfaces for their sound devices.  This allows things like Windows Media player to cheerfully run at the same time as Sonar is up, and just means keeping an extra set of speakers plugged into the normal speaker output of the computer.
 
I have only recently done this, and only did it because I wanted to be able to run a program called The Amazing Slow Downer at the same time as Sonar, and by separating the audio devices used, it allows that to happen without any problems with ASIO.
But it does work nicely, and I also have the opportunity to play YouTube videos while also playing along using stand-alone music apps, like some of my soft-synths, so I have elected to use this now as my default configuration.  It does work either way, but without the on-board sound in addition to the audio interface I would only run Sonar by itself.
 
The 48k to 44.1k thing can still occur, however, depending on what each piece of software does.  For example, by default, the Dim Pro stand-alone version on my system was switching my interface settings back to 44.1, which was really pissing me off, until I figured out I could change the default sample rate that Dim Pro used, and once set that issue went away.  That would have occurred no matter what I did with the on-board sound, so it is still something you may need to look into.
 
Bob Bone
 

Brando
2:43AM yes I do the same. Enable your Realtek or whatever in Windows as your default device. In Sonar, exclude it and only select the sound card and drivers you want SONAR to use. Works well. I keep a small set of PC speakers tied to my built in card just for windows sounds and for media player etc.

 
Same here using the built in Realtek sound as mydefault device for windows, etc.  When running Sonar, I swithch to my VS 100 and it works all the time.

2:43AM
Overall, things are getting better for me. I think that by completely axing all the 32-bit, crappy plugins from my arsenal and slightly increasing my buffer size did the trick. Of all the 32-bit plugins that I still do use, they come from reputable companies and seems to be coded well. Hence, I try to stay away from any SynthEdit or Synthmaker plugins unless they're from Variety of Sound, for example; they seem OK. Also, most everyone's sigs omit their motherboards, and in my opinion, this is one of the most critical components in one's system, more so than listing several HDD/SSD's and/or their collection of dot-matrix printers. Not all motherboards are created equal. For example, I had to part ways with my beloved Gigabyte mobo (GA-EP45-UD3P) simply because it had inherent latency issues and was no-way compatible with anything related to music production. And since I run a slightly older system, Intel Core2Duo Quad Q9550 and had no intention to upgrade all components to an i7, I bought a new-old stock P5Q mobo and it made a world of difference. So in my opinion, someone that reports a great system based on their signature that doesn't list the mobo may only paint half the picture. 

jb101
Like John, I use internal sound card for windows, etc.

Jb101, what does this mean exactly?  Do you somehow only run Sonar on your interface while Windows defaults to the internal? Maybe I should try this as some Windows apps force my interface from 48kHz to 44.1kHz, which results in silence and annoyance. This occurs despite the Windows default set at 48kHz, 24-bit.

Yes, I only run Sonar and a couple of other programs through my interface, and and leave my internal card as default for windows sounds, etc. I have quite a nice computer set of speaker set up to the internal card, and it's handy to be cake to watch tutorial videos, youtube etc. whilst running Sonar. I can always change it if , for example, I want to listen to media player through my main monitors or my nearfields.

Please excuse any typos, struggling with my smart phone today.

The only consistent, albeit rare, Sonar crash for me is to set up a loop and give editing a major workout while looping. More repeats increases the odds of a freeze, so if I remember to hit stop occasionally and re-start the loop, it avoids the problem.
 
Very rarely I'll have freezes when dragging audio from my external samples drive into track view when using the browser. I think it may relate to when the hard drive has turned itself off from not being used, then has to spin up but I haven't verified that. As Herman Cain would say, "I don't have the facts to back me up" but maybe Sonar goes out to look for something and when it can't find it, it gets upset.
 
Overall, though, Sonar just says "yessir" and does what I want it to do...that's why I use it.

X2a for the most part has been stable for me recently as I've switched up my typical project from Session Drummer 3, Dimension Pros and Raptures, to Kontakt, Trilogy, and (sometimes) BFD. Actually, this particular project I'm working on with the latter arrangement of synths has been stable for hours and hours but just now as I was editing an envelope on perhaps quite literally the last edit before rendering to a WAV file SONAR crashed with an unhandled exception error.
 
SP
 
EDIT: I should also mention that I don't have dropout issues at all. I run SONAR on Win 8 x64 on an older i7 965 with 16gigs of RAM. Audio interface is a Roland Octa-Capture, using ASIO drivers of course at 128 sample buffer at 24/48.

I have not upgraded yet.  I'm waiting for the $1.99 special.  X1 was the program that made recording effortless.  It was so bad, that it was no longer worth the effort.