Kylotan

azslow3
At least in X2, the time line is the only graphical element which is drawn differently from everything else in SONAR (for whatever reason). I have not checked with X3 yet.

What do you mean by this?
 
I'm a games programmer and work with graphics daily, so when people suggest this is a video card problem rather than a Sonar problem, I am very sceptical. But perhaps there is something more to consider here, and you know a bit about it?

The video card is a favorite boogie man in the DAW world.  When people don't know the cause to the problems it's easy say "video card/driver".   I suspect that video cards/drivers are blamed for far more than they are guilty of.

vintagevibe
 
The video card is a favorite boogie man in the DAW world.  When people don't know the cause to the problems it's easy say "video card/driver".   I suspect that video cards/drivers are blamed for far more than they are guilty of.

Possibly, but I think the reason they get so much attention is because it seems counter-intuitive that a graphics card would affect the performance of software dedicated to audio.
 
I can only go by personal experience, which is that I've always used DAWs integrated by companies like PC Audio Labs and ADK, and had stable, reliable systems free of the various glitches that seem to plague others. Even X2a worked fine for me. However, when I did encounter problems, which admittedly wasn't often, the vast majority related to graphics cards and drivers. Some cards just didn't work with some software, not just Sonar but also particularly Sony Vegas, Pro Tools, and virtual instruments from M-Audio. Also, some driver "updates" (you know, the ones that give a 2.282% frame rate speed increase with "Call of Duty" V3.122a build 467) would cause issues. Many times I needed to roll back to a previous driver and everything would be fine again, and then another update would come along eventually and it would work okay.
 
The second biggest cause of problems has been hardware failures, but the number of those incidents have been tiny compared to graphics-related issues.

vintagevibe
  Everything else works fine and the time/money spent would not be worth it even if it did get resolved.

What, $49.99 and twenty minutes work not worth it? I've certainly spent far more time and money resolving lesser issues than yours... Please tell me you're not just looking for an excuse to ditch SONAR!
 
 

SvenArne

vintagevibe
  Everything else works fine and the time/money spent would not be worth it even if it did get resolved.

What, $49.99 and twenty minutes work not worth it? I've certainly spent far more time and money resolving lesser issues than yours... Please tell me you're not just looking for an excuse to ditch SONAR!
 
 

@ SvenArne: I've already ditched Sonar for Cubase because of similar problems (and other reasons).  I still have, however, 100's of files from the MID '90s to last year, many of which I still need to work with.  I've supported Cakewalk probably for longer than anyone in this conversation and IMO I deserve a stable product.  If I have to do anymore troubleshooting with Sonar it's not worth the effort for me.  I'll just have to live with ridiculous things like the now time disappearing.  I don't think I should have to though.
 
Sonar is a fine product for many but not for everyone.

robert_e_bone
Well, if you ever put aside the 'pissed off bitterness' and want to take another stab at figuring out how to resolve this Now Time issue you have been experiencing, I will certainly try to help.
 
In any case, best of it all in whatever DAW you think is going to be your cure-all happy place, though every single one of them has their own quirks and issues.

 
However, VV prefers to work in a notation-oriented view. Sonar simply isn't designed to do that. So I highly doubt he'll take the time to find out why he continues to have stability issues others don't experience if all he uses Sonar for is project transfers. Of course it would have been helpful if he'd said that upfront so we wouldn't have spent time trying to find out the source of the problem and help him fix it, but that's life on the internet.
 
I think it's time to move on because due to his previously stated preference to work in notation, I don't think he would use Sonar even if the Now time moving across the screen created a religious experience
 
I sympathize with those who have stability issues, but all I know is that I go for weeks on end without hiccups, and I use Sonar virtually every day in one capacity or another...and work it very hard.

Again, I would be very surprised if the graphics card drivers were anything to do with audio performance or general program stability. Windows software doesn't really work in such a way that the two subsystems are related in any significant way.
 
But having said that, if people do weird stuff with the graphics, then the chance of it being a culprit is raised. And in a strange quirk of fate, after asking earlier about how the Now line could possibly be rendered differently, I encountered this for myself earlier.
 

 
This is what it looks like when Sonar hangs - a sadly common occurrence for me, possibly due to a bad interaction with my M-Audio drivers - and yet somehow, the Now line is still rendering properly over the top, as if it's coming from an entirely separate process.
 
So, the answer is yes, Sonar is doing something rather peculiar with that line, so I'm not so surprised that people are seeing unusual behaviour (including it disappearing).

There have certainly been graphics/Sonar issues in past releases - I myself had issues caused by one set of video drivers many moons past, so I wouldn't rule it out without a test first.
 
IF your computer has on-board graphics, in addition to whatever graphics card you are using, it is simple enough to temporarily disable your graphics card and use a simple VGA connection to your on-board graphics, JUST FOR TESTING PURPOSES.
 
It may well be something else, but then again, without knowing - you won't know.
 
In the amount of time that posting and reading about how it couldn't be related to graphics, you could have easily tested this out.
 
I am in the process of digging back through prior posts to see if there is anything there that might be helpful.  I did find this link, which is for a prior release, but it might be something to try:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/2682310
 
In the above link, there is a bunch of discussion prior to the post number I got the permalink for, but I just went to the part that has the thing to try.
 
In addition, I will continue to look for past posts and will post here further if I run across anything that looks relevant.
 
Bob Bone
 

@Kylotan having the now time line visible after a crash like that simply tells me the now time line is running under a seperate process/thread so when the rest of the app crashes it hangs around as this particular process hasn't crashed. It should terminate gracefully when the rest of the app crashes but it doesn't. That's not related to the OP's issue.

There is a vital clue here so thanks for this.The chances are when the time line is disappearing that process is actually crashing which is not effecting the rest of Sonar which keeps running. In conclusion the OP is getting the exact opposite symptoms. We still don't know the cause though.

Which leads us onto the question as to what is causing this timeline to crash. So far the betting money is something system specific. We are pointing at the graphics drivers right now... (We need it ruled out).

CakeAlexS
@Bob I think we both posted the link to the same graphics drivers. Ta

Well, I suppose that's either good, or bad.  :)
 
At least I was able to FIND the right drivers, after searching for the one with the typo in the name, so I got THAT going for me.....
 
Bob Bone
 

Anderton
 
However, VV prefers to work in a notation-oriented view. Sonar simply isn't designed to do that. So I highly doubt he'll take the time to find out why he continues to have stability issues others don't experience if all he uses Sonar for is project transfers. Of course it would have been helpful if he'd said that upfront so we wouldn't have spent time trying to find out the source of the problem and help him fix it, but that's life on the internet.   I think it's time to move on because due to his previously stated preference to work in notation, I don't think he would use Sonar even if the Now time moving across the screen created a religious experience 
 

 
Not exactly.  I will likely be using Sonar for a long time since all of my live performance files are in Sonar.   I will not be porting them over to Cubase since there are so many of them.  I don't need any more functionality so I'd prefer not to have to upgrade.   The Now Time bug is very frustrating (as is the bug where saving a drum map adds the name of a previous drum map to the save window making it easy overwrite your other maps ... but I digress).  So actually I still need Sonar but  I can't spend time troubleshooting it.   I recently had a hardware issue that was quite difficult to pin down.   I had to troubleshoot that so the time was well spent.   I just would like the Sonar experience to not be frustrating.   A better title might have been:   Will there be another update or will I have to buy the next version to get rid of the disappearing NOW LINE bug?
 
As for the religious experience, some say that all things are holy so why not the Sonar Now Line?
 

 

This post has been a giant waste of time.
 
I think the OP might be just getting his jollies watching all the folks try to help, while not engaging in the thread himself.
 
I don't believe I will be participating in this guy's threads anytime soon.
 
If he doesn't care enough to participate, then I guess I don't care if his issues ever get fixed.
 
Bob Bone
 

Sounds like CPU conservation mode was enabled http://www.cakewalk.com/D...dioPerformance.21.html

Alex,
Your troubleshooting method is not sound.  Just because an issue goes away on reboot does not necessarily mean that there is not an issue with Sonar.  Yes, there is some other issue that is contributing to a problem that is observed within Sonar, but it also depends on whether the outside-of-Sonar issue affects anything else or just Sonar - is it for all apps that use the audio driver?  Is it for all apps when the system usage of memory gets to a certain point?  What other factors are there?
 
Computer systems are a lot more complex than a simple "if a reboot fixed it, it can't be the software".  Same situation applies for hardware.  A reboot often corrects issues that are seen when there is a hardware problem or a driver incompatibility, but that doesn't mean that the hardware isn't the problem or that the drive is fine, look elsewhere.  All it means is that giving the computer a nap at least temporarily corrected the problem.
 
No offense, but it seems like you defend Sonar at every turn as if it's perfect.  It's not.  And it has different problems on different systems, with different hardware and drivers.  If, for example, the driver for a video card happens to interfere with Sonar, it doesn't necessarily mean that the driver has the defect if Sonar is the only application where there are problems.

CakeAlexS
As far as defending Sonar at every turn I suggest you look here. If an actual bug can be proven I'm more than happy to document it.

http://forum.cakewalk.com...aspx?m=3009969&p=1

IMHO Alex has a balanced view of Sonar. He recognizes both its strengths and its limitations. I presume the strengths outnumber the limitations, or he'd be using something else 
 
As to the troubleshooting, I'll leave that to the professionals but I think I understand Alex's point about the difference between restarting Sonar and resetting the drivers.

CakeAlexS
Please forgive me stating I've been working in IT since the 90's and I have a degree in it, I'm not saying I'm a genius but I do have a pretty good grip on technology as I've pretty much done every job there is around the field.

And you still do not know what application can do to drive system crazy till it is rebooted? I do not mean bugs in the system, I mean wrong use of the system.
 
And if you think my question is theoretical, no. I was forced to work with one program which did that with graphic system. And many times with other system components as well. In one case you could simply wait 15 minutes before program restart instead of rebooting the computer, no system bugs involved, "following standards" pure (this example is from networking).

It's a pretty safe conclusion then that the issue is outside the sonar environment otherwise the issue would have resolved itself with a simple restart of Sonar within windows and without a reboot (demonstrated to me it's most likely at level zero at kernel level)

I do not claim there is this bug in SONAR. But I claim your statement is naive...