Yet Another Work Stoppage

Now I see that there is a Manchester Update? When did that come out? No email notice? No notice in the forum?

It's in the startup page of SONAR.....

I didn't see the alert on the startup screen. It doesn't exactly jump out at you.... I usually check the forum and I usually get an email.
 
It also blew up my Roland OctaCapture...an issue that we solved with a work around during the last version....
 
Full system restarts  and all these stoppages are soul crushing. 
 
Cactus I did the Melodyne 4 update but it wasn't in use. This is basic.....I mean basic midi editing.
 
I normally try not to update if things are working...but lately I keep hoping something will finally get fixed.

If SONAR acts weird, Save As... the project, close SONAR, then re-open. A full system restart is usually not necessary. 

Not to get all rah-rah TASCAM, but after switching from the Octa-Capture to the US-4x4 (and now the US-20x20 to take advantage of the latency reduction due to USB 3.0), a whole lot of strange issues went away. However since switching to Windows 10, I use the Octa-Capture with Windows drivers along with the TASCAM using ASIO as part of a convoluted video recording/editing setup, and it's given me no trouble. Who knows...

MGC59
I have had some sort of problem with every single upgrade since I went to Sonar Platinum in August. All different, all having to do with basic functions.
 
None of my gear has changed just versions of Sonar. At this point I can't say that I'm a big fan of this subscription method...I think it is creating more problems than it is worth.

Yep, I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago as I feel the same way.  I like the concept of the subscription model, but this rush to produce new features with every release risks SPLAT turning into a constant 'Early Access' product.  With each release you have to balance the risk of getting fixes against new problems associated with the new feature set.
 
I dunno if it works for me as a package.  The idea of a significant annual update, complimented with regular patches through the year to address bugs seems to make sense for a product that is designed for use in a serious capacity.  I'm holding off Manchester right now, but if I wait too long we'll get the next one and I'll be back to square one.  For the same reason I'm holding off from an early renew of my sub for next season.
 
To an extent you can select which new features to install with each release, but I wonder if this could be taken further.  Perhaps by having 'core engine' updates separated from 'new functionality'.

Wood67

MGC59
I have had some sort of problem with every single upgrade since I went to Sonar Platinum in August. All different, all having to do with basic functions.
 
None of my gear has changed just versions of Sonar. At this point I can't say that I'm a big fan of this subscription method...I think it is creating more problems than it is worth.

Yep, I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago as I feel the same way.  I like the concept of the subscription model, but this rush to produce new features with every release risks SPLAT turning into a constant 'Early Access' product.  With each release you have to balance the risk of getting fixes against new problems associated with the new feature set.
 
I dunno if it works for me as a package.  The idea of a significant annual update, complimented with regular patches through the year to address bugs seems to make sense for a product that is designed for use in a serious capacity.  I'm holding off Manchester right now, but if I wait too long we'll get the next one and I'll be back to square one.  For the same reason I'm holding off from an early renew of my sub for next season.
 
To an extent you can select which new features to install with each release, but I wonder if this could be taken further.  Perhaps by having 'core engine' updates separated from 'new functionality'.

That, to coin a cliché.
 
I wasn't expecting major new stuff every month in the subscription model. I worry about the pressure for Cakewalk to pull a rabbit out of their hat monthly.

vanceen
I worry about the pressure for Cakewalk to pull a rabbit out of their hat monthly.

They pulled a rabbit out of their hat more or less monthly previously to the membership model, but all the rabbits were let loose at once in a yearly update.
 
There's no need to install updates every month. You can wait a year, download the most recent update, and it will contain all the features and bug fixes from previous updates. Bottom line is you can choose to have a yearly update, monthly update, quarterly update, whatever.

Being mostly a firmware writer in a schedule driven environment, the new monthly model terrified me and I said as much on this forum last Jan.
However, after a year I think Cake has done an excellent job with balancing (as tenfoot said) the schedule demands with all the other things that need to be done.
There has only been 2 or 3 'emergency patches' to fix serious  problems and even these were mostly GUI issues. I think it will get even better as Cake tunes the Beta Test Armada.
Believe me, it could have been a whole lot worse.

Now this is a much more constructive thread than the 'other' one relating to the model!  All things considered, although I'm still a bit nervous about the new feature:fix blend, I do take Craig and others' points that effectively I can make an informed decision to update as and when I need - and the total cost of ownership doesn't really change from what it was previously.
 
Lexington gave me the first bad crash/hang last night (think I was inserting an Omnisphere instance at the same time as doing something else which must have sent it over the edge).  That needed a full reboot but I had an auto save to fall back to.  So maybe I will move to Manchester this weekend and see what happens...

I admit to being nervous about the updates too, basically because Sonar has recently been (at least for me) more unstable than it has ever been, and that's with the same OS and hardware and workflow. Having been a pro developer for decades I suspected Sonar might have gone Agile at some point, instead of using the waterfall model of one big release a year, and that's now used as the basis for the subscription model. But count me unhappy with the stability so far.

PhilW
I admit to being nervous about the updates too, basically because Sonar has recently been (at least for me) more unstable than it has ever been, and that's with the same OS and hardware and workflow.

Can you quantify what you mean by "unstable"? It would be helpful in order to find out why you don't have the same experience as those who say SONAR is more stable than ever. I'd also be interested in what OS you use. I don't know code, but I've always wondered if something designed on, for example, Windows 10 might cause issues with older systems. 

Hmmm, that definitely seems to quality as a pattern...which conforms to Cakewalk support's experience that the greatest number of stability issues relate to third-party plug-ins.
 
Unfortunately there are many ways good plugs can go bad, the main one being the existence of 32- and 64-bit plug-ins in the same project. Don't know if that's the situation, but bridging is a kludge. One of the better decisions PreSonus made when they introduced the 64-bit version of Studio One was to increase stability by not including any way to run 32-bit plug-ins. When someone at PreSonuSphere asked Wolfgang what he recommended for running 32-bit plug-ins in SOP, his response was "Tell the manufacturer to make a 64-bit version."
 
Again, I don't know much about your system or even whether you're running 32-bit or 64-bit, but I will say that when I made the decision to use 32-bit plug-ins only as a last resort, I pretty much stopped having issues with SONAR once I also stopped using an audio interface with problematic drivers. Since then crashes are virtually non-existent, and I use SONAR almost every day.
 
Furthermore, SONAR sticks very close to the VST spec, and some older VST2 plug-ins may have taken liberties that didn't matter prior to the spec change to VST3 but show up now. Of course, there are also plug-ins that weren't designed very rigorously in the first place. Sadly many of these are one-of-a-kind, cool plug-ins designed by mad scientists, and I've had to wave goodbye to several of them over the years.
 
As to UA, their attitude toward SONAR changed a while back and I think you'll find that current versions work well with SONAR...at least they do for me. But remember that some of those plugs use a lot of sample buffers, like the Manley Massive Passive. 
 
[Just noticed this thread, which expresses sentiments similar to mine]

I have Voxengo (Mfree bundle) and Melodyne (4) in many of my projects, but have experienced zero issues in the latter part of this last year. I cannot think of anything (on my system) that has gone bad, except running an unstable version of UAD. I really hope you get this figured out.
All the best.