Also, if I am looking at the correct documentation, here is something pulled from the www.soundonline.com web site for Play:
 
"As a plug-in, you can load as many instruments as you want, but you will have only 16 unique MIDI channels to control them per each instance of PLAY. This is a limitation of the plug-in standards and MIDI."
 
So, why would you load more than 16 instruments into a single instance of this?
 
Bob Bone
 
 

So, here is a link to online documentation (their knowledge base) of SounsOnline.com:
 
http://www.soundsonline.com/knowledgebase
 
Please scroll down to Section 5 - Performance, and expand the various tabs within that section, as there is some info that might help you.  Here are some things I pulled from there:
 
From Section 5.1  - talking about notes dropping out
 
There can be several reasons. Check each of the following to see which applies in your case.
Voice Limit: Each instrument has its own voice limit that you can raise in the case that you're getting drop outs. Select Main Menu > Current Instrument > Advanced Properties to open a dialog and raise the value for Voice Limit.  Overload Protection: In some cases, disabling overload protection can help with dropped notes. Open the Settings dialog and select the Overload tab. Disable overload protection by turning off the checkbox and applying the change. (If this is not the cause of the problem, you may want to turn Overload Protection back on.)  Sample Purge: Try freeing up some of the allocated memory by purging samples that are not being used. You can do this in the Advanced Properties dialog at Main Menu > Current Instrument. If you click on the Purge button, samples from that instrument that have not been triggered in this session are removed from memory to free up resources.  The normal procedure for a Purge is click on the Reset button to clear the list of note that have been played so far, then play the sequence, then click "Purge." Any notes not played since you last reset are removed from memory. If you play any note purged from memory, nothing will sound.     To get all samples back into memory, click on Reload.  Reset: clears the list of which notes have been played.  Purge: removes samples not played since the last reset.  Reload: returns all samples for this instrument to memory.
 
From Section 5.2 - talking about hearing clicks and pops
 
Clicks and pops during playback are symptomatic of performance issues, most notably samples not be streamed from the hard drive in time. Please raise the audio buffer size in your host sequencer to alleviate this problem. If you're using PLAY in standalone mode, the buffer size can be changed in the Settings menu under the Audio tab.
 
From Section 5.4 - talking about pops and crackles in the bounced audio.
 
While there are settings to adjust that might help with performance issues when bouncing to audio, generally EastWest does not recommend bouncing audio faster than real-time. That's because PLAY is streaming samples from the hard drive in real-time and the host is not aware when the streaming cannot keep up.
 
Bob Bone
 
 

OK, lots to respond to (but with a happy ending)...
 
Hard Drive specs:
All of Sonar is on my C: drive, and my EWSO library is on the F: drive, which is a different physical drive. C: is a standard 400 Gb drive, but only has 22 Gb free. F: is an external drive, called a FreeAgent GoFlex drive, 1TB, 248Gb free. Other than Sonar and PLAY, I don't really use any other soft synths. I have a rack mount synth I use frequently, but it's an external box. Except for Voxengo SPAN and random rare exceptions, I don't use any effects that didn't come with Sonar. I also use Adobe Audition on here, but my workflow is such that they are never running at the same time. I am usually only messing with a single wav file in Audition.
 
This has been my music workstation for a few years, and while at first I recall having these dropout problems, at some point I solved them or they went away. That was mostly in 2012 when I did my first album, using 8.5. I did a few smaller projects in 2013 and don't remember any problems. Then I upgraded to X3 at the beginning of 2014 and am just starting in on a new album. I try not to use this computer for anything other than Sonar projects, but Sibelius, Zune and iTunes are on here too. Occasionally I will be running Sonar while Zune or iTunes is open, but I've never noticed any performance issues when they were open.
 
Like you, I have wondered also why someone would try to put a whole bunch of instruments into a single instance of Play. I've never done that. I have the Symphonic Orchestra Gold collection and added the Close Mic library.
 
 
I have also never used fast bounce to audio, because they aren't kidding in that paragraph you pasted; using fast bounce never works for any instrument ever. I fold laundry while bouncing my tracks to audio.
 
Most of the instruments use both the regular "stage mic" and the "close mic" samples, which I can mix with sliders. Hey...... it just occurred to me that I might be needlessly doubling the samples in memory for many instruments, as I usually mix my instruments to be about 90% close mic. Let me go right now and see what happens when I remove a bunch of stage mic samples which barely register anyway and use ONLY close mic. One moment while I try this....
 
....EUREKA!!! That made a big difference! Of my 20 or so instruments, I removed the Stage Mic samples from all but 3-4 of them, and suddenly things are a lot smoother. And the piece sounds basically exactly the same (minus dropout, of course!). Still occasional dropouts, but they aren't anything I can't deal with, and playing a section a second time makes the dropouts go away (which I don't understand, but whatever). WOO HOOOOO!!!!!!
 
I had also unchecked the Overload setting in Play per the suggestion you pasted here, but when I turned it back on after removing Stage Mic samples, it didn't seem to make any difference.
 
Another thing I do is load all the keyswitch possibilities for every instruments, to keep the creative flow as clean as possible. I don't like to pre-determine what kinds of attack I might need on a string section beforehand, for example. I know I'm loading a lot into memory I don't use, but I don't want to part with that flexibility. I will definitely look into the Purge though if I start getting more dropouts and crackles than I like. That play documentation section 5 is very useful, and while I know I'm doing things that push the limits, now I know where to go to troubleshoot it.
 
So, I think we're done here! Thanks Bob for all your tireless help on this, you really helped me a HUGE amount. I've added you to my thank you list in my Grammy acceptance speech :-).
 
One other issue: My orchestrations aren't nearly as good as I thought they were when I decided to re-open this project. What was I thinking? Clearing all the technical issues out of the way is now forcing me to face the REAL work. Damn you...

How do I change the thread title?

To change the thread title, you just open the first post and edit the subject line, then save the change.
 
Very happy you are starting to come to your senses :)
 
(that's the wise guy way of congratulating you for simplifying the processing demands, and for beginning to take a fresh look at some of the arrangements)
 
I am VERY happy you have been able to improve some of the nightmares, and hope you are able to get some work done.
 
 
Bob Bone