OK, because of the randomness I'm not quite ready to declare victory BUT... cliffr above mentioned odd behavior when there's both 64 bit and 32 bit versions of the same program. I eliminated the 32 bit duplicates and... so far... it works!

I'm going to try again tomorrow, to load up the little eight midi track Omnisphere test template and we'll see what happens. I loaded it up twice tonight and everything worked. I'll post tomorrow to let you guys know what's what.

Cautiously optimistic 

DaveWalton
OK, because of the randomness I'm not quite ready to declare victory BUT... cliffr above mentioned odd behavior when there's both 64 bit and 32 bit versions of the same program. I eliminated the 32 bit duplicates and... so far... it works!

I'm going to try again tomorrow, to load up the little eight midi track Omnisphere test template and we'll see what happens. I loaded it up twice tonight and everything worked. I'll post tomorrow to let you guys know what's what.

Cautiously optimistic 

Cool, I'll be keeping my eye out for your update - and hope it's a good one :-)
 
Cheers - Cliff

Here it is hours later and I tried again and... it works.   Now, once I removed all 32 bit duplicates of the 64 bit VI's and rescanned plugins, I created and saved an eight midi track template using Omnisphere. When I imported that template into a new project, so far it's worked in each of the three or four times I've opened it tonight. 

But... the track templates that I created when I still had the 32 bit duplicates of the 64 bit VI's, they don't work. So it appears that we have to do things in this order...

1. Remove all 32 bit duplicates of 64 bit VI's
2. Rescan all plugins
3. Recreate any and all track templates that you had prior to doing item #1, replacing the "old" track templates

So it looks like this is (as Inspector Clouseau would say)... Solve-Ed.

Thanks to everyone who contributed and special thanks to CliffR for what appears to be the fix for this annoying and baffling issue. I *hope* I didn't just jinx everything by saying that. 

Good call. I've eradicated pretty much anything 32 bit on my system. There are 4 (non NI) 32 bit plugins that may be required but I've simply put them into other folders that aren't known about by Sonar. In the rare event I need to use them I will simply add the file path to Sonar. However all 32 NI plugsins are definitely toast and 64 bit plugins mirror them. One thing I would suggest is setting up your own dedicated plugin folder away from the program files folder. I treat VST's like data nowadays. If you do move the NI VST's (and most other VST's) you either need to either need to reinstall with the right folder or go into the registry and change the file paths.

Well... unfortunately not completely out of the woods yet. Like I said yesterday, because of the random nature of this thing I wasn't ready to claim complete victory. This morning I opened that same Omnisphere track template that worked three times yesterday and... nothing. I try it again... nothing. I try it the third time and it works. Ugh...

OK, at least I'm a bit ahead of the game compared to before when an eight midi track template would never work. There's still a bug in Sonar somewhere.

I do have to fuss a bit at Cakewalks "bug reporting" system. I sent this in and got an email back saying they needed more information. OK good, let's click the link they sent and see what additional information I can provide. The link takes me to a page where they've declared the issue to be "Closed" saying that it's not them, it's a "configuration" issue on my end. Well... if it wasn't configured correctly it wouldn't work period. Of course I don't have a chance to have any interaction to point them in the right direction.

I guess I'll just open another problem report and try to cover all the bases in that one.

Not related to this but I found a verified bug in Sonar where midi envelopes are ignored when rendering in real time. Cakewalk verified this through their problem reporting system. That was back in X2 at some point and here we are at X3 and that hasn't been addressed. That's a major problem, a huge part of what Sonar is supposed to do just flat out doesn't work. You spend all the time creating midi envelopes, they work great within Sonar and you render/bounce/whatever in real time and all the midi envelop info is ignored. I love Sonar but I haven't had (so for) much luck with their process of problem reporting and bug fixing. 

I've just read your last paragraph Dave - can you describe the steps you take for this to happen?
 
I do quite a lot of real time Exports, all my projects have automation on them, and they all get rendered perfectly.
 

1. What do you mean by Midi Envelope? Do you mean synth automation or clip/track automation?
2. When you say render, do you mean bounce or export?

Hi Dave,
 
as Jonesey said, can you describe the steps in details ?.
 
Also - just to note, when you load a track template and it doesn't work, do a double check to see what the actual plugin it has loaded.
 
At the plugin GUI pull up the VST Properties and display the path - just in case it's actually got the 32bit version loaded.
 
Before I got all my VST paths sorted out, this happened to me.
A 32bit plug can end up being loaded, and you would never know because it does not appear bit-bridged ... from looking at the GUI, it looks just like the 64bit plug, but checking the plugin path in the VST properties will reveal whether or not the correct file is loaded.
 
Problems with automation are another symptom of 32/64 plugin conflict that can happen if there's a copy of a 32bit plugin somewhere in the scan path - and sometimes they are there where and when you really don't expect it.
 
And as you point out, once you've tidied everything up, you need to do a VST re-scan, and recreate any templates that were affected.
 
Good luck and keep us posted.
 
Cheers - Cliff

I always create a folder (as I think alex said) for my 32 bit vsts
I put that folder in programfiles(86)\cakewalk\sonarx3\ "name it vst plug ins 32.
 
ive done this since x1 and ive had great luck with 32 VS. the 64 bit conflicts.
ive never really thought about it but maybe this is why I have had good luck with using both.
that's not to say (as alex has said, again :-) ive tried to get away from as many 32 bit plug ins as I can but I still have afew I really like:gallian kruegar bass vst and so on.

Somebody pointed it out the other day in these forums, that if you put your plugins away from program files, and program files (86) you should never have the need to run Sonar as administrator.
 
So my folder structure is like this:
 
d:\AudioPlugins\32bit
d:\AudioPlugins\64bit
D:\AudioPlugIns\VST3
D:\AudioPlugIns\Depeciated\64bit
D:\AudioPlugIns\Depeciated\32bit