Geez you guys are fast, haha

No Beep. In fact it provides a greater degree of protection because it will run in a 4 GB memory allocation that is protected. But one needs at least 8 GB. 
 

Sanderxpander
Geez you guys are fast, haha

64bit

Beepster
1 : Oh and CRANK UP YOUR BUFFERS while mixing. As high as they'll go if need be. The more time you allow your system to process the effects the less likely it is you are going to have dropouts/crashes.
 
2: A good way to keep an eye on these things is to insert the Performance Module into the Control Bar (right click the Control Bar and select Performance Module until it appears). You see exactly how much CPU and Ram power is being used up by what. If it starts maxing out up your buffers and/or start freezing some tracks and/or archiving tracks you don't need for what you are doing.
 
 
3: When are tools are limited we use our minds to make those tools do what we need them to. Think back to the Beatles or any number of great old school bands who put out amazing productions with only a four track and some ingenuity at their disposal.
 

answers !

1 : Yes i always crank my buffers up while mixing, that's the way i do

2: Mhh cant quite agree on that one, if u need the real performance use  use CTRL / ALT / DEL
and bring up the resource monitor, that is far more reliable, cause the " monitor "
of the CPU / etc in Sonar hang's a bit after and can't be trusted ! just what i have noticed.

3: In those good old day's the pretty much make'd the music as you say with very few
tracks , and the music still sounds good.
today many of us use 10-50 tracks in the production, will that make any song better ? no i don't think so
we should try to go down to 4-8 tracks again and see what we can get out of that
like in the old days of recording.

How come that there's so many great songs, recorded with just few tracks.
Maybe today's producers is way to technical, and have " forgotten " how to make music
like from the 60's to the 80's !
 

There were PLENTY of tracks on Sgt. Pepper. They just had to bounce stuff and be smart about it. Anyway... you've got plenty advice here that should get you going in many possible directions. All you gotta do is choose the path that suits you best. If it's simply going back to X1 then that's cool but I think you are missing out on a lot. If you think X3 is gonna be super awesome... well I wouldn't count on that unless you can get a more current/powerful system. It is very likely it will be more problematic than X2 so as I said... sink your money where it is needed and right now the consensus seems to be that you need better hardware.
 
Good luck.

"2: Mhh cant quite agree on that one, if u need the real performance use use CTRL / ALT / DEL
and bring up the resource monitor, that is far more reliable, cause the " monitor "
of the CPU / etc in Sonar hang's a bit after and can't be trusted ! just what i have noticed."
 
No not really the one in Sonar is for Sonar and is more accurate for Sonar. It measures buffers and how quickly the will empty. This is more useful for predicting drop outs.
 
The system monitor is an over view and can be totally inaccurate in predicting drop outs.   

IDK, X3 will probably run better but on the current HW/OS stills indicates running the 32bit version of X3.

Oh and the thing is the Task Manager actually sucks up resources itself. It may be more accurate than the Sonar Performance Module but if you look at the processes you will see that Task Manager is indeed using extra resources. You don't need a hyper accurate readout. You just need to see if you are getting close to a max out as you add things. If you get even CLOSE to maxing anything it's time to start figuring out ways to free up resources.
 
 
 

Anyway's when mixing ,you will start to hear if there's some " problems " building up.
Yes you have a point about the task manager using resources.
Thank's for good advice's / post's here, we all still have stuff to learn.

The most important thing is, do Sonar work as you want it ?
For me to answer that at present time, YES it does now.

X2 has very rarely crashed on me and when it has I was able to reopen Sonar almost immediately. X1 crashed more and took longer to recover. X2 however does more weird stuff in general than X1 while I work.
 
So take that as you will but it's probably moot as my system is very different than yours so it's not really a fair comparison. My problems are truly issues with the program and/or OS/system config. Not hardware limitations.