OK Rain. Thanks for sharing. I'm sorry. Also sorry to Jeff Evans. 
 
It's none of my business if you guys do not use Sonar and want to discuss/critique other DAWs here. I don't understand it but I don't need to understand it if it will stop a fight. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
 
And beepster- I reread what I had written there and it was pretty harsh in a sort of coded way I see. I'm very sorry man and hope you can see it in your heart to forgive me. 
 
I don't have as many posts as you guys so I still have a few rough edges internet communication wise. 
 
Everyone else, I am sorry for inadvertently turning this into a circus :)  It all reminds me of that Elton John quote that went something like "If I knew you from 1970-1974, I'm sorry" 

Gee, double apology. One is enough I think.

 
Good for you Backwoods. And like I said before - it's all about passion.
 
I'm certain that all the guys who have left Cakewalk for other DAW products just really wanted SONAR to work for them. After all, something about it must have attracted them to it in the first place.
 
And I suppose the fact that some ex-users are happy to sing the praises of other products is more often than not born out of a sense of relief that they can get on with their work unimpeded, and not with any intended malice.
 
Think about it, if one of us had 'converted' a user of another DAW to come over from the dark side and purchase SONAR, we'd be looked on as the good guy here in Cakewalkland.
 
 
 
 
 

 
Double post...
 
Mind you, this was a new one on me:
 
 
 
 
 

I'm not having a go at people who are having problems. I myself wanted to throw my old computer out the window a few years back when I was using Pro Tools 8 and found myself neck deep in errors, glitches and program crashing. The Pro Tools forum told me that a small percentage of users were having similar issues but most were not. So statements on this forum like, "Sonar X2 is broken!" would imply that the program doesn't work for most users or even every user. I personally haven't had a single crash and I have songs with 70+ tracks with loads of VSTs. That's not to take anything away from those who are having problems (I know the pain.) But I'm unsure what good making harsh blanket statements (based on only your own experience and maybe a few other users you know of on this forum) as if they apply to every user, is going to achieve? Constructive criticism about each individual issue would be more helpful than taking a hacksaw to Cakewalk's name.
 
Applying some perspective and logic to the situation, if X2 was truly "broken" and did not work on the majority of users machines? Then Cakewalk would be almost out of business overnight! Even if they rushed out X2a, X2b, X2c and X2d, the amount of refunds requested on a new product would have been financially crushing to say the least. The fact that they have only seen fit to release one bug fix tells me that based on their tech section reports? The vast majority of users must have a stable product and be happy with it! This forum being a place for people having problems with X2, is not exactly going to reflect a balanced indication of those who have problems versus those who don't. Check my post count. What is it like 4 or something? I only bothered joining a few months ago to make a joke in a thread. I'm a user who didn't have any problems with X1c, X1d, X2 and now X2a. There's no way of knowing how many are in the same boat as me? However, for a software company to be even slightly viable it could well be tens of thousands? Maybe it's hundreds of thousands? Millions? What I'm getting at is, you can't post a problem if you don't have any!
 
I for one await X3's release with a massive hard on!

@backwoods... There we go. All is forgiven and I apologize for getting riled up but hopefully you could see now how that might upset someone. I'm frustrated enough with the lack of a B patch as it is (and I really do my best not to be hyperbolic or repetitive when expressing this frustration) and being told I am no longer welcome on the forum if I explore other options... well that did not sit well. I appreciate you taking the time to post that. Let's put this behind us and start over.
 
Cheers.

Royal Yaksman
I'm not having a go at people who are having problems. I myself wanted to throw my old computer out the window a few years back when I was using Pro Tools 8 and found myself neck deep in errors, glitches and program crashing. The Pro Tools forum told me that a small percentage of users were having similar issues but most were not. So statements on this forum like, "Sonar X2 is broken!" would imply that the program doesn't work for most users or even every user. I personally haven't had a single crash and I have songs with 70+ tracks with loads of VSTs. That's not to take anything away from those who are having problems (I know the pain.) But I'm unsure what good making harsh blanket statements (based on only your own experience and maybe a few other users you know of on this forum) as if they apply to every user, is going to achieve? Constructive criticism about each individual issue would be more helpful than taking a hacksaw to Cakewalk's name.
 
Applying some perspective and logic to the situation, if X2 was truly "broken" and did not work on the majority of users machines? Then Cakewalk would be almost out of business overnight! Even if they rushed out X2a, X2b, X2c and X2d, the amount of refunds requested on a new product would have been financially crushing to say the least. The fact that they have only seen fit to release one bug fix tells me that based on their tech section reports? The vast majority of users must have a stable product and be happy with it! This forum being a place for people having problems with X2, is not exactly going to reflect a balanced indication of those who have problems versus those who don't. Check my post count. What is it like 4 or something? I only bothered joining a few months ago to make a joke in a thread. I'm a user who didn't have any problems with X1c, X1d, X2 and now X2a. There's no way of knowing how many are in the same boat as me? However, for a software company to be even slightly viable it could well be tens of thousands? Maybe it's hundreds of thousands? Millions? What I'm getting at is, you can't post a problem if you don't have any!
 
I for one await X3's release with a massive hard on!

Great post, Royal Yaksman.

WARNING! If you don't like hearing about legitimate problems other users are having with Sonar do not read the following post. If you do read it and attack me I will block you:
 
Just wanted to clarify... I think X2 is great and I've had very few crashes compared to X1. The problems are a bunch of minor annoyances that make it difficult to work.
 
Like the selection problem where for some reason things get group selected when you do not want them to be. No matter how many times you reselect what you want it still grabs a bunch of other stuff. Once this starts happening it infects the project and I have to lock all other clips or manually deselect the unwanted items. So for clips there is a work around but it's a pain. It also seems to happen, albeit less frequently, in other areas like the the PRV, automation nodes and audiosnap (actually it's quite bad in audiosnap but I have other issues with that feature which I will explain in a moment). Because of all this I've had things off screen get moved around, deleted, changed, etc... without my knowledge and by the time I discover what has happened it's too late to go back. I have to revert to an older version of the project losing all the work I've done in that session. Doing this doesn't get rid of the problem either so everything has to get locked from that point forward. This causes a lot of tension and worry while editing because I am always having to second guess and double check my work. I have no idea how or why this happens. Is it user error or a computer problem? I don't know but it seems unlikely because other times it doesn't happen at all and many other users have reported the same behavior.
 
Audiosnap. Audiosnap is almost impossible to use which is really disappointing to me because it is, in theory, a really amazing feature. The markers are extremely chaotic in the sense they disappear and reappear randomly as I move the cursor around or zoom in/out. Sometimes they won't enable/disable/insert/move/etc as intended which can be a real problem if you just spent an hour working on something and can't perform a basic function at a critical point. It seems this is another thing that gets worse as time goes on as if the bug is "infecting" the project. Also once I start working with the transients I have to complete the entire section. I cannot save the project halfway through because that COMPLETELY corrupts the project. If I save in the middle of a session when I open the project back up the transients display completely wrong (huge sections missing, threshold isn't right, changes made previously are incorrect, marker statuses are wrong, etc). If I try to continue working anyway the markers do not react properly to my actions (they don't move properly or at all, if they do move they snap back to their original position, their statuses randomly change, appear and disappear randomly, etc). After a while the program starts freezing up, I get whitescreens, project areas bleed over into other areas (like the Clips Pane appears in the Track Pane or console), random white and/or black boxes appear out of nowhere, squiggly lines start showing up, the transport or other functions stop working and eventually Sonar completely crashes and the project can never be used again. So yeah... cannot stop and save in the middle of an audiosnap session. I have to muscle through all the work as fast as I can and render the changes. It's a little stressful especially considering it's hard to w ork with at the best of times. I really need this feature to work properly. I can indeed use it if I'm diligent and don't mind having to start over from time to time but I have lost hours of painstaking work with audiosnap. I was hoping a patch might make it a little more stable.
 
Keybindings. Sometimes the keybindings will refuse to perform the intended function or will behave differently than point/clicking. I have no idea why this is. It doesn't happen all that often but I seem to be having to double check my keybinding list because I think I'm just hitting the wrong combo. This happens more with the less common bindings so it's not TOO problematic but it is confusing. I've also had crashes when using certain bindings like the Insert Loop binding (this was reported by sharke and confirmed by others recently too). I cannot use the R (record) keybinding while tracking takes which is a pain because when I've got the guitar in my hands I don't really want to be messing around with my trackball. What happens is for some reason (and it only happens with the binding and it doesn't happen all the time) it will randomly unmute previous takes once I start recording. It is really weird and frustrating when I'm trying to focus on getting a part right. Another annoying one is my shift key combos don't seem to work consistently when I'm trying to move clips up or down in place on the time line. I have to use snap or if the edge of the clip is out of a specific snap range I have to set the clip to snap offset mode and line it up to the timeline.
 
Editing. Editing is a bit weird in X2 compared to X1. The zoom ruler is great but there is so much other weirdness that it somewhat negates that benefit. Like sometimes if I use Ctrl V to paste a clip or group of clips somewhere specific it lands in a totally wrong track and I have to drag them to where I want (which because of the Shift combos not behaving is a pain because I have to line everything up manually). Also if I drag clips left or right, especially groups of clips across tracks the screen scrolls down and the top track clips will try to move to the lower tracks and the clips below that will try to create new tracks to make room. I then have to drag them back up to the top but sometimes the screen won't autoscroll back up and I have to abort the function and try again. Sometimes when I'm trying to move a clip on the timeline and am trying to visually line up a wave peak to the timeline or another wave as I'm dragging the wave gets washed out and I can no longer see the peak. I basically have to guess where it is and repeat the process multiple times to get it to land where I want. Not very precise or convenient. I get things done but it takes far longer than it should because of all those problems and because none of these things are consistent it messes with my workflow/concentration. If I knew what was gonna happen every time I could just be prepared for it and do what has to be done but that is not the case.
 
Graphical errors. Pretty much every part of X2 seems to suffer from this. Notes, waves, parameters, etc... disappear/reappear/show the wrong status/generally act weird. I also get "ghosts" on screen (basically phantom images that aren't really there). This got a little better after the A patch but it still happens pretty often. It doesn't seem to hurt anything but it can be confusing, especially in the PRV. At first I thought it was just my graphics card being weird but any non promotional Sonar video I've seen shows this behavior as the person is working. You can even see some of this in the webinars and those guys are supposedly using the ideal set up. It has also been reported many times here on the forum. If the A patch made some of these weird visual glitches lessen than I can only assume that it was some kind of stability thing and another tweak might get it under control. I did not experience these types of glitches in X1.
 
So those are the main issues I have with X2. They aren't complete show stoppers and I ahve been working around them but they make working with the program a lot less enjoyable and efficient than they could be. There are MANY more other broken features and oddities but I can generally get around most of that easily or don't need those functions (yet) anyway. I have not as of yet reported all of this to the Bakers because I really have not had the time but once I have moved I intend to completely wipe my system and start from scratch. Before I do that I will be writing an extremely detailed report to tech support requesting advice on a) how to best set up my system (again) and b) how to minimize these problems. Some of it may indeed be user error but because many of it is intermittent that doesn't make a lot of sense. My computer (which I built specifically to run Sonar on following design specs from the Computers section of this site) is more than powerful enough and I optimized it according to the instructions given to me by tech support. To me, aside from audiosnap, these are all extremely basic functions for any DAW. I'm not sure if everyone experiences similar behavior and just ignore it or they don't work like I do or what but I do know that all of these issues have been brought up many times here on the forum. There are also WAY more problems that get reported here that I have never experienced and as I said I do not get constant crashes. Aside from the time I was forcing audiosnap to keep going as an experiment, the time I was trying to confirm that the loop keybinding was causing crashes and the well known Dim Pro patch browsing crashes I've only had maybe three full crashes out of the blue that I believe were directly related to X2 and those were usually me working too quickly. When those crashes happen they aren't nearly as drastic as in X1 either which would refuse to open for a few minutes afterward. X2 is pretty much instantly ready to open back up again. I do get consistent whitescreens when opening X2 or inserting a bunch of heavy duty something other but they only last a few moments and X2 goes back to what it doing. Those whitescreens actually seem to have lessened quite a bit too since I did a through cleaning of the system with CCleaner. I have not yet had a cahnce to really do any work since I did that so maybe that will have helped lessen the other weirdness that was going on as well. I'll have to wait until I'm moved to investigate further.
 
I did not post this to whine, bash, accuse or offend but to document some of the more common issues I've experienced that are indeed making it hard for me to work. It'll be a good reference for me to come back to for when I contact support because I haven't typed it up all at once like this before and maybe others have found solutions to some of this stuff they'd like to share. I did ignore a lot of it because I figured much of it would be fixed with the next patch but that patch never came and now it's looking like it never will. That to me is the disappointing part. I know the A patch helped and I know X2 is right on the brink of being stable. I just wish they had done that little bit extra to clean it up just a little bit more. I can handle SOME quirkiness but it seems I encounter at least one semi major annoyance every session. I'm afraid X3 is just gonna be more of the same. I'll definitely be waiting at least until the New Year to see what everyone is saying here before even considering upgrading.
 
I will not and do not bring these problems up often unless it's related to an ongoing discussion so please... if you are going to attack me for posting this don't bother. I will immediately block you to avoid more blowouts like what happened earlier.
 
Thank you.

@beepster
 
I apologize, but I don't read all that many posts anymore so I'm out of the loop somewhat. In a nutshell, what are the showstoppers that are causing you pain with x2?

musicroom
@beepster
 
I apologize, but I don't read all that many posts anymore so I'm out of the loop somewhat. In a nutshell, what are the showstoppers that are causing you pain with x2?

Hi, musicroom. Not showstoppers but many minor annoyances.
 
To boil that epic post down...
 
1) Selection issues. Things randomly getting selected causing havoc while editing. Once it starts it won't stop. Solution is to lock clips but that only works with clips. Not the PRV.
 
2) Audiosnap. It's just really buggy and hard to use. Lots of graphical issues and I cannot save in the middle of an audiosnap session (I have to finish what I'm doing and render before closing Sonar). If I try to save and close the project completely corrupts and becomes unusable.
 
3) Keybindings. Occasionally bindings seem to just stop working intermittently or they behave differently than their point/click counterparts. Some cause odd behavior and the Loop binding causes crashes.
 
4) Editing. Strange and erratic behavior when moving or copy/pasting clips as well as many other oddities.
 
5) Graphical errors. Waves getting washed out while moving things, things disappearing/reappearing randomly, false statuses, graphical "ghosts".
 
I can indeed work with X2 but it tends to be very laborious and I have a large list of workarounds and have to repeat actions multiple times as well as constantly double check my work. I also have to keep a very large set of Save As files (I have to save after completing pretty much any semi crucial step) in case I overlook an error due to the editing bug or something gets corrupted. X2 is awesome. Just too many quirks to be efficient. I'll still be using it for quite a while though even if I do try out other platforms.
 
Cheers.
 
PS: And I'm more than willing to accept that some of these issues may be system related as my HDD config is a little odd (which is why I intend to rehaul the whole system with the help of tech support) but I can't see all of them being because of that. Many of these things only appeared in X2 (X1 had it's own weirdness but those were more major but less frequent) and the patch did indeed help a bit. I'll be able to deal with it more thoroughly in a month or so after I'm set back up. I'll be doing much more thorough tests of everything so it is documented for the Bakers but by that time X3 will likely be out so I guess it will be moot aside from maybe correcting my own problems and perhaps helping others who decide to stick with X2 for a while as I will be more than willing to share what I find.