sharke
The only thing I can think of at present is that Sonar has potential flaws in the way in which it saves plug settings with a project file, because everything is fine until I reload the project. Nothing is happening within a project session to zero out these settings, it's only when I save it and fire it up again.  

 
Believe me, I'm the last person (well I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end of the line) who'll defend Sonar/Cakewalk, but I'm not following your logic. You said you tried the Waves Plug-ins with Reaper, it worked fine, so you blame Sonar. 
 
Have you tried any other plug-ins with Sonar & have the same problem? Let's say there is a problem with the way Sonar saves plug-in settings. Why aren't you having issues with other plug-ins? 
 
So it's got to be a problem with the way Sonar saves the settings & the way Waves reads those settings. 
 
Have you tried saving your settings as a preset? Save your project, then open it & see if the preset is restored correctly. If not, load the preset & see if it's restored that way. 
 
Chances are this is a small problem relative to what the guys/gals at Cakewalk are addressing. But I agree with you. Why would Cakewalk host this forum if they aren't going to dedicate someone to at least look at these "small" issues & communicate what they've found. If that gets to be too much work for them, maybe that says a lot about their product. 

This is a known issue between Waves and Sonar. It has to do with Sonar "seeing" both 32 and 64-bit Waves plug-ins. Waves can show how to fix this, but it has to be done, or the crashes will continue.
 
I believe this has to do with Waves trying to "capsulize" all their plug-ins into one .dll and Sonar doesn't like this if there's both 32 and 64-bit plugins inside that capsule. I personally think Waves needs to fix this, or figure out a better way, even if it means returning to the older tried and true separate .dll's, but Sonar obviously didn't catch this WaveShell issue, or they would have fixed it in X2a.

karma1959
Probably a naive question - but have you contacted Cakewalk's tech support?  Have they given any advice?

Yeah they told me to reinstall X2 which I did, with no luck. Maybe I'll try it again though. I'm a sucker for that "new install" feeling. 

brconflict
Trust me, call Waves Support. They know exactly the fix, and why this happens. I blame both Waves and Cakewalk for the trouble, but Waves can hop on your system and fix the trouble while you watch. It was easy in my case, and I haven't since seen a crash. Hope this helps!!

I don't have a Waves Update Plan, which is needed for tech support. Any clues as to the nature of what they did? 

thunderkyss

sharke
The only thing I can think of at present is that Sonar has potential flaws in the way in which it saves plug settings with a project file, because everything is fine until I reload the project. Nothing is happening within a project session to zero out these settings, it's only when I save it and fire it up again.  

 
Believe me, I'm the last person (well I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end of the line) who'll defend Sonar/Cakewalk, but I'm not following your logic. You said you tried the Waves Plug-ins with Reaper, it worked fine, so you blame Sonar. 
 
Have you tried any other plug-ins with Sonar & have the same problem? Let's say there is a problem with the way Sonar saves plug-in settings. Why aren't you having issues with other plug-ins? 
 
So it's got to be a problem with the way Sonar saves the settings & the way Waves reads those settings. 
 
Have you tried saving your settings as a preset? Save your project, then open it & see if the preset is restored correctly. If not, load the preset & see if it's restored that way. 
 
Chances are this is a small problem relative to what the guys/gals at Cakewalk are addressing. But I agree with you. Why would Cakewalk host this forum if they aren't going to dedicate someone to at least look at these "small" issues & communicate what they've found. If that gets to be too much work for them, maybe that says a lot about their product. 

Yeah I can save the settings as a preset. But it still resets sometimes. So I would have to manually load the preset every time from now on. That's something that I want to get away from  - there is nothing worse than having to load a bunch of presets by hand every time you open a project. 

brconflict
This is a known issue between Waves and Sonar. It has to do with Sonar "seeing" both 32 and 64-bit Waves plug-ins. Waves can show how to fix this, but it has to be done, or the crashes will continue.
 
I believe this has to do with Waves trying to "capsulize" all their plug-ins into one .dll and Sonar doesn't like this if there's both 32 and 64-bit plugins inside that capsule. I personally think Waves needs to fix this, or figure out a better way, even if it means returning to the older tried and true separate .dll's, but Sonar obviously didn't catch this WaveShell issue, or they would have fixed it in X2a.

When I first installed the Gold bundle, I contacted Waves to ask how to get rid of the 32-bit plugs because I didn't need them, and they don't me to just delete the 32-bit Waves Shell, which I did. I presume this has stopped Sonar "seeing" the 32-bit plugs, but the problem still persists. Isn't there a way to extract usable separate .dll's from the shell? I have heard people mention this....

sharke

karma1959
Probably a naive question - but have you contacted Cakewalk's tech support?  Have they given any advice?

Yeah they told me to reinstall X2 which I did, with no luck. Maybe I'll try it again though. I'm a sucker for that "new install" feeling.

 
Oh no! Is this their new go-to response?  It's like doctors prescribing antibiotics for everything!  This was my instruction last time I contacted them.  It even involved manual registry changes after uninstalling.  I imagine you got the same scripted steps?  Well, it sure does keep us busy for a while!
 
After going through all that (it's quite a process to completely uninstall/reinstall X2a), I replied explaining it did not resolve my issues, asked for additional ideas, and they stopped responded.  And no, I did not scare them into their hole by mentioning X2b.   It was a targeted support ticket that I bumped twice with zero response before I had to call to see what the heck was up.  Then they went with go-to response #2:  must be your interface drivers.

There's two things you can do here. One, uninstall all of your Waves plug-ins and reset your plugins within Sonar (this will delete any saved settings in a session for some reason). Install Waves again, and watch for the installation directories. You will be asked where you want your 64-Bit plugins, your 32-bit plug-ins, AND where you want WaveShell to be installed. You want ONLY the 32-bit plugins to install in a directory Sonar will never find. However, the 64-Bit plugins and the WaveShell MUST exist in both VST locations for 64 and 32 bit plug-ins, don't ask me why. Then, rescan for the plug-ins in Sonar and you should be all set.
 
The other option is to simply find your 32-bit plugins (in a directory close to your 32-bit WaveShell), and either delete them or simply move them to a hidden place. Then, re-scan for your plugins, possibly resetting your plug-ins in Sonar, which, again, will delete saved settings in your projects.
 
To get around the lost Waves settings, I had to go to each and every plug-in and manually save the plug-in's setting, then recall each plug-in's setting after the full reset. 
 
The bottom line was that you NEED the 32-bit WaveShell as well as the 64-bit, but you ONLY need the 64-Bit plugins, which are normally installed in a directory close to or next to the WaveShell. This, of course, can be pre-determined by you during the Waves install as I mentioned in the first option.
 
Hope this helps!!
 
 
 

Waves GUI problems are typically resolved with disabling X-Ray in SONAR. I believe they draw their plug-in GUIs using OpenGL so there's some differences between SONAR's GUI and their GUI right there. Other than that, I'd always get the latest graphics drivers for general drawing issues or crashes with their plug-ins.
 
Sharke, I think brconflict posted some good suggestions above. We made some changes to the VST Plug-in Manager in SONAR X2a that required some manual steps for rescanning VST Plug-ins. This should theoretically deal with any conflicts if you had both 32bit and 64bit versions installed. Can you recall if you ever did these steps? From the X2a installation instructions:
 
Additional Installation Steps Regarding VST Plug-ins:
 
After installing the X2a update we recommend resetting and re-scanning your VST plugins. SONAR X2a has a new mechanism for handling file systems without short file name support. While this is not mandatory, re-scanning will allow SONAR to properly detect and handle this scenario where applicable.
 
1) This can be done by launching SONAR and doing the following:
2) Go to Edit > Preferences > File - VST Settings
3) Click the [Reset All VST Plug-ins] button 
4) When prompted with the message "This will reset configuration settings for all your VST Plug-ins to defaults... Are you sure you want to do this" click [Yes]
5) Click the [Scan VST Folders] button and wait for the scan to complete
 
These steps are sometimes required for detecting changes in the WavesShell.dll as well, so perhaps it's worth investigating if you haven't already.

Ryan,
  Thanks for chiming in here. Much appreciated. I like to see CW get involved if they know more about the root cause.