Working on a pure soft-synths piece, I'm crashing Sonar X2 Producer every 20 minutes. Crashed it a couple of dozen times in one evening a few days ago.

The message is "sonarpdr.exe has crashed", then the program closes down entirely.

Here's some particulars: HW: Lenovo K430,
i7-3770
8GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 620
RME Babyface
UAD 2 Quad-core

SW: Win7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1
Sonar X2 Producer Build 306 [NOTE Mar 3: Now updated to X2a]

In this piece, VST: Zebra2(x64) two instances
PSYN II one instance
UAD 1176LN three instances
UAD Realverb four instances
UAD Pultec one instance
UAD LA2A one instance
Cakewalk Multivoice Chorus/Flanger one instance
Cakewalk Channel Tools one instance

This piece has 3 MIDI tracks (2 Zebra2, 1 PNSYN), plus three audio tracks for loops.

Nearly all the sound action happens in the first Zebra2 synth in Track 1, which is driven by MIDI data. Crashes repeatedly happen before any of the other tracks make their entrance around bar 70.

The main Zebra2 track has 6 automations going: Volume, Pan, and ProChannel EQ banks Hi Pass Freq, HF Gain, HMF Gain and LMF Gain.They're pretty lively, lots of dial spinning.

UAD Control Panel reports the load is quite low, avg 17%, and highest load on a single core is 26%. Any advice greatly appreciated.

You are running the original version of X2 Producer. At a minimum, you should apply the quick fix http://www.cakewalk.com/S...reader.aspx/2007013292 The current version is X2a http://www.cakewalk.com/s...reader.aspx/2007013301

I recently went thru some crashes and frustration. I did a few things as advised by folks in the forums. Since, Sonar has been running fantastic. 35 hours without any major issues.  try these:

make sure you have windows service pack 1 (windows 7) and windows update is current

shut off any virus/malware


shutoff any unnecessary services

make sure you have the latest version of audio drivers for your interface/devices

make sure you have sonar X2a

Some folks recomended updating the bios, however I did not do this.


Make sure you create a system backup or restore point before doing this.

I also optimized as in this document: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=sweetwater%20windows%207%20optimization&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sweetwater.com%2Fsweetcare%2Fdownloads%2FWindows_7_Optimization_Guide.pdf&ei=u9IyUZ3OMevryAHzvIBQ&usg=AFQjCNEc4ukA_tW-GtP_ekQJhuBxObRcOw



Other suggestions were made that I did not attempt, you should read thru the post, maybe there is something else which may help you. here is a link to that post: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2786480

Many thanks for the advice. Most of the drivers steps I have already applied, all unnecessary services are off, and the synth machine is generally kept off the Internet (this message is coming from my other box, the gaming machine). The Sonar update to X2a sounds promising, thanks for that! btw, apologies for the very ugly presentation in my first message. I formatted everything very nicely, but the forum interface seems to have thrown away all my white spaces.

Did you defrag after installation? It's my first solution, and usually works.

Good luck. The forum reformats Firefox posts. If you want to format correctly using Firefox either use the IETab addon or manually add html line breaks <br>

someone previously mentioned that the x2a update requires windows 7 service pack 1. not sure if that was on your radar...sonar...LOL....

Excellent guide, TraceyStudios, many good tips. I used to have a whole series of things like that (like DMA channel, forcing my own IRQ settings) way back in the day when I was running Cakewalk 3, 5, 6.

what soundcard are you using?
forgive me if i missed that.

and the x2a is a must for some stablitiy issues in my opinion. 

Are you exclusively using 64 bit plug ins? I do not own/know all your plugs, but e.g. UAD has only gone 64 bit in the last year.

I had serious stability issues with X2a that came only from 32 bit plug-ins and since that was solved X2a runs super smooth.