It may come as a shock to you, Bub, but that is how you come across on here.
 
It is a valuable lesson to learn how others see us.  GodP does not come across as being as paranoid as you, but at least you have used Sonar - I'm not sure he ever has. But you will be judged by the company you keep.
 
@Alex - Yes, plus one credit.  

"Stability" means various things to different people.

I think that is the key right there. That is why CJ is right...AND... Bub is right (in his own mind )

I think it is how you deal with instability issues that defines your experience with the software. I've upgraded every year since ProAudio 7, and I've never had a show-stopping, foot stomping, suicide-inducing incident that has made me even consider jumping ship. This, considering the fact that I've built all my DAWs myself (self-taught, 5 total), with multiple audio interfaces and software configurations.  

Having said that, I've been able to diagnose and fix all my quirks with the software - whether it's rolling back a driver or using the latency checker to diagnose a faulty peripheral. So yes, there have been minor issues, but I know from experience that I can figure it out. I've always had a stable DAW, in my own mind (*edit* for Bub). If that make me a fanboi, then so be it. We're not working with a Fostex cassette 4-track here...

V

quibb

"Stability" means various things to different people.

I think that is the key right there. That is why CJ is right...AND... Bub is right (in his own mind )

I think it is how you deal with instability issues that defines your experience with the software. I've upgraded every year since ProAudio 7, and I've never had a show-stopping, foot stomping, suicide-inducing incident that has made me even consider jumping ship. This, considering the fact that I've built all my DAWs myself (self-taught, 5 total), with multiple audio interfaces and software configurations.  

Having said that, I've been able to diagnose and fix all my quirks with the software - whether it's rolling back a driver or using the latency checker to diagnose a faulty peripheral. So yes, there have been minor issues, but I know from experience that I can figure it out. I've always had a stable DAW. If that make me a fanboi, then so be it. We're not working with a Fostex cassette 4-track here...

V

Yeah yeah yeah. And you were a shrimpin' boat cappin', ping pong champion, and got in on the ground level of Apple too right? Say hi to Lt. Dan for me.

You can't fix bugs in the software ... no matter how stable your DAW is. That is the key thing you and Alex are missing.

Alex is stuck on this 'stability' thing but is missing the point entirely, and that is ... there are things that are broken in Sonar that can only be fixed by Cakewalk. Things that those of us who paid for want to use and can't. Sorry I don't fall in to the "I paid for it but don't want to use it anyway so it's ok" category like most of you seem to be in.

If I'm so off base ... where is Cakewalk stepping in to correct me? They have stepped in in the past to correct forum members when they were off base. You haven't seen them because you can't argue with the fact that some stuff is broken.

250 bug fixes in the A patch alone. I am not saying that's a bad thing. It's great that they are addressing these things. What I'm saying is, stop it with the 'no problems here' routine when we all know that there are things broken.

And as for those HP's they have listed on their DAW Lab page ... those are damn nice PC's. HP gets a bad rap sometimes, but they do make a hell of a product. I still have an HP Pavilion 486 in my basement that works great. I play old DOS games on it once in a while. There's no reason on Earth you shouldn't be able to load Sonar on those things without touching them, save for turning off power management, and be up and running without doing all these tweaks you read on the net.

All those tweaks do is lower your latency, they don't actually make your system 'stable' so Sonar can run on it. It will run on it with or without the tweaks, you may just have to up your buffers a little.

Never said 'no problems', did I.

It's my perception I was referring to. I've always been able to accomplish what I have set out to do with the software. There is a difference.
 
You post about YOUR perceptions and you are 'helping'... I post about mine, and I'm a fanboi...
Just sayin.
V

quibb

Here we go....

Never said 'no problems', did I.

It's my perception I was referring to. I've always been able to accomplish what I have set out to do. There is a difference.
 
You post about YOUR perception and you are 'helping'... I post about mine, and I'm a fanboi...
Just sayin.

V

Having said that, I've been able to diagnose and fix all my quirks with the software - whether it's rolling back a driver or using the latency checker to diagnose a faulty peripheral. So yes, there have been minor issues, but I know from experience that I can figure it out. I've always had a stable DAW

Ok, so when you say you were able to diagnose and fix all your quirks with the software, you weren't talking about Sonar, you were talking about the software that runs your DAW, as in a driver, Windows, or stuff along those lines. Sorry, I get what you are saying now. I misunderstood.

I mean, you really don't think you can fix bugs in the software by yourself, do you? You could have the most stable DAW on the planet, but if the DAW (DAW as in Sonar) software is broken, it's not going to do you a bit of good. That's all I'm trying to say.

Maybe it's my work process, but I've never met a show-stopping bug in Sonar. One of the worst issues I had was with Rapturex64 crashing my system when I first upgraded to 64-bit.  Had a hard time figuring that one out, but after a clean install of Rapture, it was solved.  My point earlier was that even during the time I had issues with Rapture, I was still able to make music and wouldn't have told you that Sonar was unstable. My perception. Most of my issues have been with interface drivers, plug-in's, and OS incompatabilities.

Some Sonar issues may have required workarounds, but I've always been able to lay down tracks.  
 
Also, I waited until X1c to jump on the X1 ship, so that may account for some of my good luck as well.

V

huh Bub, you are seriously smoking something. I was talking about stability bugs. If you are talking about fixing workflow, performance, ui and other bugs that need sorting then sure I agree. But I was specifically talking about stability earlier which is more often than not a hardware or driver issue. If you wanna start blurring the issue than go ahead, you normally do which is why you tend to go around in circles.

CakeAlexS

huh Bub, you are seriously smoking something. I was talking about stability bugs. If you are talking about fixing workflow, performance, ui and other bugs that need sorting then sure I agree. But I was specifically talking about stability earlier which is more often than not a hardware or driver issue. If you wanna start blurring the issue than go ahead, you normally do which is why you tend to go around in circles.

Yeah, it's all my fault Alex.

I'll go away now.

You have a good one.

Phew-goodnight Bub!
I struggled for years with dropouts and crashes and finally bit the bullet and had a professional Daw built and benchtested with software and soundcards and have not looked back and would recommend this process to any daw user.
Apparently one version of X2 is unstable-why bother with it-just because a certain model is a dud doesn`t mean the brand is-for goodness sake ,look at the auto industry-anyone here owned an Alfa Romeo or a Jaguar?-you needed to be a mechanic to own one!
upgrading for the sake of it has it`s pitfalls. 
just saying...............

Bub

Tom Riggs

John T

I think X2 is currently a bit cranky. Here's my favourite current one: pressing the expand button to show ProChannel on a bus. About 50% of the time, that's a total white out, restart-the-computer crash for me.

Don't blame cake for this one. It is more likely to be related to the video card, driver or ram. 

I was seeing this every once in a while till i figured out I needed to increase voltages to my ram to get it stable. I could also have been my video card drivers but while researching display problems in Blender (3d design software) I figured out my problem. With that issue corrected no more video related issues with sonar so far. 

you can also check the sonar preferences/display setting to see if the use hardware acceleration is enabled. try togging that setting.

Edited for clarity.

Raising your RAM voltage is called Overclocking. You are sending your RAM to an early death doing that ... unless you had it set wrong in the first place and raised it to where it should have been. But hey, if that's what you have to do to get Sonar to run right on your system, I guess that's what you have to do.

This "sonar preferences/display setting" and "hardware acceleration" ... where is that located? Is that something in Sonar or your video card driver? I'm running Sonar X2a and when I go in to Preferences/Display I don't see a setting for "hardware acceleration"?

I was at the mall on my phone when I commented before so not that I am home I will reply to you.
 
first off the display setting is in Preferences>display and at the bottom of that page is a check box to "use Graphics Hardware Acceleration". 
 
Secondly changing the voltage to the ram is not overclocling even though sometimes when you overclock ram that is needed. I have long suspected the OCZ ram I have of causing issues for me even though it passes every test I throw at it. One of the requirements of the ram is that the vlotage be raised from the default up to a maximum of 2.1v. I always had it set for that...what I have discovered is that if I increase the termination and reference voltages from 0.9v standard to 1v I can decrease the main voltage to 2.0v and the ram seems more stable.
 
This has not really caused me any noticable problems till I reciently started trying my hand at 3d graphics. Althoug I did have sonar cause the video crash in earlier versions it was exceedingly rare and the error always pointed to the video card not sonar per se.