Solid as a rock and stable here...no crashes yet!

@sharke

You are indeed limited in Windows - I do not know if this has changed, but in Windows XP it had hardware profiles available, but there was not any built in Services profile, meaning I could not disable certain services for certain users.

To get around this, I wrote a couple of dumb little C# programs to allow me to set up profiles of services I wanted to be able to turn on or off all at once - instead of manually doing it one at a time.

I did this for back in XP on a 32-bit machine.  Since building a faster machine, with tons of memory and 64-bit processing - along with Windows 7 then Windows 8, I have not had to go back and fiddle with any of the background services.

My two dumb little programs are available to anyone who wants them.  One controls services and the other controls start up items.  Just send me a PM for them.

Bob Bone

I really like Sonar X2….not here to bash it…but I will say this: It’s crashed on me twice this week alone, and it’s caused me to lose hours of material. After the first really time robbing crash last Tuesday, I wised up and setup the program to automatically save every 10 minutes. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to do anything because it crashed again on me yesterday after about an hour’s use, and none of the work actually saved. When I rebooted everything I’d worked on at that point was lost AGAIN.....Oh, and I have a new HP computer and a Roland Quad Capture USB interface, and I have everything setup properly....even had a Sonar tech walk me through some of the deeper setups....so, I don't think that's the problem.
 
Chris  

@Christopher D

Can you please detail your system specs, as well as elaborate on what your project was doing when it crashed?

Don't know if anything can be done, but worth a look anyway.

Bob Bone

I have been having terrible stability issues with X2 and X2A.  I was fine with X1.  It is now so bad that I have started to research Reaper.  It is apparently very stable.  I will be downloading the demo version this week.  If it is any good, I will go that way.  BUT I hate the idea of having to relearn a new DAW.  I just want Sonar to work the way it used to!

It does sound like Reaper has a much better design philosophy when it comes to handling plugin crashes etc...from what I've heard a plugin crash or incompatibility will not cause Reaper to hang, instead Reaper identifies the problem and resets the plug while remaining stable itself. Not sure how accurate that is, just going by comments I've read from others. If that is the case then Cakewalk should definitely look toward following that path, because I'm sure a lot of these crashes are to do with instability in 3rd party plugs taking Sonar down with them.

I have heard that Midi implementation in Reaper isn't as good as Sonar.  remains to be seen.  Just hope it is intuitive with an easy learning curve.  Just want to make music.  Not have to contend with never ending crashes and computer maintenance issues.  

@munmun

If you are having problems with your current installation, why not see if anyone here can help?  Can you please post your issues with some detail, along with details on your system?  :)

Bob Bone'

sharke


It does sound like Reaper has a much better design philosophy when it comes to handling plugin crashes etc...from what I've heard a plugin crash or incompatibility will not cause Reaper to hang, instead Reaper identifies the problem and resets the plug while remaining stable itself. Not sure how accurate that is, just going by comments I've read from others. If that is the case then Cakewalk should definitely look toward following that path, because I'm sure a lot of these crashes are to do with instability in 3rd party plugs taking Sonar down with them.

Reaper crashes as much as any other DAW. 

     From Sharke

I have heard that Midi implementation in Reaper isn't as good as Sonar. remains to be seen. Just hope it is intuitive with an easy learning curve. Just want to make music. Not have to contend with never ending crashes and computer maintenance issues.  

Reaper's MIDI is very good and is quite usable. Its not as mature as Sonar's but it can do much the same things except there is no Staff View, no Step Sequencer and the like.

Before the X versions of Sonar Reaper was a viable alternative to Sonar. With the Pro Channel and various other features there is no competition now.

I think Reaper is as good as Studio One though. I own both. I use X2 for just about everything. The others just sit there not doing anything.  But they look cool. 

sharke

It does sound like Reaper has a much better design philosophy when it comes to handling plugin crashes etc...from what I've heard a plugin crash or incompatibility will not cause Reaper to hang, instead Reaper identifies the problem and resets the plug while remaining stable itself. Not sure how accurate that is, just going by comments I've read from others.

The VST thing I can confirm. I forget which VST I was using, but it crashed, Reaper put a message on the track that said it was not responding (or something to that effect), it reset the VST, and kept working. I didn't even have to close Reaper, it just kept chugging along like nothing happened after about 15 seconds.

I know it was the VST that crashed for two reasons, 1: Reaper told me it was this particular VST by name, and 2: It crashes all the time in Sonar. I always freeze immediately when I use it. I don't know for sure if it responds this way to all VST's when there is a problem, but I can confirm it did in this case. Another thing you can do is, there is a setting you can check off in Reaper to help make unstable VST's work better. I haven't tried it because, well ... it's never crashed or given me any problems.

If that is the case then Cakewalk should definitely look toward following that path, because I'm sure a lot of these crashes are to do with instability in 3rd party plugs taking Sonar down with them.

The VST I was using was one that comes with Sonar ... but I can't remember if it was one they did themselves or if it was one of the 3rd party ones they use.

Reaper supports VST3 ... maybe that has something to do with the fact that it was able to reset it like that? I was mistaken, it does not support VST3.