jim im sorry to hear about this.
i happen to respect your opinion very much.
sad thing is if it was anyone else i would probably be telling them to update their sig so we can help them.
i know i can be shallow at times and fanboish.

it could very well be some of the updates that were put in place for windows 8.
was it working okay up to the point where you put the patch on?

let me apologize first for some of the people who are going to bash you,confusing you with a cake basher.
i know your one of the loyal users who must be frustrated beyond belief with this.
but also dont you confuse people giving there honest opinion with people you believe might be fan bio's,thats not fair either. 

i wish i could share the disapontment just to consolodate you but i cant.
X2 has been running smooth here for me and ive been beating it to death
(one of the reasons i havent been around as much)
ive put hours and hours on it with very little issues.

i know you said the pro channel,are there any other plug ins on those tracks that could be offending ?
ive been able to trace back anything thats happen to me so far to third party plug ins.
thats not saying thats the only problem,but to me its been the main contributor.
i wish the best for you jim.your a good guy.
so i hope anyone who is reading this thread..dont go insulting this guy.

Beepster

Hi, bub. I know you've been taking a lot of heat on here the past couple days but I didn't say he was making it up. I know there are bugs. I deal with them daily.

Sorry, you can't be helped unless you list your system specs in your signature.

I'm just saying that that X1d was more or less working and X2 should in theory be the same shell.

X1D was not working for me at all. It pretty much rendered Sonar useless on my system. The best working 'version' of X1 for me was X1C with the last QF.

I just have a feeling the intergration into an OS that hadn't been fully released yet my be gumming things up more than if they had just left that stuff out of the equation for now.

I can see that being the case for some things, but all I'm saying is, these things didn't start with X2 ... they've been going on since X1 was originally released.

My personal feeling on it is it has something to do with the new Skylight interface. I think they patched this newer code on to old code, and it's not playing nice. Keep in mind ... the X series is still just 8.5, just with a new look. Which is probably another reason why it may not be playing nice with Windows 8 support.

I don't know, don't care anymore what the cause is, we just want it to work 'reasonably' well. Nobody's asking for every single tiny little thing to be perfect, but when the freaking volume and gain controls keep going haywire ... come on ... this is getting ridiculous.

Take me completely out of it ... and read the forums. I'm not the only one seeing this guys. You've been beating the crap out of me for being vocal about it ... but I'm not the only one seeing this.

You've been beating the crap out of me for being vocal about it

Aw c'mon, man. That's not fair. When I have ever given you a hard time?

:-/

Beepster

You've been beating the crap out of me for being vocal about it

Aw c'mon, man. That's not fair. When I have ever given you a hard time?

:-/

Never! :)

That was a comment intended for those who have beaten the crap out of me lately. :)

I saw some stuff early with X2, but so far for me, everything is in good shape other than a few crashes due to Kontakt...which has always been a thorn in my side. (Kontakt, just so you know, I hate you! LOL)

What amazes me about the stuff I read on here is....either someone has a bunch of weird stuff happening, or they are perfect or near perfect. I can tell you this....and I mean it sincerely, I don't know how Cakewalk handles their beta testing, but in the testing I do for companies I test for....we beat the living heck out of the stuff and try to break it any way we can. We had a release of something that was pretty popular where we on the beta team for that product and cycle felt wonderful. We couldn't make the thing act up no matter what we tried.

Some really skilled people on that team too. We released it and the next day, there were like 25 things that were found to be wrong. We went from feeling like we were awesome to feeling like we failed. Case in point....software is always going to behave differently for people depending on how it gets used. Even if you have 100 beta testers that know what they are doing....there will be 200 users that will use the product differently.

I'm not sticking up for Cake, or any of the companies that I test for...there are obviously problems or people wouldn't be complaining. The first step in fixing these problems is recognizing that they exist. The next thing...which is a nightmare....is finding the recipe to reproduce them so they can be recognized as legit bugs. Anyone that's ever been on a beta team can relate to that. It's not only frustrating, but can do your head in and make you think you're crazy. You see something happening to you as a blatantly obvious thing that happens to you religiously. Several others try to repro the problem and it doesn't happen. What do you do? Whay can THEY do if they don't see it? Trust me when I tell you, this part totally sucks!

For example, I like to always try to repro the stuff people complain about on these forums. If you ever see me post "yep, confirmed" it happens to me too of course. If I don't post anything, chances are I tried it and was unsuccessful....but I always try to reproduce just about every bug someone posts on here just because I'm curious and it usually only takes about 3-5 minutes to try.

If I were to take a guess at the problems people are reporting in Sonar, I would say the DAW itself has become a bit too sophisticated and in a sense, has lost its way. Sometimes "ground-breaking and innovative" can make something that was once great, go a bit astray. Though I have not had any of the issues reported here on my end, (Thank God) there ARE things that happen to me in X2 that didn't happen in X1 or 8.5.

A few examples: Certain plugins crash X2 that do not crash X1 or 8.5, issues with the new plugin manager at times...a few strange out of memory messages causing crashes that I have never seen before due to Kontakt, weird slip editing of clips, main power button on a PC track being disabled when it was saved as "enabled", tracks losing focus and not hi-liting or scrolling properly without clicking on them, screen sets not maintaining what was last saved/used....little things like that. No show stoppers for me other than the out of memory thing.

That said, I'm STILL not using X2 for any serious projects other than one I did last week since the bundle was sent to me using X2. Another thing I have learned which may be something for people to keep in mind. It could just be me, but I sincerely feel we should do this if at all possible for a while just until we know for sure...

Any project done in X1 should remain in X1. I've had too many issues with old projects being brought into X2. Anything done in 8.5, should remain in 8.5. When you do a project in X2, start it in X2 and name it "name of file X2" so you always know where it was created. I've noticed that any project created in X2, works well in X2 without any weird things other than my Kontakt issue and an old version of ARC crashing X2. But try that....no more old projects in X2. I really believe there is some truth to this even if it may be just on my end.

At any rate, I hope the issues can be sorted out whether they be due to the software or some sort of hardware anomaly if one exists. Speaking of hardware....here's one...not a show stopper, but something that has always bothered me that can't seem to be remedied.

Any Echo card ever made that I have, (Lalya 24/96, Gina, Audiofire Pre 8 and 12) cannot do a punch out in ANY version of Sonar from Sonar 6 to present without leaving a gap while "Allow Arm Changes during playback" is enabled. A gap will appear unless you use inputs 1 or 2. All other inputs produce a gap in punch out with ANY Echo interface. Though not a horrible thing, it only happens in Sonar. If this sort of hardware issue can occur, others can be culprits and it very well could change how they react with different versions of Sonar....you just never know.

At the end of the day, we just have to keep on reporting this stuff. If you feel you haven't received the right answer or no answer at all, it's pretty obvious what must be done. I found out about my Echo issue because one of the Cake staff was kind enough to figure it out for me. Will it ever be remedied in a future version of Sonar? I don't know...but at least the problem was found out, they are aware of it and at least I know it's not me or any of the 4 cards I was running.

The thing that makes this difficult is....there are quite a few of us that have been here a really long time. It's a bit hard to swallow that there were good versions of Sonar that worked, you take the plunge to the latest and greatest, and have nothing but road-blocks. The frustration is understandable on all counts. However, speaking for myself, the Bakers have never turned me away when I had a problem and I'm no one special.

I reported my issues like we're supposed to do and was assigned someone to help me. In just about all of my situations, I was fixed up and taken care of. If anyone else hasn't had that experience, I'm really sorry...but it's always worked for me. If at some point it no longer does, there are enough options out there to where I honestly wouldn't spend any time on this forum downing Sonar.....I'd buy a DAW that worked for me and would resume my business...but that's just me. Again, my sincere apologies for anyone having problems. I sure don't think you're crazy and can definitely relate to your frustration having been there a few times myself in the past.

-Danny

The funny thing to me is that sometime in the future Cake will release an update
with a list of issues they addressed. Not unlike any previous version.
It will be a list that will surprise me just like every one they've done.

It will list issues they fixed that I knew about but it will also list an amazing amount
of issues that I never had because of how I'd been working, with what and other stuff
beyond my awareness.

Now the funny thing is before we get that update there are two main groups of
users.
One is the group that just never had any problems. Amazing. Out of all the issues that Cake will list that they addressed not one of them effected that group. Amazing.

The other will be the group I'm usually in....glad they addressed the issues and surprised there were more issues than I could have imagined.

Until then....lot of BS.

I'll be glad when the next update is out.

Maybe I can add (or confuse) a few points here that could be useful in this discussion. 

Preface: I don't defend Cakewalk, either, because there's something pushing them a bit too hard (i.e. competition, Roland, customers, investors, you name it), and I don't like that one bit, as a customer.

1 - Anyone using X2a should update all drivers, BIOS, and ditch Windows 8 for now.
2 - Get the "SWA Complete Sonar X2" vids and go through them. Understand each feature/function fully because there are some tweaks each system can use that will help in most cases. Sonar isn't intelligent enough to auto-sense all your system settings.
3 - X2a does seem to produce some extra burden on the system or OS vs. X2 or even X1d.
4 - Cakewalk uses a LOT of C++ libraries developed by Microsoft, meaning, if the Microsoft libraries aren't up-to-date, or fouled up (happens more often than you might think) then Sonar will suffer. I don't like this poorly chosen dependency but it does lower Cakewalk's overhead, and subsequently, the price we pay. Yes, I would like to see Sonar developed without Microsoft's help, but those developers are way more expensive, and you'd be very limited in hardware choices.
5 - I prefer not to pressure Cakewalk to put out X2b yet. Ironically as this sounds, I'd rather they hold off releasing the next patch until they've at least evaluated each issue from this forum, and either fixed them, or simply says to us, we're full of (stuff), and our ideas don't meet their marketing strategies. If so, then be it.

If you take into consideration all of the features and functions Cakewalk DID pack into Sonar, it's impressive. I don't like editing (one of the most awkward and unpredictable editors I've ever used), but the appreciation is growing (albeit, slowly) on me.

@Danny - Since they have you as a Beta tester, how responsive is Cakewalk to the issues, bugs, and other anomalies you find and report? 

Brian, I don't test for Cakewalk. I test plugins and other programs. I was merely explaining how the beta cycles work within the other companies I test for. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

-Danny

millzy


Yes I am seeing some real quirky things happen also in X2a, however I'm yet to seen the pro channel eq glitch.

I had a new one happen to me tonight - slip editing a clip while playing the project and all of a sudden there was no audio from any of the clips on the same track as the one I edited! It was as if that track was magically muted after I edited one clip. The only cure was to re-open the project.

I dont know what kind of stuff your PC´s smoke ! The only Issue I had with X2 ; is it crashes suddenly sometimes ,while for example saving tracktemplates ....its strange ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,just the crashes ...but the bugs you are writing about ; they seem like an INVENTION of steinberg or either avid ^^
I think slowly ,some PAYD protools people or steiberg people ,write such BUG posts unpurpouse ? ....are these called trolls ?
They accused me big time of beeing one ,because I was so new to sonar ...NOW you all hang out with trolls ß --you must be banjo players ! ; P
 
 

Dshenkui !