I started to test the water with 8.5 and gradually moved completely over to 64bit with X1.

I found that the biggest pain in trying to run both 32bit and 64bit versions of SONAR was VST management. However, as others have mentioned, more and more 64bit versions are now available, and not having to 'worry' about hitting the 4GB RAM maximum is a great advantage.

When I finally reached the point where I decided to run 64bit 'exclusively', I spent a weekend performing the transition in a relatively well-organised manner (after taking some great advice from this forum).
 
I started off by checking which 64bit plugs I already had, and then went trawling through all my VST accounts and downloading and installing all the 64bit versions of their plug-ins I hadn't already got.
 
Then I started organising my plugin folders. There are two ways of doing this, depending on whether or not you want to use BitBridge (or J-Bridge) or not. Firstly, you need to organise your plug-ins in a way similar to how I did:

• I uninstalled and/or deleted every 32bit plug-in that I now had the 64bit version of installed
• I placed all my 64bit plug-ins inside my Program Files (x64) > Cakewalk > VST Plugins folder
• The remaining plug-ins that were only available in 32bit, I placed inside my Program Files (x86) > Cakewalk > VST Plugins folder

If you are happy to work with BitBridge, you then set 64bit SONAR VST scan to scan both folders. Consequently, in future, whenever you insert a plug-in into a project you'll only ever insert the 32bit version if you don't have a corresponding 64bit version.
 
As I use X-Ray quite a lot, I'm not a big fan of BitBridge (plus some plug-ins and VSTi's simply don't work with it), the method I use is slightly different. I set 64bit SONAR to only scan the x64 VST folder and 32bit SONAR to only scan the 32bit VST folder. On the (extremely) rare occasion I want to use a 32bit plug-in or synth (usually the Proteus XV), I open the project in 32bit SONAR, add the VST and either print the effect or freeze the synth to bounce down to audio. Then I remove the VST and reopen the project in 64bit SONAR. A bit fiddly I'll agree, but it works for me!
 
Once I'd done all this, I made certain that every new project I started was in 64bit SONAR. With any projects I was still working on (and I made sure there weren't many), I simply swapped the 32bit plugs they had inserted for the 64bit versions when I opened them. Again, it's a bit messy to start with, but you only have to do it once for each project.
 
 
 
 
 

.. Double post ..

Agreed - 64 bit all the way here, the few 32 bit plugs that don't play well with Sonar/Bitbridge have been deleted from the system.

I don't miss them.......

Here's some info on the Cakewalk site that you might find useful...
https://www.cakewalk.com/...reader.aspx/2007013187

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com - SONAR X2 Power! - http://garrigus.com/?SonarX2Power
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

SteveStrummerUK

I set 64bit SONAR to only scan the x64 VST folder and 32bit SONAR to only scan the 32bit VST folder. 
On the (extremely) rare occasion I want to use a 32bit plug-in or synth (usually the Proteus XV), I open the project in 32bit SONAR, add the VST and either print the effect or freeze the synth to bounce down to audio.
Then I remove the VST and reopen the project in 64bit SONAR. A bit fiddly I'll agree, but it works for me! 

I do this as well.

Record the MIDI track in 64bit Sonar, open up 32bit Sonar, change the VST synth, bounce, delete VST synth, go back to 64bit Sonar.

I name both the MIDI and Audio tracks as synth:patch (the:whole:tree:structure).
Add a quick blurb in the notes for any adjustments (filter res, ADSR envelope or LFO changes, etc).
I can recall that exact patch easily if I need to go back and redo something later on.


   

Win7 64, i7 3770k, 16 gigs of ram, SSD system drive, RAID 5 Audio drive and standard HDD for regular data. I also do video work which is where the 64 bit pays off. I guess I'll just dabble with 64 bit as time goes by but I see no need to leap into it.

The reason is that in 32-bit, your computer can only use 3GB of the 16GB that you have so the rest is sitting there doing nothing. 

Also, RAID can be problematic. Search the Forum for other posts on this subject. 

I have been running 64-bit (OS and Sonar) for a little over a year. I delayed for a long time thinking that I didn't need it. I use very little MIDI and the system was very stable. With the exception of Melodyne. That program (stand-alone or plugin) was very "jerky" and didn't behave at all like I saw in the Video Tutorials. And the system would often become unresponsive. I poked around on the Celemony forums and found that they strongly recommended Melodyne be run in 64-bit mode. I made the change and for Melodyne the difference was night and day. Not so much for other programs and plugins but for Melodyne it was an amazing difference. It now behaved just like in the videos and my crashes stopped. I have found that my system overall is more responsive and more stable running in 64-bit mode even though I don't use soft synths or large sample libraries. I fully expected that running 32-bit programs would be a little slower and possibly a little less stable. I haven't done any performance testing to determine just how much slower a 32-bit program runs under a 64-bit OS but it hasn't been a noticeable impact.

Opps you're right . I wrote 4gb of addressable memory with 32 bit when it should have been 3. Time to get EMM386 out ;)

I use a lot of virtual instruments so I need more than 4 GB of memory.  I have 12 installed.  I seldom see more than 6 in use, but 6 would already be 50% more than 32-bit can address.

CakeAlexS


Opps you're right . I wrote 4gb of addressable memory with 32 bit when it should have been 3. Time to get EMM386 out ;)

+1000000000000000000000000000000