I hear ya, Danny. I'm obviously not doing the super intense stuff you are but it is a little worrisome to hear that if I did end up in that position I might have similar problems. I am definitely babying Sonar far more than I ever did with the Steinberg stuff. Never had a crash or even any glitches with that old system and I didn't even know what I was doing. Overall though I think it's a good fit for me and perhaps all the quirkiness is a blessing in disguise. I'm learning FAR more about digital audio than I would if nothing ever went wrong. lol

Cheers.

Beepster,

You should also take into account the number of people who have problems (normally the most vociferous) and those who don't (the quiet ones who don't necesarily post.

What is the real ratio ?  I would guess x times more satisfied up graders than disatisfied

Cheers,
Jerry

On 2a and loving it.....

Which Steinberg products and versions have you used Beep.

I lucked upon a Nuendo 4/5.5 license and it gives me way more problems than Sonar. Not to mention the seemingly random window resizing.

Been with Sonar since Greg answered Tech support calls and it came on a single floppy.
For me, Sonar 7.x was the big disaster. I had an otherwise stable system that worked fine with Protools and other DAW software at the time but Sonar 7.x would glitch, pop click and so forth. The final straw was when it destroyed previously recorded audio tracks putting big noise bursts and distortion into them. I sent Sonar packing and moved to Cubase. BTW others had no troubles at all.

Fast forward a while and I bought into Sonar 8.0. And while OTHERS were having problems, my system which was basically the same as Sonar 7, ran fine. It was a complete reverse!

My systems are home built, since 1980 in fact, always based on solid, known to work well together components usually specced out from DUC and work fantastic with Protools, Reaper and Studio One.

Sonar always seems to be the one with the weird glitches for me.

If it isn't one thing, it's another and truthfully I use my DAW old school, like a gigantic tape machine so I'm not involved much in looping, extensive cut and pasting to make music and so forth.

Currently I have X2, don't like the interface and am using Studio One 2.5 along with Reaper on occasion. It just works and while they may not have the feature set that Sonar or Cubase have, what they do offer, works extremely well.

I agree with the others that Cake should slow down the feature creep and concentrate on a solid performer and I realize that for many it is a solid performer but in reality we all don't work the same, hence the differences in experience.
Just my 2 cents.

Beeps, you never know. Every system as well as how you use it *can* come into play but it doesn't mean that it will. There are guys running way more things in Sonar than me that aren't having any problems. I've done the best I can over the years to make it as stable as possible though. Between shutting down running programs that shouldn't be running, tweaking system stuff, learning from the great Jim Roseberry, the people on this forum and of course even the bakers themselves. I have good results with Sonar or I'd not use it. But for sure...it's a bit picky with certain things and in other situations, I have to baby it.

Jerry: well said and I agree.

backwoods: I never mention Cubase or Nuendo because I too have had nothing but problems with their stuff. Try asking a question on their forums and see how long it takes to get an answer. LOL! Though we have our quirks like every DAW does, this is still the best one for me....flaws and all. I just wish sometimes that we didn't have to treat it with kid-gloves and it is good to talk about the inconsistencies without being bashed on....as well as listening to the success stories from guys like rscain and Robert Bone. I'm actually a success story myself really...but over the years, when you get forced into using some of these other DAW's, it a lot easier to weigh some of the pro's, cons and things that just appear could make a difference in making Sonar better. :) Good talk this was in my opinion.

-Danny

Did you ever try to quantize MIDI in Sonar? All other DAW make notes streight. Sonar masses everything up. It must be me, but I could never make quantize work. And I always have to stop playback and be careful and save everything before something happens. Strange thing is- it vary day to day. Some days it handles session with band where we play song after song after song and I have open 6-8 songs at the same time. (Most of my live set songs are mixed down to 8 tracks with no MIDI or plugins). Other day (like last night) I could not get it play 8 bars.

Bob, I never thought about powering other devices with my 300 watt. Why would Dell use 300 watt if they knew it is not enough- the 3 drives were there originally. But the PCI interface feeds of it as well. Fire Wire mixer has its own power supply, I do not power it off computer.

Its a software application that runs on windows doing very complex things.  Its gonna crash!   Save your work regularly and make sure you use versioning.  I've working in my friends pro tools studio and it freezes all the time during recording which has never happened to me in Sonar so get used to things going down.  It IS the nature of the beast.   I've never had any issues with any of the patches upgrades ad I'm running on 2 windows 7 machines, 32 bit and laptop running 64 bit.   SAVE SAVE SAVE!

vladasyn:
 
The reason certain mass-market PC builders tend to use cheap components with marginal specifications is because, well, they're cheap. So long as enough make it through to the end of the warranty period, that'll do.
 
There's also the assumption that the purchasers of such systems probably won't be doing anything very demanding on them, know little about computers and probably won't ever even open the case, never mind upgrade or add hardware.
 
DAWs, an the other hand, are specialised, and very demanding on hardware and the operating system - as demanding as gaming machines, but in different ways.

Did you ever try to quantize MIDI in Sonar? All other DAW make notes streight. Sonar masses everything up. It must be me, but I could never make quantize work.

 
Vlad, it may be the way you're executing the midi quantizing. Sonar to me is fantastic in this aspect. I've never had a problem with it. Now Audio Snap for audio files....way too complicated for me. By the time I get done messing with that, I'd be better off re-recording the track myself. Way too confusing and time consuming in my opinion and my brain doesn't have the patience for that learning curve. But midi has always been great for me. You can't just grab an entire file and quantize it...if that's what you're doing. You need to literally look at what may be 16th's in a line and what may be 8ths or 32nd's etc.
 
For example, a drum track. For most things, 16ths on kick, snare and hats will be ok to quantize an entire file. But if you have any snare ghost notes or triplets on your kick, rolls around your toms and other accidentals within your playing, 16ths will cut out all the human feel stuff that is not 16th notes. When I do a kick drum, I only work on the kick drum lines that are 16ths. As soon as I have a double or triple kick in a passage, 16th will no longer work, so I have to change to 16th triplet or 32 etc. But you can't just hi-lite a clip and quantize. Each part *may* need a specific quantize setting for the part that is played. I don't know of any DAW that magically quantizes to one setting while adjusting the others automatically. Meaning, set to 16ths and it will auto-take care of 32nd's and keep them at 32nd's. This is impossible, know what I mean? So you may need to take a look at how you're using midi quantize.
 
-Danny

Danny, in Logic, I would set to 32 and it would take care of everything minus triples. In sonar the notes become different length and moved to where it never was in the first place. Most of the time it would make it worse than it was. I have been programing drums for some time. In Logic, I would play 8 bars and then quantize to 16th and it is done. In Sonar- it will make them all out of place. I do not mass with quantize any more, unless it is to half note or quotes some time. And the swing not working as it should. Use swing and it masses up the drums. In logic, it would add the groove, not in Sonar.