To make a general comment.
 
I think  Jim R.  is spot on with his comments in his post in this thread.
 
If  the OP's software has been unstable / problematic for some many version, it is  virtually certain that Sonar is  not  the issue.
 
Where I do have some sympathy with the OP is that - as I have stated before - we use both Sonar X series and  S1 V2.5 in our studio.
 
In terms of  feature richness  &  overall maturity, Sonar  X  is excellent.
 
In terms of sheer rock-solid-stability, with the recent release of  S1V2.5  Presonus's    DAW audio engine is now in a league of its own.  We do all our work at  88.2 / 32 Bit / 48 Sample Latency with RME Hardware and run on 2 x 4.2gig Hex Core i7 systems and it is not uncommon for CPU load to be sitting regularly above  %60 .............. no matter what  we throw at t,  S1V2.5  simply just does not fall over or glitch .....and I'm talking sessions which last  5 - 6 hours at a time with no breaks.
 
I'm not stating the above to say one is better than the other because overall, each have their own strngths......... if absolute audio engine efficiency is not your priority ...... not much even gets close to Sonar X .... its horse s for courses.
 
Tim
 
 

I agree Tim which is why I said that *I* had problems with Sonar 7 while others didn't seem to but Sonar 8 worked for *me* while others had problems.

The fact that overall he is having troubles with multiple versions of Sonar seems suspect to me.

I suspect his hardware or system configuration (ie:other running software, BIOS settings etc) are the main culprit here or at least a contributing factor.

I also agree with your statements regarding Studio One.  In my opinion it's the one to beat at the moment for stability and performance of the audio engine and core components.  I just hope they don't get caught up in feature bloat and lose focus on keeping the core program as solid as possible. 

Getting back to the OP, if I were him, I would go get a bare drive, reset all BIOS settings to default, remove every card not needed including the second sound card, disable all not needed BIOS devices (ie:firewire ,floppy etc) and do a CLEAN install of Windows.
Then update Windows to latest SP2.
Update drivers for soundcard if needed.

THEN:::::::::::::

Do a fresh install of Sonar and see how it performs.

At least this way he can determine where the problem lies.
Sometimes a complete level set, start from square one and forget everything previously done, is necessary.
I know it's a lot of work but at this point IMHO for troubleshooting, so much has been done already, this is really the only way to properly document things.

Good luck!

I think people have a bloody nerve and shows the state of their arrogance to point the finger at a person cos the software that they are using doesnt work for them. How arrogant can you be to say that it is their fault. Come of your arrogant high horse... similar to buying a pair of shoes and saying that the shoes are hurting your foot the sales person says it not your shoes but its your feet..stop complaining and know how to walk in them. Arrogant small minded and quite frankly dumb! Some of you have good reputations but the mindset shows that your knowledge in one field doesnt give you credentials...continue to be a big fish in a small pond and stop speaking out on behalve of others if you know you are small minded... If you never knew you was small minded now you can thank me for opening your eyes to the fact that you have delusions of grandeur. You can thank me by replying or send a check via paypal! The arrogance of some people....

vladasyn


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.

1.  They will sell you the computer you spec out.  I would imagine that 3 SCSI drives were not in the original model specs.


2.  Some devices pull power from the USB ports - that is what I was referring to on that.  It's not a lot.


But I do believe that a 300 watt power supply is not enough for that system.


Bob Bone

@joakes... Yeah, squeaky wheel and all that. Still I'm not proficient enough to deal with any more weirdness and X2 seems to be running okay as is. Cheers.

@backwoods... I was on version 2 with Wavelab (forget the version) on the side. Lots of basic workflow features I'd like to see from that in Sonar. The way it handled takes was really really nice. Right click and there were all your takes. Select the one you want and it popped up to the top for editing and muted the rest automatically.

@Danny... I've got my fingers crossed. I'm probably overstating what few quirks I've experienced but they are there which I'm not used to. I just worry a little too much about things going wonky on me once I finally ramp things up into high gear. I've invested a lot of money and time into this and if it screws up... well... have you ever seen a grown man cry? ;-)

I think people have a bloody nerve and shows the state of their arrogance to point the finger at a person cos the software that they are using doesnt work for them. How arrogant can you be to say that it is their fault. Come of your arrogant high horse... similar to buying a pair of shoes and saying that the shoes are hurting your foot the sales person says it not your shoes but its your feet..stop complaining and know how to walk in them. Arrogant small minded and quite frankly dumb! Some of you have good reputations but the mindset shows that your knowledge in one field doesnt give you credentials...continue to be a big fish in a small pond and stop speaking out on behalve of others if you know you are small minded... If you never knew you was small minded now you can thank me for opening your eyes to the fact that you have delusions of grandeur. You can thank me by replying or send a check via paypal! The arrogance of some people....

Not arrogant at all... (trouble-shoot the problem without emotion)
X2 isn't constantly crashing for the vast majority of users.
If the app *is* working well for the vast majority of users, what explains the difference?
The differences are hardware/configuration... and the way the application is used.
The X2 code is identical in all cases.
If you're having major stability issues with X2, they *can* be resolved or worked around.
Might mean rebuilding/reconfiguring your machine... might mean changing workflow or plugin choice.

but... I should be able to run Sonar on my toaster! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!

@Jim "Might mean rebuilding/reconfiguring your machine..."


I agree 100 percent.
He needs to level set from scratch and start over completely IMHO if he is looking to get to the bottom of it.


Too many things have been done along the way and at this point who knows what state the hardware and software and BIOS configuration is in.


Like I said, buy a new drive and start fresh or use something like Clonezilla or Acronis to create an image and do the same.


This will at least give him a clean baseline to start from.

but... I should be able to run Sonar on my toaster! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!

 
Beeps...  toasters are so like, last century, man...   You need newer hardware than that.