FastBikerBoy

ChuckC


For instance... If I want to have one instance sonitus EQ on the kick and I have it up, then I want to pull up the one I have on the bass to make sure I am not pushing the same frequencies in them, when I open the 2nd one the 1st closes. This never happened in previous versions. I can't have 2 scopes up at the same time to watch while listening to a mix (say the analyst & voxengo span for instance).

There's definitely something not right there. Are they being bitbridged or docked? You should definitely be able to have as many VST UIs open at the same time as you want.

I agree with this FBB - Chuck, if I select "Disable Floating" from the Window menu for the plugin (top left corner), I get what it sounds like you are seeing, which to me looks the same as if I dock the plugin in the multi-dock. I looked for a global setting that might by default cause all of your plugs to have this setting, but I couldn't find one - but maybe FBB knows of something lurking in the deep, dark places of SONAR.
Edit - do your plugins look docked? (For me, when I dock them, or disable floating, I get a white background that fills the space around the plugin GUI to the full size of the window that it is in - so this blocks out whatever would be underneath it. If I enable floating, the plugin window generally wraps pretty closely to the dimensions of the plugin itself, and just like in earlier versions of SONAR, I can move these anywhere on the display, overlay them, move them from monitor to monitor, etc. Just curious if what you are seeing looks like it's docked - 

OK, so installed the quick fix patch and perhaps things improved a little  - and also I think some of the things I was experiencing were maybe due to not yet being familiar with the changes - pilot error sort of thing!
However all that said, I still experienced strange, erratic behaviour from time to time - one error that did repeat itself which is worth mentioning, was constant freezing of the reported volume on the track itself, but all was OK on the inspector / and console views.
After a couple of days my feeling was this strange error problem all seemed to be linked in one way or another with GUI / display drivers etc.
I run 64 bit windows 7 on a SandyBridge 2600k running at 4.5GHz i7 with 16gb ram. Windows fully updated. Motu 896Mk3 with latest drivers.

I kept my X1 as was and have now reverted to this at it is rock solid.

I can see some of the new improvements being good once you know fully how to use them, but for the time being X1 + stability will win out for me!

So I think I shall put X2 back in the cupboard for the time being and shall try again after the next patch comes out - hopefully this will cure the stability issues etc
Nigel

I'll have to play around with it guys... I appreciate the help, I really do. I just haven't had anytime to dig into it in the last few days.

I get more than my share of white crashes. Luckily I'm neurotic about saving my work frequently. I like the new features so I'm using it but definitely not as stable as X1d on my system.

After the Quick Fix X2 has been at least as stable as X1 probably more haven't had a single crash since installing the QF.  X2 has a lot more little glitches though than X1, many of them graphics related, but there is a fair amount of operations that don't always work right.

Dan

Ok, well my little issue here with not being able to view more than one plug at a time seems to be only in a few projects, and only in console view... which is of course where I do my mixing and might need to see them.  I have played around with it but to no avail.  They are not docked and can be moved around but when I click a 2nd one, the 1st closes.  I have no clue why...  Puzzled. ?  Any ideas here?

New Member negativity actually should seem pretty normal. Many of us prefer to just use the software and get on with their lives, not reaching out to boards unless we want to ask a question, or to state possibly a new issue. The V-Vocal "bug" I have witnessed before is that you might process a piece of a vocal, then listen back and it sounds about 3 octaves higher than it should have. The only way I found to fix was to simply delete the whole track and re-import the audio, THEN attempt V-Vocal again. Sonar has some quirks that, if they're not bugs, they're absolutely annoying. Last week I did a mic shootout with some current LDC clones paired up with the venerable AKG c12, Tele ELA M 251, and a Tele U47 tube mics. I would not use X1 to record the session. I used an old, but VERY reliable and solid Yamaha AW4416 to record the shootout. I just can't take chances with borrowed time like this. Too critical. However, later, while I used X1 to process the audio, I was scratching my head for hours trying to figure out why a female vocal was recorded along with a drum track, and later it hit me. It was a quirk of Sonar X1's editor. I won't go into my distaste of Sonar's editor but I'm REALLY reluctant to upgrade to X2 because I bet Cakewalk didn't do anything useful to improve it. Today, I'm shopping again. I have some other tools I'm evaluating to move to, and it's currently not going to be difficult for me to jump ship. I've made my recommendation for Cakewalk to slow down and spend more time fixing issues and quirks vs. producing an "expanded" X1 or "X2". Trying to stay ahead of the competition can only be done if you have customers willing to move with you. I don't fear change unless it costs me my ALL free time for weeks as X1 has. I can't explain accurately enough how much time I've lost with X1, so I certainly don't want to pay for more lost time with the changes that X2 may bring. Cakewalk couldn't even entice me to upgrade to "X1 Expanded" for $10 because it just added more fluff and software code I certainly didn't need. I'm still bragging about that choice! Sidenote: I seriously don't see how Cakewalk can boast Sonar X2 as a tool for Mastering. Maybe "unprofessional" Mastering, perhaps. To go Pro you need at the very least some better plug-ins, and definitely some better metering tools! Sonar has neither, in my opinion. It's not a Mastering software I'd use....but holy cow, if it were, it would make my workflow that much easier!

DAWs evolve so slowly that I believe it is easier to switch to the DAW that has the features you want than to wait around for your current DAW to add those features. 

Mastering meters and top wave editing are things I would love to see in Sonar but probably they are about a decade away.

Samplitude is supposed to have the things you are looking for.

So, I'm biting the bullet and buying the upgrade to X2. I watched Cakewalk's online presentation with two of their long-standing Jedi's, and the only thing they said that made me want to try it out was that they claim to have fixed a lot of stability and issues with smoothness. This is the ONLY reason I'm upgrading--that and that I can be taken more seriously if I have issues with X2. Otherwise, it's not as attractive as X1 (imo), seems more cluttered, and has more new features that I personally consider a waste of CPU and disk-space, since I don't use Sonar to "write" music; I only use it to mix. I don't even use it to record, since it's been so unpredictable with latency, responsiveness, and hardware compatibility in Windows 7. I still use an old Yamaha AW4416, which still works as well and sounds just as great as it did in 1999! Call me a prune, but I actually use less time exporting CD-RW at 6x from the Yamaha, than I do troubleshooting and cursing at Sonar to accomplish the same tasks.

Ok, you're a prune.