Cactus Music
Well I've used my set up since WIndows XP , I've stayed with the same software for playback since day one after testing them all. Win Amp was made by the same folks who made Reaper. It hasn't been updated or touched in 10+ years but runs on W10 still because it was good code. 
 
I have never ever had my system fail me. And I always have a back up. 
My laptops I use for live are optimized and I stay with XP and W7 for stability. 
So your fears are unfounded. A laptop is no more or less reliable than my mixing board. 

That sounds great John, and I am glad that you have experienced such stability.
 
I can only apologise, again, for bringing a touch of negativity to your post. I realise now that I should have kept my thoughts to myself.
 
cheers
 
andy

My main creative project (Kicksville) took the idea of using Sonar for backing tracks and expanded on that idea to a degree I haven't seen anywhere else. The basic process was no different than most though: I made stems from the original projects, loaded 'em into a master project, and pressed play when it was time. We used a single large project instead of the playlist feature because we needed to keep timecode consistent for video and lighting worlds.
 
The big difference was how deeply we integrated Sonar into the production design. How we did that is a loooong story, but the short version is, Sonar controlled everything. Playback, timecode/controller info to video & lighting, scene changes to remote VST hosts, full dynamic automation of the two audio consoles (real-time control of faders, pan, routing, on/off, send levels, on every one of the 72-ish inputs), and more. The tech was part of the performance, so we even ran a split of my main computer screen so the audience could see Sonar doing its thang.
 
If anyone wants any more of the boring technical details, I'm happy to talk about the geekery involved, but ultimately the playback side of it was pretty simple. And most importantly, in ten years of doing these shows, we've never had a problem.
 
Here's an example.... BTW, the audio on this video was the 2-track FOH feed from our on-stage console, recorded back into Sonar during the show. In other words, this is the exact audio that went to the PA, not something mixed in post.
 
https://youtu.be/QOWNVf2p00s

Andy:  Actually I didn't find your post negative, You have good reason to fear overly technical set ups whan it comes to live music. It's why I myself avioded using a DAW for playback as my experiance with Sonar is about 90% stable so I could not deal with that 10% possibility of a train wreck. I bought Home Studio as I feel it will be that much more stable than Splat. 
 
Conrad: Thank you for your post. Good stuff. 
 
So speaking of stability, this brings up this next question: 
For simplicity I have removed all audio from my backing tracks. I used melodyn to convert my bass tracks to midi and have managed to convert some of the ssongs that I used real drums or parts of drums using Drum replacer. Thank you Sonar for those wonderful features. 
The reason to go with 100% midi is the songs will all sonicly match. The Bass will be the exact same bass played at the same Velocity and level on all songs. The drums will be AD2 but I do change the kits around a little bit. For piano all songs will be the Air Mini grand, Other keyboards vary and then a few songs use horns or say a flute, 
 
But the question is, should I leave them as pure midi or freeze all the synths and use pure audio? What is the danger in using free wheeling midi and VST's? 

The great thing about midi tracks I guess is the ability to switch things on and off if you need to.  I am still more inclined to convert to audio though.  (You could always mix alternate audio only versions of various combinations. In my case it is always the same though so it is fine. The drums are live as well as bass, guitar and vocals. What is mainly on the backing are all the keyboards parts, plus vocal harmonies so the main main sound is coming from the band. Also good too because if the backing failed for any reason, the band can go on and not much will change)
 
And stereo backing tracks still sound way better than mono as well.  The myth about not using stereo live is also just that, a myth.  I mix everything in stereo live.  It sounds way better to me.  I can hear it at the back of the room. 
 
A few years ago I saw Chick Corea (in another band) playing live with live instruments plus a laptop VST and he was ripping on the computer and all of a sudden it crashed.  He was cool about it though.  He just said mid song "Oh well just as well I have got some real instruments here" and finished the piece off on piano and Rhodes which still sounded awesome of course.  So even in that situation the computer failed.
 
I wonder too how fast can you close down a song and open another one on a computer.  What seems like fast at home can be an eternity on stage live.  The system I use now with the player running on an iPad is way fast.  This band often goes very quick from one thing to another.  Not sure you can that with a computer either. 
 
If you are running a computer live as well you must not connect it to the power in any way either. Live venues are notorious for switching transients on the mains power and some fridge coming on in a bar can slam a computer against the wall! Laptop fully charged and off the power is a good option here.  Safe at least. The iPad seems immune to power transients though. It has never stopped ever. 

Once I've mixed a tune I create a "live" mix; pulling the lead vocal and main guitar.
Left goes to the PA mains and right goes to the floor monitors.
I started out (Cake Pro 3.0) mixing to cassette, then CD;
now I drop the tunes on my iPhone and patch that to the PA (that's fun when you get a call mid tune).
Most tunes get a "cue" for the tune's name, key and count in.
Some the Mains will simultaneously have crowd noise, patter, anything to keep the set moving.
Normally when playing out its me (guitar and vocal) and a buddy who plays harmonic and some guitar.
Pretty basic, for what I do actually running the gig with Sonar would be more work than I care to do.
Setting up the PA and my amp is enough at my age
T

I've used Sonar for some years.
 
I was in an 80s synthpop tribute band (as lead vocals, sometime keys and programmer/arranger and my mate as 'man on keys' a-la David Ball/Vince Clarke/Steve Bascombe) We started with his version of Sonar 3 to which I have married a host of hardware - Edirol 880 firing off a raft of synths and workstations through Korg, Yamaha and Roland, outboard effects and at the height of our powers all of our extensive lighting and effects rig via a MIDI/DMX converter. I programmed the lot (such is the ease) and either built the MIDIfile from scratch (converting it to a BVs equipped Normal File) or re-engineered internet-available (usually poorly constructed) MIDIs to build into two or three sets. Press the space bar and you're away, next song loads and so-on. I ended up upgrading to Sonar 8, which I am currently re-using to re-record and re-engineer the setlists as we are re-forming due to massive demand. It never ceased to amaze me (and gave me a feeling of 'you'll never know') watching the crowd dancing their arses off near the end of the second set to the encores if they did actually know how many early-hours sessions (with my job beckoning a few hours later) I had had in my studio loft alone with my rig, injecting and crafting the positions of the lighting, triggering effects, applying ramped reverb and delay cc messages to time exactly to a word at the end of a line (like 'Don't Go' be Yazoo) or working out which patch needs to change with synth as I play through the channel on the sequencer in real time via my wireless-equipped Roland AX1 with my mate doing similar. I'm sure people thought we were miming as we went out into the crowd. It was all dependent upon me setting everything right, buffers, memory allocation and sample rate for various inserted sounds we couldn't re-create on the hardware. Sonar does it all.
 
As said, we are back on the road next year after seven years of haitus. It's great being back in and amongst it and I know it will work with our very much pared down setup these days. Once the money starts coming in though, I know it's be going on more kit.
 
Vic

Interesting thread.  I sometimes wonder who is using Sonar for backing tracks.  It seems like a minority.  Anyway, I have a history mostly in the 80s of using sequencers to trigger mostly background vocals (on an Akai S900) and some synth parts in an original band.  Used to feed a click track to the drummer to keep everyone in sync.  It had its challenges and a few horror stories.  For instance, one time the band had a big outdoor gig on a bright sunny day. Unfortunately, I never quite anticipated the screen being completely washed out from sunlight on my DX7IIFD which played the sequences.  That wasn't cool.  I used to do a constant shuffling of Akai S900 floppies and loading midi sequences into a DX7II.  Wow, gives me the willies thinking about it.
 
After the 80s, I gave performing a long rest.  But in the last couple years I got re-interested and found that VST synths, amp sims, electronic drums, etc were really happening and latency wasn't much of an issue any more.  And I could build complete backing tracks by myself.  I enjoy building my own backing tracks for just instrumental songs that I think are special and enjoy playing along with on guitar and keyboards.  My method involves creating the drums, bass, and whatever else is needed in a song and that gets mixed down to a stereo audio track.  Then I create the guitar and/or keyboard tracks that I want to play manually as separate instrument tracks.  I use TH3 as my guitar sim and mostly rapture, z3ta, synthmaster one, Syntronik, Hybrid, Xpand, truepianos, etc for VST synths.  Many of my synth patches and automations change on the fly as I'm playing along, all controlled by Sonar.  It took me quite a while to get this working using a combination of MIDIOX and loopbe30 which run in the background.  It works quite reliably but I would upgrade my computer if I ever dared to play live again, which I'm not planning on.  It's just for my own amusement at this time and it's a ton of fun.  
 
One problem I'm having if any one has a solution is:  I'm using Sonar playlists which work ok but since I have automation in all the songs, it always asks me if I want to save the song after playing thru the playlist, which of course I don't.  The problem is, the songs don't unload as I continue on playing thru the playlist and it starts to put a load on memory.

Jeff:  Good stuff . That's the beauty of a laptop vs a mini PC. Laptops are power buffered. I remember a night long ago with the Atari system and the power kept going out for a few seconds a coming back on. The Atari not only had to re boot, but the songs all had to load from the Floopy disk to RAM and this was painfully slow. Good thing it was just a bar and not a dance. 
At dances I bang my songs off back to back with zero downtime. 
I use a USB footswitch and I master all my songs with tight top and tails. With Win Amp if I select the next song while the last song is in fade out the next song plays. I'll do about 4 songs fast like that then take a quick break to catch my breath. So your thoughts about the time it takes to load a song is one reason I've been reluctant to change my system for what it is. One of the acid test for Sonars playlist will be just that. 

Tom:  Well sounds like you and me would get along. I buy the best equipment I can afford but # 1 is Simplicity. #2 is weight :)  I've just ordered a Voice Live Play Acoustic. I think and I hope it will replace my mixer, my Lexicon MX 200 and for my acoustic gigs, my pedal board. The TC Voice Live, a mike, guitar and 2 powered speakers. Oh and my net book. I'll be in the market for a Voice Live with a built in MP3 player! 
 
Vic:  Another great historical musical document. I have a feeling that this thread will be insights from a lot of us who pioneered midi performance gear.
One thing, I highly recommend you upgrade to at least the latest Home Studio, The new PVR editing speeds things up tremendously for me. If your working with midi your going to want the tools we now have, 100% workflow improvements just in this last year of Sonar. And I could also not live without drum replacer and Melodyn for converting my audio bass and drum tracks to midi. 
 
Craig: Ya I been there in the sunlight were all those little LED screens go blank on you! Makes you realize how much time we spend in the dark. And yet another denizen of the 80's, good stuff. Good heads up on the playlist wanting to save.. Possibly Tenfoot can answer that as that certainly scares me. It's a weird behaviour of Sonar that you can open aproject, hit the space bar and play it, stop and hit close and it askes you to save. It's like it's not happy if the cursor has moved. In one way this is good as it saves your butt but it does get tiresome when your just cruising old projects to see what's there. 

kicksville
My main creative project (Kicksville) took the idea of using Sonar for backing tracks and expanded on that idea to a degree I haven't seen anywhere else. The basic process was no different than most though: I made stems from the original projects, loaded 'em into a master project, and pressed play when it was time. We used a single large project instead of the playlist feature because we needed to keep timecode consistent for video and lighting worlds.
 
The big difference was how deeply we integrated Sonar into the production design. How we did that is a loooong story, but the short version is, Sonar controlled everything. Playback, timecode/controller info to video & lighting, scene changes to remote VST hosts, full dynamic automation of the two audio consoles (real-time control of faders, pan, routing, on/off, send levels, on every one of the 72-ish inputs), and more. The tech was part of the performance, so we even ran a split of my main computer screen so the audience could see Sonar doing its thang.
 
If anyone wants any more of the boring technical details, I'm happy to talk about the geekery involved, but ultimately the playback side of it was pretty simple. And most importantly, in ten years of doing these shows, we've never had a problem.
 
Here's an example.... BTW, the audio on this video was the 2-track FOH feed from our on-stage console, recorded back into Sonar during the show. In other words, this is the exact audio that went to the PA, not something mixed in post.
 
https://youtu.be/QOWNVf2p00s

Brilliant work Kicksville! I would love to pick your brain a bit if you dont mind:)  Is the triggering of the DMX controller via midi or do you have some form of deeper integraton that allows more flexible control/editing from within Sonar? You mention that Sonar is used to control the show. Is it generating the timecode, or are you syncing it to another clock/ show controller? I seem to have no end of frustration trying to maintain stable timecode sync between Sonar and other software.