10Ten


He says he wasn't doing that, so let's let it go and get back to working toward a solution to the issue.

True but his response genuinely worried me. The thought process itself. The issue is so clearly with Sonar itself that user setups and third party plugins should not even enter his mind. The fact that it did... OK OK I'll shut up already.

UnderTow

Poco


Geez Louize.  You got the CTO of the company that makes the software you say you want improved, and all most of you have done is blather on about how you want it to be another product, and treat him and Brandon like crap.  What, do you want them to ignore the forum or what?  I get the impression you just want to piss and moan, then when you are called out you start blowing smoke and repeating "Ableton Live" like it means something, and saying "fix everything".  Yeah, that's real helpful.

How about this 10ten, Undertow, and others:

Provide Noel a NUMBERED LIST OF ITEMS PRIORITIZED BY ORDINAL POSITION?  Not more whine and poses!

And if it boils down to:

Turn effects on & off, both singularly and using the global effects button.
Slip edit clips
Change loop times
and of course change screensets.......

Please try telling them something they don't know.  You might also try to quantify just how important these things are to you.  I mean is this it?  Is this the all time buzzkill that you guys are complaining about?  Cry me a river.

For what it is worth, Noel, Brandon et al, I run a recording and composition studio, so the audio engine dropout is not too big a deal for me, as I have never had it occur while tracking (and thereby lose a take). It does happen during mixdown when I do certain things like adjusting Ozone during playback with a heavy CPU load (I often run multiple instances of Ozone, both on tracks and busses).   See, changing a mastering plug requires the audio to be running to determine how the changes are affecting the music.  On the other hand, why do you need to hear the music while changing the screensets, or slip editing clips??  One is far more important than the other.  Which one do you want them to fix first?

I cannot recall SONAR ever being marketed as a live performance tool, and for the life of me cannot imagine why anyone would have a need to insert a soft synth during playback.  There must be some reason, but I cant see taking the time and effort to make it seamless when there is other work to be done.  Is dropout a minor inconvenience?  Yes.  Is it a show stopper?  Not for me, and if it was, I would get on with providing an attentive CTO with some REAL assistance.

Poco

P.S.  10Ten, you deserve to be banned.

-P

Poco, I agree 100% with everything you just said. Thanks.

UnderTow

10Ten


He says he wasn't doing that, so let's let it go and get back to working toward a solution to the issue.

True but his response genuinely worried me. The thought process itself. The issue is so clearly with Sonar itself that user setups and third party plugins should not even enter his mind. The fact that it did... OK OK I'll shut up already.

UnderTow

Can we not agree that it's important to narrow down the issue, though? It seemed clear to me that Noel was not dismissing the issue nor trying to shift any sort of blame. I didn't take his response that way at all. It seemed to me that he was hoping to get more detailed information to find the exact cause of the problem. For any particular problem, the fault could lie 100% with Sonar, or maybe the fault is with a certain version of a plugin, or perhaps even only when certain plugins are being used in certain situations. It is critical for Sonar to be able to sort through the various symptoms to determine what mixture of software, plugins and hardware cause these issues.

It is a fact that sometimes, perhaps a lot of the time, these issues are caused by hardware issues or even misconfiguration of Sonar. Setting the ASIO latency too low is a good example. And sometimes plug-in designers make mistakes in their code. Why are you getting irritated when someone suggests thoroughly troubleshooting the problem and considering all possibilities?

 

neiby


Can we not agree that it's important to narrow down the issue, though? It seemed clear to me that Noel was not dismissing the issue nor trying to shift any sort of blame. I didn't take his response that way at all. It seemed to me that he was hoping to get more detailed information to find the exact cause of the problem.

Fair enough.

For any particular problem, the fault could lie 100% with Sonar, or maybe the fault is with a certain version of a plugin, or perhaps even only when certain plugins are being used in certain situations. It is critical for Sonar to be able to sort through the various symptoms to determine what mixture of software, plugins and hardware cause these issues.

But the thing is that everyone seems to acknowledge the gapping! Even people that don't care about it. That is a clear indication that it really isn't related to any particular plugin but to Sonar itself.

It is a fact that sometimes, perhaps a lot of the time, these issues are caused by hardware issues or even
misconfiguration of Sonar. Setting the ASIO latency too low is a good example. And sometimes plug-in designers make mistakes in their code.

Of course there are situations where there are genuine issues with drivers or hardware or whatever but this particular issue, the gapping of Sonar's engine in situations in which it shouldn't really gap clearly is a Sonar issue. I have heard it on every single installation of Sonar I have used. Installations setup by various people on a variety of computers with a variety of sound cards, CPUs, motherboards, video cards, setting, you name it  and on many of those same systems there will be other DAWs installed that do not exhibit any gapping.

Why are you getting irritated when someone suggests thoroughly troubleshooting the problem and considering all possibilities?

Because it really worries my that the CTO of Cakewalk even considers that the general gapping of Sonar might be due to external factors. It really deeply worries me.

Anyway, the proof will be in the pudding.  Let's see if Noel (or whomever at Cakewalk) can fix this.

UnderTow

UnderTow

neiby


Can we not agree that it's important to narrow down the issue, though? It seemed clear to me that Noel was not dismissing the issue nor trying to shift any sort of blame. I didn't take his response that way at all. It seemed to me that he was hoping to get more detailed information to find the exact cause of the problem.

Fair enough.

For any particular problem, the fault could lie 100% with Sonar, or maybe the fault is with a certain version of a plugin, or perhaps even only when certain plugins are being used in certain situations. It is critical for Sonar to be able to sort through the various symptoms to determine what mixture of software, plugins and hardware cause these issues.

But the thing is that everyone seems to acknowledge the gapping! Even people that don't care about it. That is a clear indication that it really isn't related to any particular plugin but to Sonar itself.

It is a fact that sometimes, perhaps a lot of the time, these issues are caused by hardware issues or even
misconfiguration of Sonar. Setting the ASIO latency too low is a good example. And sometimes plug-in designers make mistakes in their code.

Of course there are situations where there are genuine issues with drivers or hardware or whatever but this particular issue, the gapping of Sonar's engine in situations in which it shouldn't really gap clearly is a Sonar issue. I have heard it on every single installation of Sonar I have used. Installations setup by various people on a variety of computers with a variety of sound cards, CPUs, motherboards, video cards, setting, you name it  and on many of those same systems there will be other DAWs installed that do not exhibit any gapping.

Why are you getting irritated when someone suggests thoroughly troubleshooting the problem and considering all possibilities?

Because it really worries my that the CTO of Cakewalk even considers that the general gapping of Sonar might be due to external factors. It really deeply worries me.

Anyway, the proof will be in the pudding.  Let's see if Noel (or whomever at Cakewalk) can fix this.

UnderTow

Regarding that last point, I think we have different understandings of what he was getting at. I took it as meaning that even if the ultimate problem lies with SONAR, it might be a combination of drivers or plugins or who-knows-what that causes the problem to pop up for different people. That seems clear since many people have chimed in saying they have never experienced drops in situations where other users say it happens often.

I don't doubt that something inside SONAR is to blame for much of these drops and stutters, but I think it's critically important to dig deeper and find out what combination of factors is leading to the problem arising.

I like that some people are giving specific examples. If people have situations where this can be reliably recreated, that would go a long way to nailing down the exact causes.

Poco

neiby

 

Poco, I agree 100% with everything you just said. Thanks.

Hey Neiby, we dogs gotta stick together.  Are you a member of BARC (Bad A** Recording Canines)?

lol  I'm not! I'm not sure my engineering skills would qualify me to be in a club of such stature. :)  But if the club will have me as a member, I'll gladly apply!

UnderTow

neiby

Regarding that last point, I think we have different understandings of what he was getting at.

We are going around in circles so we will just have to wait and see what comes out of all this.

UnderTow

I agree. That's what I meant to convey before, that I think I took a different meaning from what he said. Maybe I'm wearing my rose-colored glasses today.  :)

But, as you say, the proof of the pudding will be in the tasting. Let's see what comes with X1b and beyond.

I do have to give the Cakewalk guys props for coming in here. Some here don't think that's a big deal, but I think it shows that they are trying to provide good customer service. It is rare that you see this level of involvement by  management on a user forum and I think we all need to take this opportunity to communicate with them while they're here.

neiby




I do have to give the Cakewalk guys props for coming in here. Some here don't think that's a big deal, but I think it shows that they are trying to provide good customer service. It is rare that you see this level of involvement by  management on a user forum and I think we all need to take this opportunity to communicate with them while they're here.

Agreed.

UnderTow

Poco

Do you mean "really deeply worries" like world hunger and human rights issues, or "really deeply worries" like "I can't find my car keys"?  Does this keep you up at night or something?

Don't mean to pick on you dude, but you make it so easy, and you're still not giving the boss what he asked for.  

Ok I've had it with your childish attacks.

Based on what you told us of how you use Sonar I surmise that you are not smart enough to perform more than one task at any given time. No wonder you stop the audio engine to perform basic operations. You clearly indicated that you stop playback to do slip-editing. Duh! You even think this is normal. Duh! And you probably don't care about jarring audio gapping and glitching because you have the sensitivity of a door knob.

You are being a jerk with absolutely nothing to add to the discussion. Your acceptance of mediocrity is a clear sign of a mediocre mind. And your "picking" on me only seems so easy because your "picking" is as childish as it gets. Making fun of typos? Oh ho ho! How amusing!                      Grow up kid.

And yes Noel's response worries me. Sonar has been gapping ever since it was created, a fact acknowledged by everyone involved.  Cakewalk have had about 7 years to query their users and perform their own testing since they first claimed that Sonar didn't gap. Now the CTO of Cakewalk comes here and suggest he needs info to debug it and vaguely implies that it might be due to third party software? That should be cause for worry to anyone that cares about the software this forum is about.

UnderTow

It should not be a list of just say 4 or more things that you want to be able to do without the audio engine stopping. That is very limiting. It should be everything as it is in say Studio One. And please don't tell us that other DAW's glitch or stop because they don't as in the case of S1. I cannot find one situation that has made it stop yet and I have done some really serious things while it has been in play or record.

Because we all work in different ways it is too difficult to just choose which 4 or 5 things one might want to do. eg for me it is the ability to drag out a big complex instrument such as Reaktor 5, search for presets, rehearse, go into record, record data, go out of record etc..  All while it continues on or loops.

For example if I have got say 4 external synths setup with sounds, Sonar cannot even switch tracks while recording (midi only) without having to stop at some point. I want to be able to jump tracks at anytime and record new data etc without a hitch, S1 can do this.

I agree with those that say it should simply be everything you may want to do. It should happen seamlessly and without glitching or stopping. The audio engine in other programs seems  to have the highest priority and that is where I would like Sonar to be. It is simply the fastest way of working and for me it is now the single most important feature in a DAW program. All the deep options and facilties that Sonar offers are not important compared to this.

What I would like CW to give us is an honest answer as to wether this is possible. Is it something that can be fixed and tweaked over time (and I don't mean just a few glitch free operations either, I mean everything) or has the program now got so far away from this, it is going to be impossible to do without a complete rewrite.

UnderTowAnyway, here is an example of seamless playback from another DAW that is not marketed as a live performance DAW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKk6y3XCMF4#t=5m

I haven't nearly followed this whole thread, but I checked out the video, and right offhand, I'm not seeing anything happening there that would cause a glitch in SONAR on my system, unless the Compressor or EQ were specifically the LP-64 plugs, which are known to have issues with real-time tweaking.


I'm honestly curious what specifically is going on there that you think SONAR would not be able to do without audio glitches.

Noel are you saying that adding vst on the fly is down to the vst and not the  sonar audio engine. I have tested the same plugin on the fly with studio 1 and no issue.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]
 
Its blowing my mind that I have to come out on a public forum and justify every line I write here because people read it like a Rorschach test. Its almost impossible for us post here without it degenerating into this nonsense. Please keep it professional and have some faith in what we do as a company.
 
Thanks again for the constructive replies listing concrete use cases and problems that affect you. Thats all that we need. Thanks.

It's blowing my mind as well but sadly I've become used to the abusive attitudes. I don't think anyone should be kept from saying their piece but there is such a thing as common courtesy and respect for another's opinion. It's a simple thing to respond with that same respect and common courtesy but that simple attitude somehow gets lost on this forum.

I belong to a lot of different forums but this one is pretty unique in that way and really takes some getting used to.

I for one REALLY appreciate your participation in these threads and know how hard it must be to find the nuggets within the noise. I also think you have your work cut out for you but that doesn't seem to have phased you guys over the years so I'm not sweating it.

Thanks again

fitzj


Noel are you saying that adding vst on the fly is down to the vst and not the  sonar audio engine. I have tested the same plugin on the fly with studio 1 and no issue.

No, that's not what he's saying. How do I know? I read his post. He said it's not that simple and probably some combination of both and needs to be taken as a separate technical issue in order to be resolved.