ccondon23

Here is the response I got from Cakewalk support when I asked about that: As for rolling back, Sonar doesn’t currently have a built-in rollback installer, but if you need to revert for testing, we can look into possible options.

FYI - I got the following from Cakewalk support: As for rolling back, Sonar doesn’t currently have a built-in rollback installer, but if you need to revert for testing, we can look into possible options.

My bad -- the problem also occurs with Cakewalk by Bandlab. It's still only a problem when using Sonar or Cbb, though. I can use all my other apps without issue. Task manager doesn't show anything out of the ordinary when the problem is happening. Memory is a little high (80+%), but that's also the case when things are working fine. CPU, Disk, Network and GPU are all nominal. I opened a case with Cakewalk support. We'll see how it goes...

The problem ONLY occurs after running Sonar for a period of time. It didn't occur before the latest upgrade and doesn't occur with Cakewalk by Bandlab. The fact that it affects other applications suggests it's a problem with Sonar not properly interacting with Windows.

The latest version of Sonar has an issue where everything is working fine, then I suddenly get a audio engine dropout and my PC slows to a crawl until I reboot. Literally everything (my browser, email, etc.) is unusably slow and it usually takes about 5-10 minutes just to close everything down so I can reboot. Note that Cakewalk requires using Task Manager to end the task, as the app itself is non-responsive to any command. The PC remains slow even after I kill Sonar. If I search for how to revert, there's an entry here in the forum that states "In every release of Cakewalk by BandLab we include a link to "Rollback installer" along with its product release notes. All historic product release information can be found here with links to the corresponding rollback installers," but I can find no evidence that such rollback installers actually exist. Does anyone know how to find these rollback installers? Also, has anyone else had this issue? Here is a link to the forum entry for rolling back... (I can't tell if the link actually works - it embeds a picture of it when I paste the link into this post, but it won't let me click on it.)

Sigh...nope, didn't fix it. Edited the file for hours without issue. Edited other files without issue. Shut down Sonar and reopened the problem project, crashed with seconds. Tried again, crashed again within seconds without my having done anything other than opening it.

This morning I was poking around Event Viewer and noticed that there was another app that crashed in nt.dll, CodeMeter. Apparently, CodeMeter was installed as part of the licensing for the free version of AutoTune that I had installed. While looking into AutoTune and what else might have been installed, I found the following link: http://www.antaresaudiotechnologies. com/&token=88461c5a (don't click this!), which my ISP blocked as a suspicious site. This is NOT the site of Antares, makers of AutoTune, that site is antarestech.com. Since I don't use AutoTune anyway (I use Melodyne for pitch correction) I uninstalled it along with the CodeMeter stuff that was left behind after I uninstalled AutoTune. Since then, no additional crashes. I'm not 100% sure that the issue is resolved because it often took a while before a crash occurred, but I'm hopeful - I did a fair bit of editing in the 'broken' project and it usually would have crashed by now -- not always, but fingers crossed.

I worked in software tech support for much of my career, so I know that problems like the one I'm seeing a really tough to hunt down -- basically the crashing process/module/whatever is the victim and it's really difficult to figure out what other process/module/whatever somehow corrupted the victim, especially when the problem is not reproducible. I've offered to run a special build, but they haven't taken me up on that, likely because there's not enough data to determine where to put any debug code -- and whatever debug is needed would likely be in nt.dll or some other application that Cakewalk doesn't have the source code for. It's very frustrating, but I understand why it's taking a long time (and, in fact, they may never be able to resolve it). That's why I've been calm and polite in my interactions with them, rather than yelling, "Why haven't you fixed this yet?!" 🙂

What is the benefit of running in safe mode? And how do you do that?

I've been having an issue with Cakewalk Sonar crashing repeatedly. The crashes began shortly after I switched from Cakewalk by Bandlab to Cakewalk Sonar. They occur most often in a specific project and occur more often in a specific version of that project. However, other projects have also crashed. This same project also crashed when loaded into Cakewalk by Bandlab. Cakewalk support says that the crash occurs in 'nt.dll'. I have updated drivers and the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables. Yesterday I tried doing a repair install of Windows 11. I've been sending crashdumps (when one is generated, which does not occur 100% of the time) to Sonar support since mid-December. I have followed any instructions that they asked (including updating the C++ stuff, doing a uninstall/reinstall of Cakewalk, etc.) and I've provided them with a copy of the project that crashes most often. The response since late December has basically been "Thank you for your patience, keep sending crashdumps, we're working on it." In addition, a couple of weeks ago, I started seeing crashes after closing a project, including sometimes getting a crash notification a half a minute or so after I completely closed Sonar. I've notified Cakewalk support about this and provided crashdumps as well. Has anyone been seeing similar issues? Does anyone have suggestions on what else I might try? I keep reading that Sonar is super stable, but I've seen anything but and I'm kind of at my wit's end here. I don't want to switch to a different DAW - I've been using Cakewalk/Sonar since the 1990s - but I'm really starting to think I don't have a choice. Thanks, Chris

Thanks!

I recently got a new laptop and loaded the latest Cakewalk by Bandlab. I copied over my Cakewalk/Sonar data from the old PC and when I opened a old project I got errors about VST plugins being referenced but not available. My assumption is that those plugins are included with my original Sonar X3 media and don't normally come with CbB by default. My question is, can I just download the Sonar X3 media and install it or should I uninstall CbB first? If I do install Sonar X3, will I need to reinstall/update CbB afterwards? Thanks, Chris