Jim Stamper

No worries, it's interesting to see what others are doing. I'm glad you found something of value👍😊

Thanks, that's probably the next step once I outgrow my current config. For now everything is running well as is. Going back to the OP .... Sonar freezes only about once per month, and triggers the PC fan to kick on until I kill the session. I thought that posting this condition might be useful to the Bakers, or other users if they encounter it.

No. Drive D is all samples. Drive C is everything else - programs, projects, etc. It runs quite well. I can have a lot of Sonar tracks & plug-ins before anything starts to drag.

4 TB Storage: (2) 2TB internal SSD drives

Thanks for the details. I tried this but didn't have the same results. I see heavy activity from Defender while Sonar is opening a project, it gradually winds down as the project gradually opens all plug-ins ... this might be 20 - 30 seconds beyond when Sonar says the project is "open". Once fully open, I play the project, and Defender has no activity in Disk resources, and only a tiny amount of CPU resources - not chugging but sitting still in background. I only did a quick test with one project. There may be some difference in our computers, OS versions, Defender versions, or specific Defender and Windows settings.

Whatever it's doing, I don't believe Defender is causing any issues for me, but can you provide more detail on how to see what its doing? So you mean Defender is scanning the .wav file for each track every time you play the track? How could I see that happening, can you see it in Task Manager (and where in Task Manager?). How would I know it's scanning each .wav file? Thanks

I agree. The next time it happens I'll try to check the CPU and other resources in Task Manager

Thanks to all, it's interesting to learn how you set up your antivirus exclusions. I agree it's best practice. And this will be useful if I ever suspect that MS Defender is causing me problems wrt to Sonar. MS Defender is supposedly designed to only run when the system is idle ... defined as no keyboard / mouse activity for 4 minutes plus other criteria for activity such as CPU, RAM, Disk. It may check a new project when you first open it, but if so, it isn't noticeable to me.

You're right it's best practice to exclude Sonar and all the stuff from MS Defender (does that mean every single plug-in 😱?). Or to stop Defender while working in Sonar. But for me, in many years of using DAWs and MS antivirus since the earliest versions of Windows and all, I don't recall it's ever caused a problem. Hard to say why ... Maybe because I've always tried to have high performing PCs, or maybe because my projects don't need that much horsepower, or maybe MS Defender isn't that intrusive. Thanks

My PC normally runs around 47C with Sonar, and the fan is not running. For my PC, the fan shouldn't kick on until at least 65C, and likely wouldn't be audible until well above that temp. I don't believe the PC gets hot and then crashes Sonar. I believe Sonar crashes and triggers the fan to run until the moment that I kill the Sonar session, then the fan is completely quiet immediately. If the PC was truly hot, the fan should reduce speed gradually. The next time it happens I will have to look at Task Manager to see if the CPU is at 100%, which may "falsely" trigger the fan. My original post was to see if anyone else had the same symptoms. Thanks

Thanks Timbo, Yes, fans take off when the system gets warm, but in my space it rarely gets that warm. It seems that Sonar freezing triggers the PC to either run hot with some frozen activity, or it somehow triggers the fan to run "unprovoked". The fan almost never runs except for a Sonar freeze. And the fan stops at the same instant I tell Windows to close Sonar, completely silent immediately. I'm not going to invest much time in troubleshooting this. I post issues in case someone already has a solution, or if it provides clues to the Cakewalk experts for problems they may know about. Processor: 11th Generation Intel Core i7-1165G7 (4 Cores, 8 Threads, up to 4.7 GHz Turbo) RAM: 64GB 4 TB Storage: (2) 2TB internal SSD drives Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB GDDR6) with integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics Projects: It happens with all sorts of projects Virus Scanner: Windows 11 MS Defender runs all the time

I have a Windows 11 Intel NUC11 Enthusiast mini-PC, which is built kind of like a laptop. A great little powerhouse. Normally very quiet. The fan almost never runs. But just about every time I hear it blowing, it means Sonar is locked up / crashed. It won't accept any keystrokes. When I use Windows to close the Sonar session, the fan stops running immediately, all is quiet again. The PC itself is not locked up. Everything else continues running as normal. It's become Pavlovian for me. I hear the fan running, I know Sonar crashed 🐶 I haven't posted it before, but this has been happening for a long time, multiple releases of Sonar, both CbB free and now paid Sonar subscription. Sonar freezes randomly, it's never a specific amount of time being open, or time of the day, or any specific operation. I have Sonar open almost constantly every day, and sometimes I leave it open all night so I can continue a project the next day without interruption. I would guess it freezes about once each month. I'm posting it now in case others have noticed this, and to maybe give the Bakers another clue about Sonar freezes.

I'm at 2025.07 Build 109, X64 ... I've been noticing this issue for awhile, possibly even before moving to Cakewalk Sonar paid version ... I often use the FX button on the control bar to bypass all FX, either for checking mixes, or to improve performance briefly while doing live recording. So to turn all the FX back on, I hit the FX button again ... BUT I've been seeing that often there are a few tracks where the FX bin shows Bypass FX Bin is still checked. It doesn't happen on all tracks, usually only a few of them. I'm reasonably sure it's caused by using the global FX bypass on the control bar. And it catches me by surprise because I'm not in the habit of checking every FX Bin after using global bypass. I should say that I very very rarely Bypass the FX Bin on individual tracks ... my habit has been all or none. Anyone else had this happen?

I've been a heavy user of Sonitus for years, and they've been great. I'm having some separation anxiety. 😬 Once I install the new Core plug-ins, will the Sonitus plug-ins still be available to me in my registered plug-ins list? Is there any guidance on how long Sonitus will be supported?

Are you using the free version or paid version? I have the paid version on Windows 11 and didn't have any of these problems. I haven't updated to the new "core vst" version, I'm taking a wait and see position on that ... because I share your concern that the monthly updates can have unintended consequences