Noel Borthwick

Please don't do a clean install. Its the last resort and in many cases, it causes more setup issues than it solves. If you installed other apps my money is on them installing old buggy versions of the Microsoft redist installers. This is why Microsoft released a universal redist installer that we now use.

I had one user who had that issue and I had him search for Visual C++ and first remove all resists, then run the latest Sonar install (or our redist installer) which installs the latest redist as well as the proper Microsoft legacy redist installer. That was the only thing that fixed it for him. As I said, I don’t know what is causing this. Its very odd if its breaking and you aren’t aware of any installers that were explicitly run, The only thing I can think of is maybe Windows update did something. I would use the feedback app in Windows and report this to Microsoft. Its crazy how brittle their visual studio redist has become over the last year.

Don't do a clean install of Cakewalk it's definitely not required in this case. This is almost 100% a case of damaged or mismatched redistributables. I really have no idea why this is happening, but my only explanation is some other software is installing bad versions of the redists. Please follow the instructions in this link and first remove all the redists and then run the latest Sonar installer or use our redist installer to put back the latest good versions.

I misspoke. Actually, you can use Quick group along with permanent groups as long as you start the operation from a control that is not permanently grouped. Quick grouping and permanent grouping are two different operations. Permanent grouping is when you assign a bunch of controls to predefined groups (A, B, C...) and set up their relationships to each other via the group and group manager menu items. Quick grouping is a temporary state where it auto groups controls for selected tracks and operates on them. Since the key is CTRL for this you cannot engage quick grouping from an already permanently grouped control since the modifier acts as an override in this case. We can't use shift either since shift is used for accurate editing mode.

Quick grouping is mutually exclusive to permanent grouping. If you want to quick group first information any normally grouped controls.

This is BS sorry. Crash dumps get looked at by all our developers.

This is the Sonar forum. Please keep posts focused on Cakewalk Sonar. We don't support Sonar Platinum anymore. This issue was addressed in CbB back in 2021.

You don't consider the program working on high definition displays functionally better? One of the big complaints about cbb and earlier was that it was blurry on high definition 4k monitors. Regarding "bundles", like it or not it's how every vendor operates. Cakewalk has had bundled products and services for 20 years or more. You have to justify whether the cost of product for the features you will use is worth it for you, rather than looking at what you won't use. FYI I personally use about a 10th of the services in any given product I have.

Its possible that AD2 somehow overwrote something then. Not that I'm aware of. However, I have no idea how Microsoft manages its redistributable installer. We simply run their latest installer. Their notes say "Redistributable installed on the machine must be the same or higher than the version of the Visual C++ toolset used to create your application. ” which to me indicates that they have a common redist now which is backwards compatible. If this is the case, then another app can come and downgrade that and break other apps. This is the only explanation I have for how these redists are routinely getting trashed for some people. I will create a support ticket but I doubt MS will even know how to troubleshoot this.

Here’s the thing - even if a program installs a “bad” redist, that particular program may work, but it can break a different program that was built using the newest version of the redist. Honestly I’m not sure who’s fault this is - is it a buggy redist installer from microsoft or just that the new redist installers are not compatible with old obsolete ones resulting in this hell. I’m curious if the other programs you installed were prior to installing the latest Sonar or before? Its pretty frustrating since we get blamed for it but its really out of our control. We could consider statically linking the dependencies that we need but then our exe size gets huge.

That is true in general but the universal installer that we now use from Microsoft should cover most bases. We also install prior VC 2005, 10 and 13 installers (as supplied by Microsoft). The issue here arises with redundant duplicates from old VC installers or incompatible toolsets. This is the important info from Microsoft “Visual Studio versions since Visual Studio 2015 share the same Redistributable files. For example, any apps built by the Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019, or 2022 toolsets can use the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable. However, the version of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable installed on the machine must be the same or higher than the version of the Visual C++ toolset used to create your application. ”

It also fixed cbb and platinum right? Are you aware of any other software you installed recently that could have damaged the redists?

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Its failing to insert the prochannel module itself. I can fix the point of failure but the fact that you claim its new could mean that something mode fundamental changed in at the system level. Let me know if removing all redists and reinstalling Sonar helps. Several users have been reporting problems with other apps corrupting the redists. Go to add/remove programs and search for Redistributable and remove ALL the microsoft Visual C++ redists. Then re-run the latest Sonar installer. Let us know if that resolves the problem. If the issue is indeed the redist then all versions of Sonar should get fixed. Note that something like this can also get caused by something damaging a common dll dependency. If so all related dll's will fail to load leading to random crashes. This is typically an installation problem.

It might help if you posted the link to the article lol. I also have no idea what Sonar 4 is 🤯 Looks like someone went back to 2004!

Its not about resistance! You realize that customization is not some magical thing you just think of and it happens? 😅 Its pretty complex to implement something that works for all themes. It takes design, engineering work and testing. It will come at some point but its not the highest priority thing we have at this time.

@Lynn Wilson I sent you a PM please reply there.

Is it ok now?

Its definitely fixed. His project opens now without crashing.

The contrast has been tweaked in the latest 2024.11 release which is now available. It's a subtle change but it more visible now even in dark themes.

The plugin browser is where you should be searching. Menus are not designed to be searchable.

Yes this is indeed a Sonar bug but related to persistence. It will be fixed in the next update.

I have verified that the user project crashes after it loads. As described if I load it in safe mode (without ignoring anything) and then save it it loads and plays with no problems. This seems to indicate that there is some persistence related problem with the old file (coming from CbB) and when you re-save the project it self-repairs. Now that I have a repro case I'll look into it and see if I can fix whatever is causing the problem at load time itself. In any case the project should work fine after resaving in Sonar so you should be unblocked. This is one of the main reasons we have safe mode.

Regarding the crash please send the dump file that should have been created, so we can identify if it was indeed a plugin crash or not. You can find the dump file in %AppData%\Cakewalk\Sonar\Minidumps or %AppData%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Minidumps\Plugins Look at the timestamp to find the actual file corresponding to the crash. It doesnt mean a lot that it didn’t crash in CbB, since there could be myriads of reasons why a plugin may crash in one scenario and not another. If it is indeed a plugin crash we have no super powers to solve it but we can take a look. Please also read this article and this one for more information about plugin crashes.

Fixed it. The MIDI export code was stopping the engine as a side effect of its processing but never resuming it when done.