Sonar 2024.12 Feedback

[Mark D.]

In Track View, you still can only resize the FX bin a limited amount. Using dozens of plug ins, you have to go into the bin and scroll to see them. Please fix this!

[Glenn Stanton]

13 hours ago, Mark D. said:

In Track View, you still can only resize the FX bin a limited amount. Using dozens of plug ins, you have to go into the bin and scroll to see them. Please fix this!

another option (one i use) is keeping everything in the Pro Channel (PC) view including the FX Chain which let's you install many FX and allows scrolling.

if you're using so many FX on a single track, you might also think about using a "channel" FX which can bundle many FX into a single UI (e.g. the Waves SSL Track FX has EQ, compression, expansion, filtering, side-chaining, gain etc) and could make things easier for you.

[Mark D.]

7 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

another option (one i use) is keeping everything in the Pro Channel (PC) view including the FX Chain which let's you install many FX and allows scrolling.

if you're using so many FX on a single track, you might also think about using a "channel" FX which can bundle many FX into a single UI (e.g. the Waves SSL Track FX has EQ, compression, expansion, filtering, side-chaining, gain etc) and could make things easier for you.

Thanks for the reply and  tips. I put together images & videos showing issues. When I mix I rarely use more than a handful of VSTs that will fit. I master what I mix and do pure mastering and track view is optimal for that as you'll see. I hope @Noel Borthwickcan view this and let me know when it may be fixed in updates.
 

 

Edited December 27, 2024 by Mark D.

[Noel Borthwick]

2 hours ago, Mark D. said:

Thanks for the reply and  tips. I put together images & videos showing issues. When I mix I rarely use more than a handful of VSTs that will fit. I master what I mix and do pure mastering and track view is optimal for that as you'll see. I hope @Noel Borthwickcan view this and let me know when it may be fixed in updates.
 

 

This isn’t a bug. Feature requests should be posted in the feature requests channel.

[Jim Stamper]

On 12/25/2024 at 4:34 PM, James Togher said:

Currently having two issues with this build. As this is the first build I have used i do not know if these exisited prior to this release.

Issue #1 - After recording of automation (e.g. slider fade) play back of automation will not work until project is saved, closed and reloaded.

Issue #2 - Control surface input has notable delay (e.g. Arturia Keylab88 mapped as mackie controller, sliders work but there is significant delay before DAW responds rendering the control surface unusable)

I don't believe I saw a response to James' issues. I haven't loaded 2024.12 yet, but these issues will be a problem for me, if they are not unique to James.

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Jim Stamper said:

I haven't loaded 2024.12 yet, but these issues will be a problem for me, if they are not unique to James.

I'm not seeing either of those issues using a control surface with the AZController plugin. I don't currently have a Mackie surface set up. His second issue may be due to PDC-inducing plugins.

I'm pretty sure there would be more reports of problems if there were a more general issue with Mackie control in Sonar.

[Mark D.]

On 12/26/2024 at 10:37 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

This isn’t a bug. Feature requests should be posted in the feature requests channel.

Hello Noel. I'd  linked to where I put the feature request in. I got a reply that it'd be kept on file as a suggestion. While  not a bug it's a sudden major change affecting everyone. If the old code can be put back in, to make that new resizing boxes layout optional, so it can be switched back to enlarge as needed to let all plug-ins to be visible it can help me & likely many others. I'd asked you here since I recognized your name and role / I didn't know if you knew that I posted about it months ago, and if you heard of this actually being worked on now. It's also a larger issue, that such changes should perhaps be done as optional or at least vetted in the community. I think we all would have wanted it optional.

[Cloud Cave]

Sonar Issue: No Track Numbers and Automation Node information 'windows' are blank. Most of the time when opening a project (existing or new) the track numbers in Track View are not present, and the information 'window' for nodes in automation are blank. On rare occasions I have track numbers and information in automation node information windows.  Version 2024.12. Suggestions?

[Michael Crepps]

Quote

 

Since these last 2 patches my Sonar has not been working well.  2 issues. One is when piano roll is open and I am in track view sonar becomes crazy sluggish. Cant stop playback. Just pretty much becomes unusable. I click back on Piano Roll view and after like 30 seconds it finally highlights that window and I can close it. Once Piano Roll is closed everything works fine. Been using cakewalk/sonar for 20 years. Never had this problem ever. Been really shitty last month or two.

But recently I have a new problem. I use audio monitoring one active track to record Guitar. I add effects live as I'm playing using Amplitube 5.  In sonar Performance window its playing everything and adding effects to my guitar live with no noticeable latency. Haven't had a problem doing this for last 5 years. But suddenly in last week I am getting these spikes. Audio processing stays around 18 to 20 %. Engine load stays between 40 to 65% if I have audio monitoring on or not.  If I play the song or don't. If in playing my guitar even when the song isn't playing. Or if I click record and play guitar adding effects live to other tracks playing. Doesn't matter. No noticeable spikes either way. Same usage percentages if I click ply or stop or record or have audio monitoring on in a track. Barely changes the percentages of Engine Load and Audio Processing. But randomly like every 3 seconds to every 10 second there is an Audio dropout. Im getting a late buffer but whats crazy is in the performance window if im watching the Audio Processing jumps to 100%Max for a split second and the Engine Load jumps to 1300 to 1900% Max .

This seems very weird. Never had this problem before. The only thing that changed is recent Sonar patch and a recent Win 11 update.  My RME HDSPe AIO card Sonar said it wouldn't work with it. So I checked and RME released a new patch for it like a day or 2 after Sonar patch.  I believe The RME card had problems due to Win 11 Update. Once I got new drivers the RME card showed back up in Sonar.  But it worked fine for like a week then suddenly started having these strange spikes in CPU. I pulled up Windoes Task Manager and the CPU is spiking hard when I have these audio dropouts.  Seems if engine load is jumping to 1300 to 1900% Max then there is some conflict going on. But I dont know haw to diagnose it any further. I am paying for Sonar. Not having a very good time with it. I hope someone can help.

 

OK*****

I think I figured out my CPU spikes. So weird cause after I installed new RME HDSPe AIO card drivers I have been getting a Popup when Sonar starts that Control Surface not loading. So I searched that subject on Google. It said it was a midi thing. So I thought maybe that's whats causing my Piano Rolls to lock up Sonar if its open in the background and not the the window I'm focused on.  I went into preferences and under MIDI / Devices   I had M-Audio Keystation 49 keyboard on but the RME AIO midi was off in input and outputs. Not sure if this would effect anything since I dont use the AIO Midi inputs ever but I clicked them on and went back into sonar and started testing if that helped Piano Roll window causing sonar to be sluggish. Well it had no effect. Piano Roll still messed up. Been messed up since last two Sonar patches. But to my surprise it totally fixed my CPU spikes. This is so odd but all I can figure is my audio card was being used as an audio device in sonar but because the midi was turned off even though I don't use it it was still causing some error and my Audio card was glitching out.

I am playing everything now and my percentages in Sonar performance meter are not spiking any. So weird that it was Midi related. I guess when I updated my RME card it turned off the Midi devices in Sonar.  Hadn't looked at it really because it was Midi and also because I been using everything without error for so long that I couldn't remember if the Midi devises were clicked before or not.

Now if I could get Piano Roll window to work like it used to. I would be back in business.

I am pretty sure the piano roll thing is Sonar patch related cause nothing else changed but the Patch. It was instantaneous after patch before last and still the same.

Edited January 28 by Michael Crepps

[Sock Monkey]

I have submitted a few crash dumps and staff have been helping me resolve this issue but I will document it here as well in case other users have had this issue. 
 

Issue- Sonar crashes on plug ins loading. There is no dump file. 
 

I have determined that this is only happening to older projects that were created in Sonar Platinum.
They all have been  opened and edited in Cakewalk by Bandlab.

But this is the first time that they have been opened in Sonar. 

Staff, a forum member and I found that in safe mode there was 2 plug ins that if removed the problem was solved. These were showing as Untitled EQ and Untitled CA2A 

A very strange aspect of the projects is in some tracks and buses  e Pro Channel has no Gloss EQ.. This apparently is impossible. 
 

I just had another of these projects crash on start yesterday. But even after I excluded the 2 known plug ins it still crashed. I started removing other plug ins until they were all gone and finally it opened.. 

Theres no dump file so nothing to report. 
 

I just was wondering if anyone else here has older Splat projects and if the mystery of the missing pro channel EQ is common to anyone else? 

Edited February 2 by Sock Monkey

[Sock Monkey]

I see that the CTX exchange system is still not working. 
 

Once again I attempted to edit a midi file in Cakewalk Next and it all fell apart. 
Id select a track to edit and the editor would be stuck on the 1st track I had selected. But the keys on the left actually played the selected instrument? 
Gave up and because I had spent an hour editing the first track I said screw it im going to use Sonar. 
No problem I’ll just export it as an CXT exchange file. 
Nope Crashed Sonar. 3 times. Only one dump file found which say Sonar exe fault module. 
4 midi tracks. Crashes Sonar?  

Next is totally useless stay away from it if you know what’s good for you. I uninstalled it. 
 

Ut first I exported the song from next as a midi file and that opened no problem in Sonar. 

[IgoRr]

On 1/10/2025 at 2:03 AM, Cloud Cave said:

No Track Numbers and Automation Node information 'windows' are blank.

You are not the only one with such problems with displaying texts, I also have no text with module names in the menu for adding modules in ProChannel. I assume that you have Windows 10 installed? I talked to one of the developers for a long time, and he even found a solution, but then he refused to continue to deal with this problem, citing the fact that everything works in Windows 11, and that other programs and drivers that I have been using for the past 15 years are to blame for everything.
The most interesting thing is that in early versions of the new Sonar (even for the 2023 "beta" version), this does not happen, all the texts are in place. I sent him animations from these versions, but he did not even respond.
Personally, it seems to me that the Cakewalk team also switched to Windows 11, and now everyone else will be forced to switch. It is unlikely that our problems will be solved. Personally, I won't switch to Windows 11 until I can, but if Sonar works stably and reliably, I'd rather not have texts than deal with a lot of problems in Windows 11, in which everything is unstable and unreliable.

 

Edited February 12 by IgoRr

[Jonathan Sasor]

On 2/12/2025 at 5:29 AM, IgoRr said:

You are not the only one with such problems with displaying texts, I also have no text with module names in the menu for adding modules in ProChannel. I assume that you have Windows 10 installed? I talked to one of the developers for a long time, and he even found a solution, but then he refused to continue to deal with this problem, citing the fact that everything works in Windows 11, and that other programs and drivers that I have been using for the past 15 years are to blame for everything.
The most interesting thing is that in early versions of the new Sonar (even for the 2023 "beta" version), this does not happen, all the texts are in place. I sent him animations from these versions, but he did not even respond.
Personally, it seems to me that the Cakewalk team also switched to Windows 11, and now everyone else will be forced to switch. It is unlikely that our problems will be solved. Personally, I won't switch to Windows 11 until I can, but if Sonar works stably and reliably, I'd rather not have texts than deal with a lot of problems in Windows 11, in which everything is unstable and unreliable.

 

 

While we're generally working in Windows 11, we also still test on Windows 10. At least through October this year when Microsoft is discontinuing support. 

These issues seem like they might be more specific to a particular configuration as I haven't personally seen them on Windows 10. 

[Xoo]

I've had this (Windows 10) when font installation has gone screwy.  To fix, I found the fonts Sonar installs and removed them from windows\fonts, then reinstalled Sonar and it was fine.

Can't remember the fonts offhand - sorry.

[IgoRr]

45 minutes ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

These issues seem like they might be more specific to a particular configuration

It may well be so, but I can swear that I have not installed and will never install anything "unusual" in the system. Ben Stanton has already found a way to solve these problems, I have verified this on my computer, but he simply did not want to finish this work. In early versions of modern Sonar (specifically in version 29.09.0.138 "beta"), all texts are displayed completely normally, although, in this version there are other graphical failures. I checked this version on the same system with the same configuration, in which the latest versions do not show texts in the places I have indicated.

Frankly speaking, I think that it should not be so, when some program so strongly depends on the installation of completely ordinary programs in the system from the category of Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, a couple of simple video editors (AviDemux, etc.), and hardly 100+ music plugins and VST instruments that have been tested for decades. I did not install any programs for editing or controlling the system itself, no additional fonts, I generally try to have as few third-party elements in the system as possible.

Well, it seems completely wrong to me that in addition to Microsoft, now your team will, in fact, force users to switch to Windows 11. Not everyone can afford to change hardware when they want to. I understand that official support for Windows 10 will end this year, but until then, you could have easily resolve all controversial issues, especially since a solution has already been found.

[Noel Borthwick]

We cannot indefinitely support breaking changes to older operating systems. Windows 10 and Sonar work perfectly for 99% of users. Beyond that there isn't much we can do to support this.
Changes caused by mismatched components or bugs in Windows itself are completely beyond our control.

[IgoRr]

25 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Changes caused by mismatched components or bugs in Windows itself are completely beyond our control.

Do I understand your motivation correctly: are Cakewalk brand products simply worse or weaker than Steinberg, Fruty Loops, Cockos, Magix? Judging by such explanations, this is true, because all the above mentioned brands products that work without the slightest anomalies on 99.99% of hardware and systems, including my specific one.
I will just repeat once again: I do not install anything "unusual, extraordinary, super-heavy" into the system, no third-party drivers, no third-party fonts, and most importantly - in the same current configuration, early versions of Sonar showed full functionality in the text display section. Now (as almost always for me) my system (Windows 10 Pro, totally updated) works perfectly, without the slightest failures, errors or anomalies, DAW from Steinberg, Fruty Loops, Cocos (Reaper), Magix and others work flawlessly in it, I specifically installed several other DAW's to check my system. So, the problem is definitely not in my system or settings, if the old versions of Sonar worked, and the latest ones do not want to show texts. It is very strange for me that the developers so persistently refuse to solve the problem, especially when the solution has already been found!

I am becoming more and more convinced that my guess was right - there is a campaign to force users to switch to Windows 11. I do not think that such a great brand will grow its number of users and followers in this way.

Edited February 13 by IgoRr

[Noel Borthwick]

3 hours ago, IgoRr said:

Do I understand your motivation correctly: are Cakewalk brand products simply worse or weaker than Steinberg, Fruty Loops, Cockos, Magix? Judging by such explanations, this is true, because all the above mentioned brands products that work without the slightest anomalies on 99.99% of hardware and systems, including my specific one.
I will just repeat once again: I do not install anything "unusual, extraordinary, super-heavy" into the system, no third-party drivers, no third-party fonts, and most importantly - in the same current configuration, early versions of Sonar showed full functionality in the text display section. Now (as almost always for me) my system (Windows 10 Pro, totally updated) works perfectly, without the slightest failures, errors or anomalies, DAW from Steinberg, Fruty Loops, Cocos (Reaper), Magix and others work flawlessly in it, I specifically installed several other DAW's to check my system. So, the problem is definitely not in my system or settings, if the old versions of Sonar worked, and the latest ones do not want to show texts. It is very strange for me that the developers so persistently refuse to solve the problem, especially when the solution has already been found!

I am becoming more and more convinced that my guess was right - there is a campaign to force users to switch to Windows 11. I do not think that such a great brand will grow its number of users and followers in this way.

You are free to draw whatever (incorrect) conclusions you may. There is no "campaign" to force anyone to update. You use old OS's at your own risk. We don't have the bandwidth to chase down obscure bugs that only affect certain systems on unsupported OS's. Our dev spent days if not weeks trying to fix issues that ended up being specific to your machine. Old versions of Sonar used completely different Microsoft tools so if it coincidentally worked for you there is nothing we can do to solve that. Upgrade to stick to old versions if you insist on running an old OS.

[IgoRr]

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Upgrade to stick to old versions if you insist on running an old OS.

It seems that you do not read or do not understand what I am saying. What does "outdated systems" mean to you? Is Windows 10 already considered "outdated"? But there are several billion users on the planet using it, and when you say "there is no campaign to force an update", how can you call a fully working, current, mass-market operating system "outdated", for what purpose? Do you really believe that most people will switch to Windows 11 this year?

And I did not mean old versions of SONAR Platinum, I am talking about the modern Sonar, but about earlier versions, I even provided the build number for clarification. And if these versions for last year showed text on the same Windows 10 system that is installed now, then what and why was changed so much? And why can't the code be slightly adjusted to solve this problem for a huge number of Windows 10 users? Are you saying that last year's versions worked on completely different Microsoft tools?

Ask Ben Stanton, he carefully analyzed my system, and found absolutely nothing "anomalous" or "corrupted", there was a suggestion for some special font, but it was not confirmed, then there was a suspicion of an outdated version of the GdiPlus.dll file, but this version was not confirmed either. Sonar itself works without the slightest complaints, but there are problems with displaying text, is it really impossible to fix this for Windows 10, if a solution has already been found? If you honestly tell me that you just do not want to solve this problem, I will understand and will not beg anyone anymore, but I think this is wrong. Let me remind you again: all (!) other DAW's and other programs work absolutely perfectly in my system, the problem is only with texts in Sonar in the last 3 versions.

[John T]

Just to add a data point, I'm running Windows 10, and I'm not seeing this problem with the latest Sonar.