Sonar 2025.07 Feedback

[Glenn Stanton]

2 hours ago, John Vere said:

In your screenshot l see you have added an underscore after the brackets (project name)

That would explain why 

i did that as an example. my export works as it should, but i wanted to see under what conditions an underscore would be added - the only time it did it was, ta-da, when i added an underscore to the name! 🙂 and perhaps the OP with the issue would look more closely at his settings...

Edited Saturday at 10:16 PM by Glenn Stanton

[msmcleod]

12 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

i did that as an example. my export works as it should, but i wanted to see under what conditions an underscore would be added - the only time it did it was, ta-da, when i added an underscore to the name! 🙂 and perhaps the OP with the issue would look more closely at his settings...

I replied to the original post.

The issue is caused by using the "Entire Mix" category when having more than one hardware output in the project.

Better to use "Hardware Outputs" in this scenario.

[Glenn Stanton]

11 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I replied to the original post.
The issue is caused by using the "Entire Mix" category when having more than one hardware output in the project.
Better to use "Hardware Outputs" in this scenario.

thanks Mark! moi? i don't use the hardware output nor the entire mix settings, i have my custom exports which work just fine - but this is a handy thing to know for sure...

[Loyal.0]

What happened to note merging on the Step Sequencer?

On build 2025.07 build 0 97 X64 the Step Sequencer has lost a feature important to me. On previous builds and CBB builds you could merge/tie note in the step sequencer. If you entered 8 beats on a row right next to each other, you could hold the Control key and left-click drag across those beats to merge/tie them into one note that holds for 8 beats. CBB would visually show these 8 beats were merged into one 8 beat long bar but Sonar shows nothing different and you have to look in the velocity lane to see anything different.

The latest build breaks this feature entirely. I enter 8 beats in a row and Ctrl-left-click them to merge/tie them and when the sequence play, only the first beat plays and silence for the remaining 7 beats. This worked on the previous builds but not longer works and there is still no visual indication the beats are merged.

I use the step sequencer often and this missing functionality has stopped me cold as merging is something I do in every project. I don't know why this feature has been affected, but it makes me angry that Sonar is so far proving to be a downgrade from CBB in many ways. I have been using Cakewalk since the 90s and I don't want to use another DAW, but without a working step sequencer, I may have no choice but to look into other DAWs. Please fix this!

Anyone else able to reproduce this issue on 2025.07 build 097 X64?

[Promidi]

5 hours ago, Loyal.0 said:

What happened to note merging on the Step Sequencer?

--------------------------------------  snip ---------------------------------------------------

Anyone else able to reproduce this issue on 2025.07 build 097 X64?

Confirmed.  

Maybe lodge a ticket.

https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[saxon1066]

Relatively new member.  I find the frequent online activations unnecessary and annoying.  Of course I can disconnect from the Internet afterwards, but being forced to renew activations every couple of months or whatever  is weirdly totalitarian. 

[User 905133]

Comment about word choice and definition removed.

Edited Monday at 02:52 PM by User 905133
definition removed because it might open up a political discussion

[msmcleod]

16 hours ago, Loyal.0 said:

What happened to note merging on the Step Sequencer?

On build 2025.07 build 0 97 X64 the Step Sequencer has lost a feature important to me. On previous builds and CBB builds you could merge/tie note in the step sequencer. If you entered 8 beats on a row right next to each other, you could hold the Control key and left-click drag across those beats to merge/tie them into one note that holds for 8 beats. CBB would visually show these 8 beats were merged into one 8 beat long bar but Sonar shows nothing different and you have to look in the velocity lane to see anything different.

The latest build breaks this feature entirely. I enter 8 beats in a row and Ctrl-left-click them to merge/tie them and when the sequence play, only the first beat plays and silence for the remaining 7 beats. This worked on the previous builds but not longer works and there is still no visual indication the beats are merged.

I use the step sequencer often and this missing functionality has stopped me cold as merging is something I do in every project. I don't know why this feature has been affected, but it makes me angry that Sonar is so far proving to be a downgrade from CBB in many ways. I have been using Cakewalk since the 90s and I don't want to use another DAW, but without a working step sequencer, I may have no choice but to look into other DAWs. Please fix this!

Anyone else able to reproduce this issue on 2025.07 build 097 X64?

Thanks - this has been fixed for the next update.

[David Rubenstein]

I am finding the latest version of Cakewalk Sonar (Version 2025.07 (Build 097, X64) to be very very unstable. I am using Windows 11.

The program often crashes when I open a saved project. So instead, I am often forced to open an old version of my project (one that was automatically saved).

I have a single audio track in my project, and 6 Midi tracks, using the same Midi instruments that I have in the past, with no problems. I only use a few plugins (Sonitus Compression, Channel Tools, and EW Spaces II).

[Loyal.0]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

Thanks - this has been fixed for the next update.

Thank you! The step sequencer is very important to my workflow and I was worried that this feature was taken out. Glad to see the super quick response on the fix. You guys rock!

[David Baay]

4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Thanks - this has been fixed for the next update.

Inquiring minds want to know... what the heck kind of presumably-unrelated update caused that regression?

[Colin Nicholls]

4 hours ago, David Rubenstein said:

I am finding the latest version of Cakewalk Sonar (Version 2025.07 (Build 097, X64) to be very very unstable. I am using Windows 11.

The program often crashes when I open a saved project. So instead, I am often forced to open an old version of my project (one that was automatically saved).

I have a single audio track in my project, and 6 Midi tracks, using the same Midi instruments that I have in the past, with no problems. I only use a few plugins (Sonitus Compression, Channel Tools, and EW Spaces II).

Can you open the projects in Safe Mode ? 

[David Rubenstein]

Colin,

Thanks for the suggestion! I was able to open the projects in Safe Mode. By looking at all the individual plugins, I discovered one that I did not explicitly add: "LRS track bus groove player". When I turned off this plugin, the project opened correctly.

Further investigation showed that this plugin is used by the metronome. In preferences / metronome, I switched from "Use Audio Metronome" to "Use Midi Note", saved the project and exited. Then I re-opened the project in normal mode, and switched back to "Use Audio Metronome", saved and exited the project. Now when I open the project, it opens correctly in normal mode.

So, there may be a bug (?) in the metronome settings that causes Sonar to crash.

[David Baay]

2 hours ago, David Rubenstein said:

So, there may be a bug (?) in the metronome settings that causes Sonar to crash.

More likely just an issue with the that particular project's internal referencing of the plugin, but for good measure you might want to re-register the dll which is the usual solution for this error:

- Open a command prompt and cd to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Dxi

- Type regsvr32 GroovePlayer.dll and Enter.

 

[Andres Medina]

Hello,

Unable to use Sonar when disconnected from internet (due to a temporary cut in the provider service).

Sonar hangs and start loading very slowly, like 10 minutes to load the main window...!

I guess this is not expected behavior?

[Noel Borthwick]

Definitely not seeing this here. In fact I was testing a bunch of stuff completely offline today. Sonar launches in about 2 seconds here. If you can repro this please PM me a dump of the process while it is hung in that state and I can take a look.

[Noel Borthwick]

5 hours ago, David Rubenstein said:

Colin,

Thanks for the suggestion! I was able to open the projects in Safe Mode. By looking at all the individual plugins, I discovered one that I did not explicitly add: "LRS track bus groove player". When I turned off this plugin, the project opened correctly.

Further investigation showed that this plugin is used by the metronome. In preferences / metronome, I switched from "Use Audio Metronome" to "Use Midi Note", saved the project and exited. Then I re-opened the project in normal mode, and switched back to "Use Audio Metronome", saved and exited the project. Now when I open the project, it opens correctly in normal mode.

So, there may be a bug (?) in the metronome settings that causes Sonar to crash.

Can you send me the project as well as a dump file of the crash?

[David Rubenstein]

5 hours ago, David Baay said:

More likely just an issue with the that particular project's internal referencing of the plugin, but for good measure you might want to re-register the dll which is the usual solution for this error:

- Open a command prompt and cd to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Dxi

- Type regsvr32 GroovePlayer.dll and Enter.

 

I tried that, but got the error code shown in this screenshot.

[Noel Borthwick]

13 minutes ago, David Rubenstein said:

I tried that, but got the error code shown in this screenshot.

You need to do that from an admin command prompt

[Noel Borthwick]

On 7/19/2025 at 5:00 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

@brundlefly if I remember correctly I made this fix to resolve problems you were having 😂 

And no there is no way to send a single message that's not how the API works.

Anyway I'll move this to a PM so we don't clutter this thread with the details. 

@Matthew Carr I've sent you a PM with a build to verify. Please respond in the PM.