Sonar 2025.07 Feedback

[aleo]

As you can see in the attached screenshot, several of the problems that occurred in the Clips Pane with v. 2025.07 build 084 remain in build 097.  Track 1 demonstrates the corruption that occurs in automation envelopes whenever you move the horizontal scroller—broken or irregular jump lines, irregular straight lines and curved envelopes.  This can be cleared up by opening Track Inspector or by moving the vertical scroll thumb.

The corruption in the envelope in Track 2 is an old problem that goes back, I believe, as far as v. 2024.12.  It was fixed for version 2025.06, but has returned with build 097.  It occurs consistently when a clip with an envelope is moved to the left and the 2nd node from the last is deleted.  I've reported this problem several times both on this forum and to Support.

There was no signal passing through Sonar when this screenshot was taken so there should be no green bars in either the Master or Metronome bus, yet they are there, frozen (?).

I’ve sent several problem descriptions along with screenshots and project files to Cakewalk Support and have also tried to send videos and dmp files (build  097 has crashed on me twice) as requested.  Some of these files may have been too large and I don’t have an account with Drop Box.  I have not heard back from anyone in Cakewalk Support for over a week.

Can we please get these problems corrected by the next Sonar update?

[Wookiee]

@aleo have you reported these to support with an example project?

[gmp]

I installed Sonar Free on 2 different computers and got the same results
of this Bug.

Go to Preferences / Customization / Colors. Select all, change all the
colors to bright yellow
Show strip Colors is checked save changes for next session is checked. The only thing that does change is the waveform color to yellow. Can anyone duplicate this bug or see any changes besides the waveform color.

With no Theme Editor, I can't even make minor changes. Here's my Theme PNG on the bottom.  My workflow is more efficient when I can visually see things clearly.

Edited Friday at 01:09 PM by gmp

[aleo]

Wookiee, yes and I believe my e-mails with these attachments made it through including copies to Jonathan Sasor.

These problems center around Sonar's failure to re-draw things in the Clips Pane correctly after the horizontal scroll thumb has been moved.  Build 097 corrected the problem of the Now Time line being messed up, but didn't correct the corruption in the automation envelopes.

We are finishing a final mix for an album and rely heavily on drawing and adjusting the volume and pan envelopes in our tracks.  The bugs you see in my screenshot interfere with our progress.  I don't think it's related to our hardware; since April we've been using a state-of-the-art PC running Win. 11 and optimized for running Sonar.

[Wookiee]

@aleo I have noticed historically Envelopes can get the knickers in a twist when superimposed over the track clip, have you tried clicking on the Envelope gadget Bottom left of the Track to expand the Envelope into its own lane.

The other thing to look for is duplicated or spurious Nodes

[Noel Borthwick]

1 hour ago, gmp said:

I installed Sonar Free on 2 different computers and got the same results
of this Bug.

Go to Preferences / Customization / Colors. Select all, change all the
colors to bright yellow
Show strip Colors is checked save changes for next session is checked. The only thing that does change is the waveform color to yellow. Can anyone duplicate this bug or see any changes besides the waveform color.

With no Theme Editor, I can't even make minor changes. Here's my Theme PNG on the bottom.  My workflow is more efficient when I can visually see things clearly.

 

I'm not sure why you are editing the colors like that. If all you want to change the strip color this is how you do it.

[gmp]

Noel, so in the track view changing the colors only changes the color of the audio waveforms in the clip pane and nothing in the track pane?

Edited Friday at 06:05 PM by gmp

[IgoRr]

1 hour ago, gmp said:

track view changing the colors only changes the color of the audio waveforms in the clip pane and nothing in the track pane?

You need to go to this section of the screen settings and activate this checkbox (see screenshot), then the colors you choose for the tracks will be displayed not only on the content of the clips.

[jeejeestudio]

This seems not to work, no color change to any track.

Edit-updated to Build 109. I see no change when applying the colors and also selecting the box as in the above screen shots.
Right clicking anywhere on a track or strip does not bring up a color selection.
Am I missing something?

Thanks

Edited Friday at 08:28 PM by jeejeestudio
Checked after update to build 109

[Noel Borthwick]

Build 109 has been released. We recommend that all users update to it since it fixes many startup issues and also has optimizations.

 

Optimizations and Stability

• Transport start/stop is now fast when "Zero controllers when play stops" is enabled and many midi ports are in use.
• Optimized Sonar startup to run faster on PCs with slow internet or when running offline.
• Resolved failures when uploading and downloading BandLab projects when using a slow or unstable internet connection.

Fixed:

• Duplicated Instrument Track with Input Echo enabled does not show correct button state
• Browser/Track Manager fail to draw correctly after maximized Dock/Console
• Sonar crashes on startup when opening certain projects
• Sonar can hang on startup when no internet connection present
• Track Manager tooltips don't update after changing setting in Preferences
• Clicking Input echo from Inspector fails to show updated Input picker
• Notes fail to Link in Step Sequencer
• Lasso node selection not working correctly in some cases
• Time ruler "jumps" at certain zoom levels.
• Crash Loading ProChannel Preset
• Underscore added to Exported filename for project with multiple hardware outputs
• Input Echo on Instrument Track shows Auto-Thru when turned ON
• Auto Echo MIDI not working on Instrument Inspector/Console View strip
• Projects can Fail to Upload to BandLab

 

[IgoRr]

12 hours ago, jeejeestudio said:

Right clicking anywhere on a track or strip does not bring up a color selection.
Am I missing something?

The color for the header of tracks and buses is selected not with the right mouse button and not anywhere, but on a narrow strip to the left of the header of any track with the left mouse button, see the attached GIF file. In the same way, you can select a color for a group of tracks or buses selected together.

Edited 21 hours ago by IgoRr

[jeejeestudio]

Ah ok thanks, this works.

[John T]

16 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Build 109 has been released. We recommend that all users update to it since it fixes many startup issues and also has optimizations.

Really great to see all these frequent updates and fixes lately. 

[Noel Borthwick]

Thanks. We're getting a lot of new users signing on and spotting random things that have not been seen previously because everyone has different workflow. Thats a good thing since it makes it better for everyone as long as the problems are reported clearly to us rather than vague reports. We're able to fix things very quickly 99% of the time when its described properly. In this month itself we have fixed about 50 bugs!

A few users have the misconception that all bugs should be found in beta. In practice nothing could be further from the truth. Our internal QA and Beta team typically finds the most serious bugs but not those that are project specific or workflow dependent. Sonar is an incredibly complex program with millions of ways it could be used. We could be in beta for 10 years and you'd still find oddball cases when its exposed to hundreds of thousands of users because of variations in systems and workflow. It's just the way things are for all software like this.
So, if you have an issue, it's in your best interest (and others as well) to report it concisely and calmly to us and work with us if necessary, until its resolved.

Also, keep in mind that not everything you happen to notice is going to be a bug. Before reporting something please make sure you understand the feature and check the documentation before calling it out as a bug. This will be appreciated since it saves us time wading through reports of irrelevant issues.