External Insert and Graphics Issues in Sonar

[Tommy Byrnes]

Hi folks,

Since the announcement of the free tier of Sonar and since CbB will be deactivated in August I decided to show my support and signed up for a year membership. I use the software for 8+ hours a day and I make a significant portion of my income from my studio. I have used this program professionally for nearly 20 years and I loathe to think of learning another DAW. I have CbB customized perfectly for my workflow.

I will eventually adjust to the new look (not a fan of flat and lack of customization) but there are a few troubling things in Sonar that I've found that are giving me pause. The first is with the External Insert. In previous versions I could toggle the On/Off to check the external effect in real time. In new Sonar there is a 1.5 to 2 second pause in the audio engine before playback resumes. This is unacceptable. In fact, the whole audio engine now seems, well, clunky. 

Another thing that is happening is an issue with the graphics and the way they interact with the audio. When I slide across the tracks in the Console View from Track 1 to the end track, either by the slider bar or the Page Up/Page Down command, the audio stutters. I got a weird look from a client yesterday who thought it was a problem with the recording. I was a bit embarrassed. This used to happen in 8.5 but stopped for me somewhere in the X Series, IIRC. In fact, in this Sonar when going from the top to bottom of a track it moves like it's built from frames. They don't move smoothly up and down but click by click.

To be honest, with the way it looks, the lack of customization and audio issues it feels like a downgrade from CbB for me. Of the hundreds of bugs supposedly squashed since the new Sonar release none affected my day to day work. I would gladly pay a yearly fee to keep CbB active in its current state. It does everything I need it to and looks better.

I have been doing this professionally for nearly 30 years and I know this software inside and out from the thousands of hours I've spent with it. I have hundreds of personalized key bindings/templates so using the software is muscle memory. My system is completely optimized and runs like a top. All drivers are updated and I regularly back up the .ini file and the Cakewalk Content folder so I know there is no discrepancy between the different versions. When moving between CbB and Sonar there is a definite difference in performance.  Any suggestions or ideas on what or why this might be happening? 

As usual, thanks in advance for the help.

[Jorge Tata Arias]

Try this: Disable GPU acceleration in "display." In the audio file settings, reset the settings to default. It worked for me.

[Tommy Byrnes]

Thanks for the idea, Jorge but it's not enabled.

[David Baay]

Is CbB still giving expected results with the same project in both cases?

Sonar has revised External Insert functionality that now supports using mono channels of a stero pair independently among other things, but I've not seen any issues with it except in very esoteric use cases (e.g. putting two mono external inserts in series using channels of the same stereo pair which - not entirely unexpectedly - causes PDC issues).

I don't often have enough tracks in the Console view to have to do a lot of scrolling but I can't say I've ever seen that issue.

[timeworx]

On 7/1/2025 at 8:13 AM, Tommy Byrnes said:

To be honest, with the way it looks, the lack of customization and audio issues it feels like a downgrade from CbB for me. Of the hundreds of bugs supposedly squashed since the new Sonar release none affected my day to day work. I would gladly pay a yearly fee to keep CbB active in its current state. It does everything I need it to and looks better.

Totally agreed! Even if a formal "no future updates" plan was announced, I'd prefer a steady-state CbB as is for my membership fee as opposed to the new Sonar. I'd even pay a bit more for the option to use both.

[David Inglesfield]

On 7/1/2025 at 1:13 PM, Tommy Byrnes said:

When I slide across the tracks in the Console View from Track 1 to the end track, either by the slider bar or the Page Up/Page Down command, the audio stutters. 

I installed Sonar yesterday and noticed the above immediately. I never experienced it with Cakewalk by Bandlab. BUT, I also noticed that the glitching in the audio when scrolling across the tracks only seemed to happen the first time I opened the Console view. If I continued to scroll left and right across the tracks, the glitching didn't persist. And if I closed the Console view, and then reopened it and repeated the same action, again there was no glitching. So, maybe not a major thing, but nevertheless it was disconcerting to hear the glitching when it did occur. It made the program feel less reliable and stable than CbyB.

[Tommy Byrnes]

7 hours ago, David Baay said:

Is CbB still giving expected results with the same project in both cases?

Sonar has revised External Insert functionality that now supports using mono channels of a stero pair independently among other things, but I've not seen any issues with it except in very esoteric use cases (e.g. putting two mono external inserts in series using channels of the same stereo pair which - not entirely unexpectedly - causes PDC issues).

I don't often have enough tracks in the Console view to have to do a lot of scrolling but I can't say I've ever seen that issue.

Hi David,

Yes, CbB works as expected. If I toggle on/off there is no pause or  glitch in the audio engine. It switches instantly.

 

[Noel Borthwick]

On 7/1/2025 at 8:13 AM, Tommy Byrnes said:

The first is with the External Insert. In previous versions I could toggle the On/Off to check the external effect in real time. In new Sonar there is a 1.5 to 2 second pause in the audio engine before playback resumes. This is unacceptable. In fact, the whole audio engine now seems, well, clunky. 

 

I think you might be reading too much into your initial observations. I'll look into your external inside issue. We made massive improvements and bug fixes to external inserts in sonar. Have you read the release notes for it? And the audio engine itself is demonstrably faster and more efficient at low latency large workloads. Give it a bit of time and of course feel free to report any issues. We acknowledge that users have  varying workflows and sometimes see problems others don't see. 

 

[Tommy Byrnes]

47 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

I think you might be reading too much into your initial observations. I'll look into your external inside issue. We made massive improvements and bug fixes to external inserts in sonar. Have you read the release notes for it? And the audio engine itself is demonstrably faster and more efficient at low latency large workloads. Give it a bit of time and of course feel free to report any issues. We acknowledge that users have  varying workflows and sometimes see problems others don't see. 

 

Hi Noel, thanks for the response. Yes, I'm aware of all of the updates since CbB. But it's a problem exclusive to Sonar for me. The audio engine does not seem as smooth in my case.  It feels, well, sluggish. I have the newest flagship RME interface with the latest drivers and a two year old purpose-built computer so I know it's not my gear. Graphics causing audio stutter is not good. 

And, I want you and the rest of the Bakers to know how much I've always appreciated the incredible work you folks have done over all these years.  

[Noel Borthwick]

12 hours ago, Tommy Byrnes said:

Hi Noel, thanks for the response. Yes, I'm aware of all of the updates since CbB. But it's a problem exclusive to Sonar for me. The audio engine does not seem as smooth in my case.  It feels, well, sluggish. I have the newest flagship RME interface with the latest drivers and a two year old purpose-built computer so I know it's not my gear. Graphics causing audio stutter is not good. 

And, I want you and the rest of the Bakers to know how much I've always appreciated the incredible work you folks have done over all these years.  

Regarding the external insert issue, we looked at the code and indeed in Sonar there is a change to how bypass works. However its completely intentional and doesnt have anything to do with engine stability.  Its exactly the opposite in fact. In Cbb there were numerous bugs with EI and when bypassing and unbypassing rapidly you could crash or hang the system because the external insert has very complex routing internally and it led to a race condition. To solve that I made it do a proper "hard bypass". In fact bypassing from the fx rack is always a hard bypass as opposed to an internal plugin bypass. In the case of the EI the old code wasn't handling it in a threadsafe way. The New EI has extended functionality and doing this was the only safe way to handle it.

That said I'll consider implementing a soft bypass mode for the EI - this will have to be done from the plugin UI's bypass button. This isn't available today for the EI.
In any case the TLDR is that this is not a bug but expected behavior today. Much better to be safe than crash.

[Tommy Byrnes]

54 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Regarding the external insert issue, we looked at the code and indeed in Sonar there is a change to how bypass works. However its completely intentional and doesnt have anything to do with engine stability.  Its exactly the opposite in fact. In Cbb there were numerous bugs with EI and when bypassing and unbypassing rapidly you could crash or hang the system because the external insert has very complex routing internally and it led to a race condition. To solve that I made it do a proper "hard bypass". In fact bypassing from the fx rack is always a hard bypass as opposed to an internal plugin bypass. In the case of the EI the old code wasn't handling it in a threadsafe way. The New EI has extended functionality and doing this was the only safe way to handle it.

That said I'll consider implementing a soft bypass mode for the EI - this will have to be done from the plugin UI's bypass button. This isn't available today for the EI.
In any case the TLDR is that this is not a bug but expected behavior today. Much better to be safe than crash.

That is very interesting. I found the inverse to be true. I can toggle bypass fairly quickly in CbB and I've never had it crash. Is there a pause on your test system  when using EI and using bypass and is that the expected behavior?

[Noel Borthwick]

Yes as I said the "gap" was intentional to fix a problem. You might not have seen it bit it could happen intermittently which is why I had to make that change. I'll look into it next week and see if there is an alternate way to address that problem.

[David Baay]

On 7/1/2025 at 6:13 AM, Tommy Byrnes said:

In new Sonar there is a 1.5 to 2 second pause in the audio engine before playback resumes.

Are you sure about the length of that delay? I think the gap that Noel is talking about is more on the order of an audio buffer or two - maybe 50-100ms if you're running a large buffer. The gap I get is like that - a small fraction of a second.

[Tommy Byrnes]

50 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Are you sure about the length of that delay? I think the gap that Noel is talking about is more on the order of an audio buffer or two - maybe 50-100ms if you're running a large buffer. The gap I get is like that - a small fraction of a second.

Nope. 2-3 seconds. I can count one Mississippe two Mississippi.

[Tommy Byrnes]

On 7/4/2025 at 3:19 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

Yes as I said the "gap" was intentional to fix a problem. You might not have seen it bit it could happen intermittently which is why I had to make that change. I'll look into it next week and see if there is an alternate way to address that problem.

Thanks, Noel.