HELP!!! SOS!!! - Can Not Export in latest Sonar - SOS !!! HELP!!!

[57Gregy]

On 8/1/2025 at 5:24 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

Holy crap thats a lot of plugins.

It boggles the mind how folks think that because they have some whizz-bang computer with 83 billion bigabytes of memory and all the latest geegaws and whoosits that things can't go wrong. And that wrong thing could have been avoided with a little safekeeping and housecleaning.
Once recording is done. save an uneffected copy of the project.
Add soft synths, effects to the original, edit, adjust, bounce and archive, delete the synths and effects, then save. Or freeze, if that's your preference. I just like to get unneeded stuff out of the way.
Hide archived tracks, use folders for similar tracks.
An all-audio track will always be able to be used in any audio editing app or DAW if the VSTs have been baked into the track already and you won't need to worry if that VST reverb you bought in 2009 will still open in your (different) DAW 17 years later.

But I can commiserate with the OP about not being able to finish this epic work and am glad that he and Noel have probably found the culprit and work can continue.

[David Baay]

5 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Fast bounce should have no bearing on MP3 export. There is nothing that it needs to keep up with, since the MP3 exporter is just using LAME which isn’t asynchronous.

yes, I meant to say real-time bounce to MP3 could be a problem. I haven't tested it for a long time, but I recall it has come up as an issue in the past, and I was able to easily reproduce at the time. But this was admittedly a looooong time ago, maybe even pre-X1 era, and on re-reading it seems the OP was fast-bouncing to MP3.

[minminmusic]

Spent all day yesterday and a bit this morning troubleshooting.

First to comment about what appears to be an "inordinate" amount of plug-ins, on several of these projects the track count is at 170+. It's a very cinematic, orchestral sounding based pop album using tons of "real" instruments that were recorded peace meal due to budget/scheduling. So to create a full sounding string section, it's done track by track. Same thing with harmonizing on the vocals. I could submix but trackcount/playback is fine so I leave it. The way I see it, 136 plugins over a 170+ track count, I don't think is off the charts. Especially if CbB plays it back fine and renders fine...and was NEVER brought it it's knees on my i9 14900k.

On to my observations and revelations on the current Sonar choking Export issue.

Took 3 projects that play and render fine with CbB but have now been giving me problems within Sonar. To be clear, the play back is fine in Sonar but it chokes on rendering. Spent all day yesterday deleting FX bins, reshuffling/rebuilding FX chains to varying degrees of non-success. Late last night I tried "Freezing" all tracks and was able to render. Ok...maybe that's it? Maybe there WAS too many plug-ins within the project?!?

Except this morning...I stumbled on something that I hadn't caught before, mainly because I haven't used this option that often and I think I "may" have found what the issue is? Whether there's a reason why or it's a bug that's not for me to say.

USUALLY, I was going to File/Export/Audio in both CbB and Sonar (have ALWAYS done it that way)...choosing my options and file locations and hitting Export. It would flush the plug-ins and then choke. In Windows Explorer I could see that a file was generated but it would be stuck at 4kb. If I clicked on the screen...eventually it would go white and say that Sonar's unresponsive...do you want to wait or close.

BUT...THIS MORNING...I DISCOVERED...that if use the Export Shortcut function on the control bar...ALL 3 PROJECTS RENDERED FINE.  Listening to playback of the Renders from Sonar now and all 3 sound fine. 

So yes...a grateful workaround and maybe slightly less fearful about CbB going away...but that still doesn't make sense to me that one way of Exporting works...and the other chokes. Any thoughts as to why?
 

[OutrageProductions]

So... one interaction with a menu command causes issues and a different operation using a GUI button works.
Have you just tried the default Keyboard Shortcut <E> to open the Export dialog?

And FWIW; I do scoring similar to your track count or larger, and ALWAYS render the tracks as I work, unfreezing them if further edits are necessary. Keeps the CPU load managable and the playback buffer low.

Edited 8 hours ago by OutrageProductions

[Noel Borthwick]

Even real time bounce should be immune from that. Real time bounce runs the transport so it's similar to playback but it's not clocked to the audio device. I.e it's not susceptible to dropping out unlike actual playback. Dropout detection due to starvation direct apply here. If it so happens to take longer to process than realtime it will continue at whatever pace it can.

[Noel Borthwick]

3 hours ago, minminmusic said:

Ok...maybe that's it? Maybe there WAS too many plug-ins within the project?!?

 Nope that's not it. There is no such things as too many plugins as far as export goes. I've seen projects with 500 or more plugins from some users.
It will take as long as it needs to process since there is no deadline unlike playback.

3 hours ago, minminmusic said:

BUT...THIS MORNING...I DISCOVERED...that if use the Export Shortcut function on the control bar...ALL 3 PROJECTS RENDERED FINE.  Listening to playback of the Renders from Sonar now and all 3 sound fine. 

That is weird although I've heard about a similar issue where experience behaved differently depending on how it was invoked. I'll look into it.

 

3 hours ago, minminmusic said:

USUALLY, I was going to File/Export/Audio in both CbB and Sonar (have ALWAYS done it that way)...choosing my options and file locations and hitting Export. It would flush the plug-ins and then choke. In Windows Explorer I could see that a file was generated but it would be stuck at 4kb. If I clicked on the screen...eventually it would go white and say that Sonar's unresponsive...do you want to wait or close.

I thought I had asked you to disable flushing plug-in buffers some plugins don't react well to that. Have you tried disabling that yet?

 

[minminmusic]

14 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

So... one interaction with a menu command causes issues and a different operation using a GUI button works.
Have you just tried the default Keyboard Shortcut <E> to open the Export dialog?

So...it wasn't bound that to key...but went ahead and did that but it didn't work. Seems the only way I can reliably bounce down is through the below attached method. Anything to do with that File/Export/Audio dialog box keeps on choking as soon as it starts.

[minminmusic]

Just now, Noel Borthwick said:

I thought I had asked you to disable flushing plug-in buffers some plugins don't react well to that. Have you tried disabling that yet?

You did...I did toggle that several times off/on yesterday. I didn't really see a difference. Also toggled off/on Plug-In Load Balancing and the system seems a little more stable with it engaged. Going to try this new shortcut method with both disengaged and I'll let you know if there's a difference.

[minminmusic]

Still rendered ok (only a quick listen) with both toggled on/off and that above Export method through the Control Bar. The only difference I saw was it moving right to the rendering stage with no flushing of the buffer,

[Noel Borthwick]

So the only thing that affects it is running the command from the toolbar vs the menu?

 

[minminmusic]

Yes...seems to be. One completes correctly (the Export option on the Control Bar) while File/Export/Audio hangs every time for me.
Thanks for your help thus far Noel!!!

[Noel Borthwick]

And to clarify when you choose it from the control bar you are picking the Export Advanced option to open the dialog?
This seems very random why it would make any difference since both are executing the identical command on the UI thread but just from different locations.
I'm almost certain that this is some bizarre thread timing issue that is affecting one of the plugins that has a vulnerability in its thread safety.

 

[David Baay]

2 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

This seems very random why it would make any difference since both are executing the identical command on the UI thread but just from different locations.

This sounds familiar from another thread not too long ago, but I'm not immediately finding it. I'm thinking it had something to do with the default time range or source when executing a simple export from the Export module without going through the Advanced dialog.

[Noel Borthwick]

Thats why I asked if hes picking export Advanced.

[minminmusic]

No actually...Advanced brings up the same Export dialogue window as File/Export/Audio where it chokes for me.

The screenshot below method will work to fully complete the export with no issues. I've done it like 6 times with no issues.

[minminmusic]

and though I normally wouldn't do it this way...I exported as an MP3 from the above method and that worked as well.

[sjoens]

I normally use this method but have always been curious what settings it uses since it gose straight to file saving.

[Mr No Name]

can't you send it through the outputs of your soundcard/interface/dac and record it into something else in real time ?