What are the options for 30+ year users?

[Bass Guitar]

Yes it seems something happened at some point and it was narrowed down to the TTS-1 Ghost and all the pro channel modules. 
 

The biggest mystery was that all these projects opened with out issue up until the fall of 2023. 
Nothing was changed in the way I work . I am very simple in my workflow. 
Safe mode was what points to the Pro Channel as you might remember. 
 

I worked on this for over 3 months with lots of crash dumps submitted etc.  I even went as far as completely reinstalling W11. 

I simply gave up as this problem was easily solved by switching Daw’s. And now as I find by reverting to Splat. 
I realize this issue is very unique to me. I don’t think Sonar itself crashes, but seems the new version is more sensitive to nasty plugins and in this case it’s Sonars own stuff! 

And now I have Platinum working smoothly so I might not even fully switch to that other Daw because it is inferior to Sonar in many ways. 
 

So as I stand I love Sonar. Im not leaving and will simply bide my time waiting for something to change 

Thanks for your patience and understanding. 

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Bass Guitar said:

Im not leaving and will simply bide my time waiting for something to change 

Let's make it change. Please PM me links to some zipped projects so I can help you get this sorted... to satisfy my curiosity if nothing else.

[Xoo]

2 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

initally select no to all. then repeat, one at a time, the process until you have eliminated the plugin causing the issue.

Do a binary tree search - much quicker and less hair pulled out!

[Glenn Stanton]

2 hours ago, Xoo said:

Do a binary tree search - much quicker and less hair pulled out!

no hair, so no problem for me... lol

[Bass Guitar]

What I have done with safe mode is as it shows the plugin I always say yes to the ones I totally trust. This can narrow it down very quickly. 
 

But that said I tend to be only using stuff from Melda, Overloud. Air and a lot of the included plugins that have been part of Sonar for a zillion years. 
I have a lot of  3rd party freebies for those weird things like a Zither. So those are the ones always under scrutiny. 
 

I have been slowly weaning myself of all the DX stuff. The TTS-1 has definitely been a problem for me lately. So I now use Coyote. 

[RBH]

Just speaking for myself here. But I'm an old guy who has also spent many many years in Cakewalk land ( since dos days ) . I have solid functioning system that still runs widows 7 and cannot be upgraded. I have thousands of dollars in sofware and VSTi's. I DO NOT wish to upgrade my hardware and risk loss of 30+ years of archives plus what is now unobtanium VST's,   patches on top of patches etc etc. It's been a tortuous path all these many years. I would love the opportunity to pay a one time time fee to allow my system to sunset at current CBb  install on the current hardware.  Does anyone even know where to find PCIE card capable and firewire capable machines. I use UAD appolo.  Come on bakers , seriously what harm could come from making money with no further obligation to future updates ? Let me pay you for all the years of awesome repair and  updates. I can't really go further with this and upgrade - just to risk a huge  loss. In any Case I truly respect and cherish all the years of music making fun. 

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, RBH said:

Does anyone even know where to find PCIE card capable and firewire capable machines.

I recently set up a Cakewalk DAW system for a friend who bought a refurbished Dell Optiplex 7050 i7-7700 system at Amazon for $210. It has both PCi and PCie slots. I installed a Firewire card in the PCi slot. Works great with his PreSonus Firepod on Windows 10 Pro.

The Windows 10 Pro license was included. I prefer Pro for a DAW because it allows for more control over the OS. It also came with 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 2TB spinner. Quite a loaded little system for DAW work.

On my own system, I use a PCie Firewire card with my Focusrite Saffire FW interface. Works great with Windows 10. See my sig for details.

So for very little money, you could set up a much more capable and up to date system. Get in there while Windows 10 is still being updated. You can still have your old Windows 7 system as a backup.

[user905133]

15 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

On my own system, I use a PCie Firewire card with my Focusrite Saffire FW interface. Works great with Windows 10. See my sig for details.

Quote

Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4P I7-6950X, 48G RAM, Gigabyte GTX 1070 G1, 500G NVMe SSD system/program drive, 1TB NVMe data drive, Win 10 Pro, Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, JBL 305p MkII's, AKG K240's, Beyerdynamic DT880 Pros, Audio-Technica ATH-M50x's, Sony MDR 7506's, Superlux 681 EVO's (I like headphones). Cakewalk CbB/Sonar, Mixcraft Pro Studio, Sound Forge Audio Studio, Studio One Artist. MComplete, AIR synths, A|A|S synths. Lord of the .STH

I had to turn Signatures back on to try to find out what firewire card you use. I'm looking for a possible replacement.

I used to use the firewire port on an E-Mu PCI Digital Audio System Card, but over the years the various features of the card disappeared.  The firewire functionality was the last to go. This might have been due to Windows' updates over the years and I have thought of trying to find a firewire card to try.  

Thanks.

[MozartMan]

26 minutes ago, user905133 said:

I had to turn Signatures back on to try to find out what firewire card you use. I'm looking for a possible replacement.

I used to use the firewire port on an E-Mu PCI Digital Audio System Card, but over the years the various features of the card disappeared.  The firewire functionality was the last to go. This might have been due to Windows' updates over the years and I have thought of trying to find a firewire card to try.  

Thanks.

When you search for a new Firewire card make sure it has Texas Instrument chipset. Don't buy FW card with any other chipset.

[mettelus]

20 minutes ago, MozartMan said:

When you search for a new Firewire card make sure it has Texas Instrument chipset. Don't buy FW card with any other chipset.

^^^^ this... if you Google "pcie firewire 1394a card ti chipset" that will probably pop off Amazon hits and they are roughly $25. Those cards actually run off (and must run off) the legacy driver perfectly fine (driver version 10.0.1904.1 from 6/21/2006). IIRC, the one I got for this machine was the "Syba SY-PEX30016 3 Port IEEE 1394 Firewire 1394B & 1394A PCIe 1.1 x1 Card TI XIO2213B Chipset Requires Legacy Driver for Windows 8 10" The "comedy" is that driver pre-dates Win8. It is a small card and you just need the PCIe slot (and rear case opening) to use it.

[user905133]

28 minutes ago, MozartMan said:

When you search for a new Firewire card make sure it has Texas Instrument chipset. Don't buy FW card with any other chipset.

Yeah.  Thanks for the reminder. I already knew that, Thanks to Tom Deering's FW-1884 documentation which I had been to long before I found him here.  🙂

 

[user905133]

2 minutes ago, mettelus said:

^^^^ this... if you Google "pcie firewire 1394a card ti chipset" that will probably pop off Amazon hits and they are roughly $25. Those cards actually run off (and must run off) the legacy driver perfectly fine (driver version 10.0.1904.1 from 6/21/2006). IIRC, the one I got for this machine was the "Syba SY-PEX30016 3 Port IEEE 1394 Firewire 1394B & 1394A PCIe 1.1 x1 Card TI XIO2213B Chipset Requires Legacy Driver for Windows 8 10" The "comedy" is that driver pre-dates Win8. It is a small card and you just need the PCIe slot (and rear case opening) to use it.

Thanks. I am pretty sure I found the Syba cards on line when I looked a few years ago, but I appreciate hearing your personal experience--I have suspicions about random online ratings/comments. My desktops have PCI slots, and at least one has a PCIe slot. I'll pull out the pdf service manuals,

[MozartMan]

9 minutes ago, mettelus said:

^^^^ this... if you Google "pcie firewire 1394a card ti chipset" that will probably pop off Amazon hits and they are roughly $25. Those cards actually run off (and must run off) the legacy driver perfectly fine (driver version 10.0.1904.1 from 6/21/2006). IIRC, the one I got for this machine was the "Syba SY-PEX30016 3 Port IEEE 1394 Firewire 1394B & 1394A PCIe 1.1 x1 Card TI XIO2213B Chipset Requires Legacy Driver for Windows 8 10" The "comedy" is that driver pre-dates Win8. It is a small card and you just need the PCIe slot (and rear case opening) to use it.

Haha! This is exactly the card I currently have in my PC with Windows 11. Works great with Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. Here is screenshot from Device Manager.

[MozartMan]

1 minute ago, user905133 said:

Thanks. I am pretty sure I found the Syba cards on line when I looked a few years ago, but I appreciate hearing your personal experience--I have suspicions about random online ratings/comments. My desktops have PCI slots, and at least one has a PCIe slot. I'll pull out the pdf service manuals,

Look at my previous post.

[user905133]

5 minutes ago, MozartMan said:

Haha! This is exactly the card I currently have in my PC with Windows 11. Works great with Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. Here is screenshot from Device Manager.

2 minutes ago, MozartMan said:

Look at my previous post.

Thanks, but I already turned off "View Signatures." So if you listed it there, I appreciate the feedback about the Syba card.

[Starship Krupa]

6 hours ago, user905133 said:

what firewire card you use. I'm looking for a possible replacement.

I'm using the Syba mentioned by @mettelus and others. PCIe.

[57Gregy]

On 10/5/2025 at 12:01 PM, MozartMan said:

When you search for a new Firewire card make sure it has Texas Instrument chipset. Don't buy FW card with any other chipset.

I had a stock HP with a VIA FireWire card that worked perfectly for many years. It probably still works but the computer doesn't.
Got a card from another forum member here with the TI chipset to try to continue using my Focusrite Saffire on a newer computer and could never get it to work due to software issues (I think).
Anyway, the TI card is just sitting in a box. Free to a good home. Bapu was the donee.