Sonar 2025.09 Feedback

[Noel Borthwick]

Its a known issue that BReverb has problems rendering some automation with fast bounce. You could possibly get around it by doing a realtime bounce or by using an Aux track to record the rendered output.

[minyong um]

It's a problem related to right-click mouse that keeps happening
I'm attaching a video

If you turn on the Sonar and work on the first screen of the new projact, you will get these symptoms. In addition, there will be a delay in the play & stop while working

[Noel Borthwick]

Not seeing any of these symptoms here. Are you running the latest build 36?

[minyong um]

Yes, I updated it recently

There is no problem with the new project, but it is a problem that occurs when plug-ins are added or audio waveforms are increased while working

[minyong um]

As a result of continuing to check, I think it's okay to open a new project and work on it, and I think this delay occurs when I open an old project and work on it.

There was no problem if it was newly created with exactly the same plug-in and number of channels. It seems to be a compatibility issue with the old project.

[Noel Borthwick]

Then you need to attach or send the specific project that has the issue. Otherwise there is no way to diagnose further.

[David Baay]

On 9/28/2025 at 12:34 PM, Richard Hunter said:

The latest update has disabled Bounce to Track on my machine.

I can run a MIDI track to my drum machine, and it works--the meters for MIDI and audio show activity.  When I try to bounce the two, the MIDI track meter shows activity, and the audio track does not. 

Was "latest update"  build 33 or 36? If "drum machine" is hardware, you would need to bounce with Render in Real Time and Live Input options enabled. If "drum machine" is a VST, I'm not seeing any issues in build 36, and you would need to provide a demo project and specific steps that reproduce the issue.

[Will.]

On 9/30/2025 at 11:29 AM, minyong um said:

It's a problem related to right-click mouse that keeps happening
I'm attaching a video

If you turn on the Sonar and work on the first screen of the new project, you will get these symptoms. In addition, there will be a delay in the play & stop while working

The issue seen in the video is related to your mouse. Certain USB Mouse brands radio communication frequencies lock up sometimes. This could be due to other frequencies hijacking its bandwidth like TV, Radio, Cellphones, Electricity surge, or Wi-Fi frequencies. To reset the communication frequencies just press both buttons down simultaneously. This will be explained in the mouse manual, 😃 but I'll assume you do not have that little booklet anymore. You can always google it. 

That delay in you play and stop could be many things. It could be a plugin, it could be latency issues, keyboard batteries going flat, drive issues, incompatible drivers, background apps, anti-virus or just project specific. Send the project to the developers to have a look at it. 

[Tez]

I'm glad to report that with this update 38, I didn't get any audio glitches  at all working on my project after the install

[Skelm]

Hi, 

I updated to build 038 after noticing this issue in build 036, but it is still happening. When first opening Sonar and selecting a project from the quick start screen, I immediately get a toast notice that the project has been opened, and then no activity for several seconds while the project actually opens. None of the usual loading toast notifications are displayed. Opening anything after this works correctly, it is only the first project opened after launching the app.

I have captured a screen recording of this but it is too large to attach here. I have uploaded it to this location:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19Wu3gzX612_oApSsqqBGOBnoanfCTmWF/view?usp=sharing

 

[Igor]

5 hours ago, Skelm said:

and then no activity for several seconds while the project actually opens.

I see two instances of Complete, some Omnisphere, Legend, and Pigments in your video. Each of these instruments can be considered quite "heavy" in terms of system resource usage, and you're using them all together. I experience also similar in heavy projects with Kontakt and/or several Spectrasonics instruments. All of these instruments require some time to load their samples, which is why loading projects with so many instruments takes longer, and not just the first time you open a project, but consistently. Incidentally, this has been happening for about a year and a half now, so it didn't appear in build .036, but much earlier.

As an experiment, I tried creating absolutely identical projects in Cubase, and the project window opens completely in literally 2-3 seconds. I don't like Cubase for work, but in this regard, it clearly wins in terms of project loading speed.

[msmcleod]

13 hours ago, Igor said:

I see two instances of Complete, some Omnisphere, Legend, and Pigments in your video. Each of these instruments can be considered quite "heavy" in terms of system resource usage, and you're using them all together. I experience also similar in heavy projects with Kontakt and/or several Spectrasonics instruments. All of these instruments require some time to load their samples, which is why loading projects with so many instruments takes longer, and not just the first time you open a project, but consistently. Incidentally, this has been happening for about a year and a half now, so it didn't appear in build .036, but much earlier.

As an experiment, I tried creating absolutely identical projects in Cubase, and the project window opens completely in literally 2-3 seconds. I don't like Cubase for work, but in this regard, it clearly wins in terms of project loading speed.

There are usually options in these VSTi's to control how samples are loaded.  Most have the ability to limit the memory they use for samples, and also how they load or stream samples - e.g. do they load the libraries up front, or load (or over just stream) the samples they need on demand.

Certainly in Kontakt, if you set it to load on demand, and purge all samples before saving your project, the project will open extremely quickly.  If you set it to load all libraries, it'll take much longer to load the project.

The downside of load-on-demand, is you may have to play your project all the way through so it picks up the samples it needs, and you can expect glitches during this first playback if the libraries are large.

Ensuring your sample library is on an SSD makes a huge difference.  Loading a large patch in Omnisphere went from 45 seconds to 2-3 seconds when I moved from HD to SSD (although most patches load in less than a second).  You can tweak your memory limit/preview size/streaming settings to optimise this.

With the exception of streaming, there's no getting around the fact that those samples need to be loaded however, and they're going to take time to load, so really it's up to you when you want that to be.

If you're going to use sample based instruments (and especially if you're streaming), you need plenty of memory and a fast SSD to store the samples to get optimum performance.  For streaming, you'll need a faster PC too. Some even go the extra mile and use Vienna Sound Library with their samples on a separate PC dedicated to hosting the samples. 
 

[Skelm]

9 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

There are usually options in these VSTi's to control how samples are loaded.  Most have the ability to limit the memory they use for samples, and also how they load or stream samples - e.g. do they load the libraries up front, or load (or over just stream) the samples they need on demand.

Certainly in Kontakt, if you set it to load on demand, and purge all samples before saving your project, the project will open extremely quickly.  If you set it to load all libraries, it'll take much longer to load the project.

The downside of load-on-demand, is you may have to play your project all the way through so it picks up the samples it needs, and you can expect glitches during this first playback if the libraries are large.

Ensuring your sample library is on an SSD makes a huge difference.  Loading a large patch in Omnisphere went from 45 seconds to 2-3 seconds when I moved from HD to SSD (although most patches load in less than a second).  You can tweak your memory limit/preview size/streaming settings to optimise this.

With the exception of streaming, there's no getting around the fact that those samples need to be loaded however, and they're going to take time to load, so really it's up to you when you want that to be.

If you're going to use sample based instruments (and especially if you're streaming), you need plenty of memory and a fast SSD to store the samples to get optimum performance.  For streaming, you'll need a faster PC too. Some even go the extra mile and use Vienna Sound Library with their samples on a separate PC dedicated to hosting the samples. 
 

Thanks for the response, but my post wasn't about the speed of loading a project. Usually there are toast notifications that pop up at each stage of the project loading, such as the plugins, the content, the tracks etc, and finally a pop-up saying the project has been opened, at which point I can press play and continue.

The issue I was explaining is that the final pop-up immediately appears, and then no pop-up activity at all while the project is clearly still loading. In other words the final pop-up is appearing too early saying the project has been opened when it should be notifying of the various load stages. 

Hopefully this is clearer.

[Xoo]

34 minutes ago, Skelm said:

Thanks for the response, but my post wasn't about the speed of loading a project. Usually there are toast notifications that pop up at each stage of the project loading, such as the plugins, the content, the tracks etc, and finally a pop-up saying the project has been opened, at which point I can press play and continue.

The issue I was explaining is that the final pop-up immediately appears, and then no pop-up activity at all while the project is clearly still loading. In other words the final pop-up is appearing too early saying the project has been opened when it should be notifying of the various load stages. 

Hopefully this is clearer.

The same happens if you load a project from Start Menu/Taskbar Sonar icon (right click to view recent files and pick one).

[Igor]

3 hours ago, msmcleod said:

If you're going to use sample based instruments (and especially if you're streaming), you need plenty of memory and a fast SSD to store the samples to get optimum performance.

I think everything you've said is absolutely correct! I always do exactly that – purge all the samples from Kontakt (or Spectrasonics instruments) and re-save the instruments (patches). And when I load an empty project (template), it opens very quickly. But I was saying that absolutely identical (!) projects (with all the samples loaded) open several times faster in Cubase; in the current Sonar, it takes up to 10 seconds, and in Cubase, 2-3 seconds. And all this is in the same system with the same settings. Of course, I'm not going to complain about "losing" 10 seconds when loading a project; it's still very significant. I'm simply noting that this procedure is implemented much faster in Cubase.

[D Gorod]

Hello! Meanwhile, the indicators are still disappearing (

[msmcleod]

46 minutes ago, Igor said:

I think everything you've said is absolutely correct! I always do exactly that – purge all the samples from Kontakt (or Spectrasonics instruments) and re-save the instruments (patches). And when I load an empty project (template), it opens very quickly. But I was saying that absolutely identical (!) projects (with all the samples loaded) open several times faster in Cubase; in the current Sonar, it takes up to 10 seconds, and in Cubase, 2-3 seconds. And all this is in the same system with the same settings. Of course, I'm not going to complain about "losing" 10 seconds when loading a project; it's still very significant. I'm simply noting that this procedure is implemented much faster in Cubase.

Is this on every project load, or only on the first time you start Sonar?

[Igor]

12 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

Is this on every project load, or only on the first time you start Sonar?

This happens constantly, every time, since somewhere around the first versions in 2025. I don't think the cause is some "issue" with Sonar itself. I'm inclined to believe that something was changed in Kontakt itself in the latest versions of the 8th series, which slows down the loading of Kontakt projects in Sonar. This conclusion was drawn from the fact that same projects with Kontakt version 6 (or 7) with the same instruments (patches) loaded, load several times faster. But, oddly enough, this hasn't affected the loading speed of projects in Cubase. I've been working exclusively with Cakewalk's DAWs since 2001, and I consider these programs the best, most convenient, and most well-thought-out, but there are still some small issues that leave much to be desired.