Sonar 2025.11 Feedback

[Jonathan Sasor]

Hi all - please use this topic to post feedback specific to the Sonar 2025.11 release. Release-specific feedback is valuable to us, and consolidating it in a single topic is extremely helpful.

We request that  discussion in this thread be restricted to issues directly concerning this release, to make it easier for us to assist users. For other topics, kindly use the feature request section or create new posts.  Off topic messages will be deleted.

Thanks in advance!

[Skelm]

The file opening bug introduced in the previous version is still there. Browse for a file, and when opening it, the quick start screen displays instead of opening the file. The quick start needs to be closed before the file will start to load. The startup toast notifications are also displaying incorrectly. I have provided support with a video showing this and they have been able to replicate the behaviour. 

[Wookiee]

3 minutes ago, Skelm said:

The file opening bug introduced in the previous version is still there. Browse for a file, and when opening it, the quick start screen displays instead of opening the file. The quick start needs to be closed before the file will start to load. The startup toast notifications are also displaying incorrectly. I have provided support with a video showing this and they have been able to replicate the behaviour. 

Not a bug, if you repeatedly open Sonar from a project in Windows browser, or other method, I recommend you disable the Quick Start from starting period. Quick start can always be opened from the file menu.

[Igor]

1 hour ago, Skelm said:

when opening it, the quick start screen displays instead of opening the file

+1
I experience the same thing quite often. I thought it was a quirk of my particular computer, but I see it's not just me. And I'm almost certain it's a bug, as it doesn't happen in most cases, only with certain projects. I haven't been able to detect any specific data dependencies yet. This started happening somewhere in the second half of 2025, as far as I remember.

I always open projects from within Sonar, using the Start Screen tool; I never launch projects from the files themselves in the project folder. This doesn't happen in the latest version of Cakewalk (Bandlab), and it doesn't happen in Sonar at all, either.

[Bass Guitar]

11 hours ago, Skelm said:

The file opening bug introduced in the previous version is still there. Browse for a file, and when opening it, the quick start screen displays instead of opening the file. The quick start needs to be closed before the file will start to load. The startup toast notifications are also displaying incorrectly. I have provided support with a video showing this and they have been able to replicate the behaviour. 

I just had same issue. From the start screen use browse, open project and start screen opens and prevents project from loading. Close start screen and project loads. 

[Bass Guitar]

I didn't make it since my last post to here. I was trying to draw a CC-1 expression envelope and when I started playback I lost my mouse cursor. I stopped playback with space bar and my mouse would show where is was by opening dialogue boxes. I managed to close and save the project which is just a midi file. My cursor came back. 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Bass Guitar
Removed unnecessary content

[Wookiee]

Edit as requested

[Bass Guitar]

You are probably correct because I keep forgetting that I’m using my laptop which has 2013 specs. 
But truthfully other software is running fine and it’s just the graphics of Sonar are constantly glitching out as I work. 
Im staying with family in Puebla Mexico so I bought my old laptop. I saw the Black Friday deal so grabbed a new membership. 

The other thing going wrong is my typical crashes on loading simple projects is back. 
These don’t crash in Platinum. 
But I think Ive narrowed it down to the new Sonar doesn’t like it when plug ins are not found. 
It will load as far as showing me the list of missing plugins and freeze up and go opaque for a few seconds before closing. 
I will wait until I am home to test properly on my studio computer. 

[Wookiee]

11 minutes ago, Bass Guitar said:

These don’t crash in Platinum. 

Technically Cakewalk Sonar and S-Plat are now very different programs. S-Plat uses PNG's and BMP's to generate the GUI Cakewalk Sonar does not, it uses vector graphics. 

Cakewalk Sonar also has a much updated Audio engine. 

On my two year old i9 14900K tower computer, I can not say I have experienced any GUI glitches, but then I am running a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 8gig graphics card.
Having said that, Cakewalk Sonar runs fine on my old i7 4790K CPU from 2014 PC, which only has a 2Gig graphics card.

Can I ask what CPU are you using, how much RAM, does your machine have, do you only have the one disk drive, what graphics chips does your laptop have installed?

[Bass Guitar]

We are off on a road trip to Veracruz for a few days and I didn’t bring the Laptop but you can trust that the specs are on the edge of qualification. I think Lenovo T450. i5 2 core. I added 12 GB RAM and a 500 SSD a while ago. W10 home.  It only has music apps for live gigs and editing stuff when I’m away. I just installed the Command Centre and Platinum on it last Summer. 
It was probably a stretch to install Sonar. 
And it is definitely not happy about its new home. 
I installed Next and that is running smoothly with the exception of the Start screen has same glitch that Sonar has. But Next doesn’t save as midi files which is what I am trying to work on. 
For now I’m just using Platinum again with no issues at all. But you miss those little things that we soon realize are now part of Sonar. The list is long. 
 

Edited 2 hours ago by Bass Guitar

[Wookiee]

@Bass Guitar your CPU is your issue, 2 cores/4 threads 2.9 GHz is way under spec. The absolute minimum spec is 4 cores/ running at 3+ GHz, around two to three years ago it was actually recommended to get proper performance you need 8 core 16 threads, it is what the code is written for.

As noted the start screen opening is its default mode, you can disable the start screen, both in Next & Sonar, in Preferences. As for it being a bug, it is just the way Windows file association works. Windows knows that if you double click on a file with the file extention WRK or CWP it should launch Cakewalk Sonar. It doesn't know to tell Sonar to not launch anything.