2025.12 Early Access Feedback

[Vlad Vilnev]

The program really dislikes heavy projects with deep Side Chain application. I'm afraid of Sonar, it may suddenly start making some sounds, and then turn off. There are scary red numbers on the indicators, and my ears are ringing. And this has been happening for a very long time and very often on loaded projects. But I have good equipment. And I'm not surprised that daw Sonar surveys conducted on various resources don't even have a choice.

[Wookiee]

3 hours ago, Vlad Vilnev said:

The program really dislikes heavy projects with deep Side Chain application. I'm afraid of Sonar, it may suddenly start making some sounds, and then turn off. There are scary red numbers on the indicators, and my ears are ringing. And this has been happening for a very long time and very often on loaded projects. But I have good equipment. And I'm not surprised that daw Sonar surveys conducted on various resources don't even have a choice.

Scary red normally indicates over driving. You make derogatory statements about Sonar but don't state the hardware you are using. Perhaps if you share the stats of your machine,  the exact size of your project, plugin count, number of plugins per track, the plugins in use, audio interface, driver, buffer sizes.

As a point of reference I am aware of at least two professional studios that regularly record projects with 200 plus tracks using Sonar,  without issues. 

[Vlad Vilnev]

After some digging, I found conflicts between Sonar, Spectrasonics Omnisphere 3, and branched routing (each MIDI track has its own logical audio output): old Sonitus Fx plugins (especially Delay) and especially when interacting (in the same effects bin) with Oeksound plugins (such as Soothe 2) in Side Chain mode. In general, I removed all your super plugins, and everything worked smoothly.

[Vlad Vilnev]

Conflict, but without Sonar plugins

[Vlad Vilnev]

That's how it sounds, just very loud. It's a pity that I can't please you with an uncontrollable loud sound.

[Noel Borthwick]

Clipped meters like that is a symptom of a plugin internally "crashed" in its DSP. Its most likely generating bad floating point data. This isn't originating from Sonar and has nothing to do with large projects. You can troubleshoot further by bypassing the plugins till you find which one is generating the noise.

[aleo]

Very glad to see new options coming for altering themes and colors in the U.I.

The design of the U.I. just needs to follow common sense.  Allowing users more freedom to alter colors will make fields and objects within the U.I. easier for them to find and identify.  Allowing users to change the color of backgrounds and text allows users to make these fields easier to read and reduce eye fatigue, e.g. light green or blue text on a black background.

I  do a lot of MIDI editing and often when working with MIDI tracks and instrument tracks in the same project you can find yourself in a situation where the notes (foreground) in the clips in two or more tracks have the same or nearly the same color.  While the colors of the notes in clips can easily be changed in Track Inspector the color change is not synced with PRV.  Editing notes from different tracks with the same color in PRV is particularly difficult.  Hope this will be remedied soon.

[Greg Wynn]

Same issue remains with the new build.

 

“something is funky enabling/disabling plug-ins in the track view individual track effects bin.  If you click on the button within the bin for the individual plug it works however you have to click on the actual plug in for it to show that it's enabled (changes color).

I'm using "dark".

 

[Vlad Vilnev]

20 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Clipped meters like that is a symptom of a plugin internally "crashed" in its DSP. Its most likely generating bad floating point data. This isn't originating from Sonar and has nothing to do with large projects. You can troubleshoot further by bypassing the plugins till you find which one is generating the noise.

I turn off soothe 2 - playback without errors, I turn on soothe 2 again - the result is the same as in the video. Okay, I change soothe to Wavesfactory - Trackspacer with the same settings. The result is the same. Therefore, this is not a plugin issue, but rather a bug on your end.

[Noel Borthwick]

Is this issue specific to this early access release or are you reporting an issue that you see in prior releases?
This thread is to discuss issues that are specific to this release alone.

[Vlad Vilnev]

55 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Is this issue specific to this early access release or are you reporting an issue that you see in prior releases?
This thread is to discuss issues that are specific to this release alone.

 

[Noel Borthwick]

The question is whether the same issue is present in the prior shipping release 2025.11 not whether it's reproducible in the EA 

[Will.]

On 12/20/2025 at 4:16 PM, Vlad Vilnev said:

Conflict, but without Sonar plugins

Hi Vlad,

Did you try creating a new bus track? It’s also possible that the MIDI data is locking up at that specific timestamp, so recreating the Keys track by inserting a new instance of the same instrument track and routing it to a new bus track may help. I’ve encountered similar issues in the past.

Rather than duplicating the tracks, try re-inserting them and then drag your MIDI data onto the new instrument track. Do the same with the bus track and see if that resolves the issue. 

[Vlad Vilnev]

12 hours ago, Will. said:

Hi Vlad,

Did you try creating a new bus track? It’s also possible that the MIDI data is locking up at that specific timestamp, so recreating the Keys track by inserting a new instance of the same instrument track and routing it to a new bus track may help. I’ve encountered similar issues in the past.

Rather than duplicating the tracks, try re-inserting them and then drag your MIDI data onto the new instrument track. Do the same with the bus track and see if that resolves the issue. 

Hi, Will ! The Keys tone was generated by the Spectrasonics Omnisphere 3 vst instrument, and then routed to the Keys Bus, which (as shown in the video) had two q4 and Soothe 2 plugins. I followed your advice and initially converted it from midi to audio using freezing. The routing remained unchanged. This resolved the issue. What does this prove ?! It proves that Noel Borthwick is wrong. However, it raises the next question. It solved the problem because the load from Spectrasonics Omnisphere 3 disappeared, or there was some kind of conflict with this tool.  Or is it that Sonar has fundamental problems and poses a serious health risk to consumers?