David Baay

Yes, but even if you don't use presets, the export setup is initially going to be based on the project template's settings and if you save a project after exporting with different settings, that's now the default for that project when no preset is selected. I tend to just rely on that.

I can confirm that Pow-r dithering options chosen in Preferences are not preserved when Sonar is restarted. This is not a per-project setting so should not be affected by template or project settings. That said, what others are getting at is that the setting in Preferences has been effectively superceded by the setting in the Export dialog which is a per-project setting and does follow the template used to create the project. So far as I can tell, the setting in Preferences is completely superfluous for new projects, but it might still be applicable to projects created in older versions of Sonar that don't have a value stored for the new export dialog.

Sonar's using ASIO while Windows will be using WASAPI; it's not uncommon for the different driver modes to present I/O ports differently. FWIW, I bought a used Ultralite mk3 a year or so ago. It was cosmetically in mint condition but I had to return it because the USB port (or its connection to the board) was mechanically flaky and would disconnect whenever the cable moved.

I am able to repro the lock-up in a simple project with one audio track and one Instrument track and in a new project from the Basic template. I use Go to Time frequently and it works as expected when executed directly with the G shortcut. When executed via the Assist feature, Sonar minimizes to the Taskbar and when brought back to the foreground will not respond to the mouse or keyboard, including trying to close it; it has to be killed in Task Manager. I checked other "Go to" functions and they worked okay so it's not affecting all transport functions as I thought it might be.

FWIW, the original response from Jonesey missed the point that bouncing the clip before stretching resolved the issue; it wasn't about online vs. offline rendering quality after stretching. The actual explanation is that stretching individual clips doesn't ensure the waveform at transitions between clips remains continuous; the phase and/or level at the ends of each clip can change indepndently, creating a discontinuity that produce a click/pop. In order for the stretching algorithm to produce a contiguous waveform at it has to be processing a single file. Bouncing before stretching renders crossfades and merges the multiple cropped files into a single file so they're all processed together rather than individually.

Perfectly safe and fairly common. Just move the entire Projects directory in one go with Sonar shut down. After restarting, go to Folder Locations in the File section of Preferences and change the path for Project Files. The greates drawback to this is that the Created/Modified dates of all the folders will change to the date and time you make the move. If that matters to you, there are 3rd-party file management tools that can preserve the timestamps Note that it's also possible to move whole program directories and things like Cakewalk Content and sample libraries to another drive and create a symblic link from the old location to the new one using mklink at an administrator command prompt: mklink /d "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk Projects" "D:\Program Files\Cakewalk Projects" Any reference made to the original location in the registry or by Cakewalk installers will automatically and transparently be referred to the new location with no performance impact. If the new drive is faster, performance can even be improved. I did this on my old desktop DAW when I installed an SSD in it and didn't want to bother migrating the whole C Drive and OS to it. I just individually moved projects, program directories, plugins, samples and the global Audio Data and PIcture Cache folders to it and created symbolic links as necessary. Works completely seamlessly.

John's okay; he just has early onset old codger.

Your dyslexia is getting the better of you; It's FXB: An FXP files stores a single Preset. FXB files store a Bank of presets.

A quick Google indicates that a number of DAWs have native FLAC support and that the CPU usage to decode in real time is negligable compared to the load from plugin processing.

Good one. I guess you have Windows set to Hide Extensions...? I've been disabling that from the day it showed up in Windows 95.

Too many permutations. The result will differ depending on: 1. The project is new and unsaved so it's using the global Audio Data folder. 2. The project has been saved so it's using a per-project Audio folder. 2. Always Copy is checked/unchecked in Preferences 4. Always Copy is checked/unchecked in the import dialog. 5. Copy All Audio is checked/unchecked in the Save dialog Since the OP was referring to the global Audio Data folder, I tested by importing to an unsaved project. Always Copy was enabled in Preferences, but i overrode it by unchecking it in the Import dialog. This left the clip referencing the original 48kHz, 24-bit audio in the folder from which it was 'imported' both before and after saving the project with Copy All Audio unchecked. If the sample rate and bit depth (and possibly other file-type/format parameters) are matching what Sonar needs, the 'import' will be near instantaneous because it's just creating a link to the existing location and generating a waveform picture. If it does any processing to bring the file in, there's some sort of file format mismatch - maybe something other than sample rate and bit depth. EDIT: @bertox Double-check the value for Import Bit Depth under Preferences > File > Audio Data. This can be different from Playback bit depth shown as Audio Driver Bit Depth in Preferences > Driver Settings.

I think it's pretty standard in the industry to give new versions of synths a new plugin UID. This helps distinguish them and keeps the sound of an existing project from changing when the sound of the new version changes. But this also means that the DAW has no way of recognizing that they're essentially the same and doing an automatic substitution when you do want that. For the OP's situation (which most of us have probably encountered at one time or another) it would be nice if Sonar provided an option with Replace Synth that tried to apply the patch parameters from the replaced synth to the new one, but this could get tricky if the synth parameters are no longer the same or a user tries to do it with completely unrelated synths. As an example, Pianoteq tends to change its sound pretty dramatically with every major release, so you wouldn't want an automatic substitution to happen in a finished mix. The one time they made a big change in sound with a minor release (8.3) and no change in UID, they ended up having to provide users a way of loading the original v8.0 sounds to address this.

I'm not seeing that when the sample rate and bit depth match the project. If I check Associated Audio Files immediately after importing, it's referencing the path to the existing file and that persists when I save the projectso long as the Copy option in the Save dialog is also unchecked.

I did read it. I've now checked CbB on my old laptop and my main desktop DAW. Both are Win11 but the desktop was only recently migrated from Win10 . CbB and Sonar's Performance Meters behave identically with a new Basic project on both machines with the Audio Metronome enabled - Audio Processing: 1-3%, Engine Load: 0.1-0.2%. The only way to get 0% is to set the Metronome to MIDI Bottom line: Pretty clearly something is configured differently in Sonar on your machine, possibly something not obvious like the ThreadSchedulingModel in Config File (AUDINI). There have been a couple other cases of CbB tweaks not working well in Sonar. If you made any changes the default config in Sonar as a matter of course without checking before and after results, you should start reverting them one by one and watch for changes.

Yes, you're right about that. I was re-opening existing projects that have the button unlit and assumed they had always been that way becasue the lanes were never shown. I may never have noticed they're lit until close out completely and come back later. I actually don't pay that much attention or care that much about the state of the button. If i need to show lanes I click it. 🤪 That said, consistency is always helpful.