Why you shouldn't use File Explorer to rename a Sonar file

[jcrandel]

I offer this cautionary tale so it won't happen to you. I'd recorded several vocal takes of a song demo using comping yesterday. This morning, I decided to change the title of the song using Windows File Explorer. Bad move. As you can see in the screenshot, when I opened the file this morning, all of the take lanes on the vocal track except the last one I'd recorded were blank. They weren't muted, and it didn't matter if I selected one or more of them to play. After various attempts to bring them back were unsuccessful, I considered what had changed since yesterday and realized it was that I'd renamed the file. The only other thing I did was to covert the vocal track from stereo to mono. Using File Explorer again, I changed the name back to what it was originally and reopened the Sonar file. The take lanes were still blank. Fortunately, I have "Show hidden files, folders, and drives" enabled in Windows, so I was able to view the last saved hidden file from yesterday in File Explorer. These files have no extension telling it what app to use, so I specified opening it in Sonar, and when I did,  all of the take lanes were intact. I'm not sure which of the two things I did caused the take lanes to become blank, but I don't recommend doing either of them if you want to preserve your take lanes. 

 

Edited Thursday at 04:02 PM by jcrandel

[John Vere]

Best practices for all software that has complicated multiple files associated with it is to use save as to rename a file. 
You now have the old file as a back up. Delete it later when you know it is safe to do so. 
Sonar has a box that allows you to copy the audio files with the new version if you re- locate it. 

Edited Thursday at 10:34 PM by John Vere