mcdonalk
Mudgel, and update:
 
Based on direction from Lynx Technical Support, I have tried to operate various audio sources simultaneously and have reported the results back to Lynx:
 http://www.lynxstudio.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5651&PID=32265縉
 
At this point, I don't know what to conclude.  RX4 (ASIO) and Windows Media Player (MME, presumably) can output audio simultaneously when configured for different channels of the Lynx mixer, but not when configured for thre same channel. However, when Sonar and RX4 are configured either to use the same output audio channels or different ones, the behavior is the same: RX4 indicates an error. In my experience over the past 15 years, Lynx has the best and fastest technical support of any vendor of any of my other acquisitions, so we shall see.

scook
Do you run SONAR as administrator? If so, I believe you will need to setup the other programs with the same permissions.

msorrels
Here's my registry entry.  I've never seen that extra entry appearing though.
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cakewalk Music Software\Tools Menu\7iZotope RX 4]
"ExePath"="D:\\Apps\\iZotope\\RX 4\\win64\\iZotope RX 4.exe"
"MenuText"="iZotope RX 4"
"StatusBarText"="Run iZotope RX 4"
"Type"="WaveEditor"
"RegionFlag"=dword:00000000



Important to note, the reg text dump shows paths with double slashes, but inside regedit they are just single slashes.
 
I never run anything as Admin (though my account does have full escalation rights).
 
One thing that is kind of strange about Platinum (that I don't remember seeing in X3e) is I can't open a wave editor on a Groove looped audio clip.  Only "plain" audio.  It may have always been like that though,  I just can't remember.
 
As for what/who/when that extra registry entry is coming from the best tool for debugging that is the Microsoft SysInternals tool Procmon.  It can log every single file and registry access any software makes.  I often use it to work out why software has gone wrong and to figure out what software is looking for.
 
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645
 
Bad news though, it's very technical and not exactly a end-user tool.
 
As for the multiple apps sharing the driver problem it really depends on the driver developer.  Some are better at sharing than others.  My Saffire will share (with or without the Sonar checkbox) as long as every ASIO app agrees on the sample settings (48khz).  Software that uses MME mode will share anything, it's only the ASIO driver that has control issues.  Hence my reason for letting Sonar have the ASIO and my wave editors use the MME device.  This works because (for example) other apps can still play bells/Skype notifications/YouTube/Browser sounds/etc) even when Sonar is open.  The MME driver is much more flexible than ASIO drivers.
 
Running Sonar as Admin will vastly effect how it launches other apps.  And those other apps may not be very friendly when running under settings they weren't installed with.  Temporary file paths are very different.  Access rights are different.  The registry is different.  Network file shares mounted as the user may not be available.  It's just a bad idea to run software as Admin without a very good reason a full understanding of what that may involve.
 
If I were having problems I'd use Procmon to record everything and look at what files Sonar and the wave editor are accessing and then try and figure out why/change that so it's correct.  I'd also consider deleting all the tool menu entries from the registry except one (back them up with regedit).  Might want to reboot once too (though usually that's a fools errand).
 
One handy tip, Sonar sorts the tool menu (technically the menu is now called Utilities but the second half of the Utilities menu (after the seperator) is the "Tools" menu) using the names of the registry entries (which isn't the same as what is shown to the user) so you can stick a number in front of the name in order to control the order.  As you can see above my RX4 entry is named "7iZotope RX 4" since I want it to show up 8th on the tools menu.  (I have tools numbered 0-7).
 

Sanderxpander

mudgel

Sanderxpander
Am I the only that finds this whole process ridiculously complicated for an end user? Why isn't there an "add Wave Editor" dialog or something that simply lets you point to a program and give the menu item a name? I'm pretty sure most DAWs work that way.

1. I don't know of any other daws that let you pass internal audio to an external editor and save it back.

2. As per Noel's post #12 in the following thread the feature is undocumented and unsupported.
3. There was a 3rd party utility that was called Sonar Utils, that used to do what you ask and more. Unfortunately it was never updated to work for Sonar x64 so we lost the feature. The gent that developed it left off using Sonar.

1. I know for a fact at least Ableton and Logic do this and simply let you browse for your preferred wave editor. Not sure about other DAWs but it seems a pretty common feature to me.
2. If undocumented and unsupported perhaps they need to take down this document
https://www.cakewalk.com/...e-to-SONARs-Tools-menu
from the support site. Seems pretty bad policy to me to direct users to hack their registry.
3. I know it's harsh but I don't think I should need to care about why they haven't developed this. It has been in this state for years. Whatever excuse they had has long since evaporated. I really hope this will be part of an oncoming update, it isn't exactly something complicated.

pwalpwal
sound forge (pc version) hasn't changed for quite a few years now... i read the linked thread, noels comments, he doesn't say anything about "programs like Sound Forge and that their code is legacy as they are no longer making their tools available in Sonar as they used to" not even close...? but at least he shares the registry hacks needed to make external apps work (thanks noel!)

Noël Borthwick IIRC it was to solve the converse problem. When I did plugin manager integration I needed it to be non modal and added a bunch of new items to the tool options like the parent window etc.
Some of the tools menu settings have been around a *long* time - since the pro audio days or earlier, and dates back before my time at Cakewalk.

Noël Borthwick
Dan, Its cool that it works now. Some tools require the current directory to be set.
You might want to post your reg settings for other users of RX. Also you could let Izotope know in case they want to self register this when RX installs. Sound Forge used to do this years ago.

Sanderxpander
If I understand you correctly, this was something SoundForge developers baked into their installation? So Sonar has basically never offered any easy adding of a wave editor through their own procedure?