Question about trimming

Greetings Folks...
 
I've been using Audacity for years in my home studio, but just outgrew it after a while and wanted more function. So, I figured I'd give SONAR Artist a try. I've found it pretty intuitive to use, and love all of the features it has which Audacity lacks. I'm already able to perform most major tasks that I routinely do after just a few hours of using it.
 
Let me just say up front that I have indeed been reading a lot of posts on here, so one small request... I'm a brand new user and have searched the Internet high and low for an answer to what IMHO should be an extremely simple question. So, please don't crucify me, because nothing I've found here or in the documentation has helped me with the question I'm about to ask.
 
When I record, I typically leave a 10 second lead-in to allow a short time to prepare to perform. Naturally, all of the tracks I record do not end at exactly the same time either.
 
Finally, on to my issue: All I'm trying to do is to trim the beginning and end of a song. I know I can highlight the sections of all the clips I want to *keep* and export them (basically the opposite of what I'd like to do). But, at that point, the tracks are already imported into Artist (I use a separate recorder, a Tascam Tascam DP-32SD) and I'm ready to begin work. From what I've gathered, I'd then need to import the trimmed tracks again? Unless I'm misunderstanding something, that seems completely ridiculous. After my initial imports, I want the beginning/ending trims GONE from the project before I begin work on mixing and mastering.
 
In comparison, to accomplish this in Audacity takes two seconds. You simply click and drag over the sections at the beginning and/or end of the song which you want gone, then press the "delete" key. Bam, done. Of course I know I can still use Audacity to do this, but I really don't think that's a realistic answer since I bought Artist to replace it. It surely seems that this advanced program should be able to accomplish this very basic task. How hard can such a simple thing possibly be?
 
I've tried a boatload of suggestions I've found, many very convoluted. At any rate, none of them have worked for me. I'm really stumped, so I'm still left wondering what anyone here thinks would be the easiest way is to accomplish this, if it's doable at all?
 
Thanks in advance, and apologies sorry for the newbie question.

Absolutely perfect brundlefly, thank you so very much! Your answer is exactly what I was after. Everything's easy when you know how to do it, right? ;^)
 
And mettelus... Yep, as you were saying, what I was after here was exactly that, a "destructive edit". No worries, since the originals are in the Cakewalk Audio folder as you also noted. Also in my recorder on its SD Card, on my laptop, and on my external hard drive that I use for back-ups that lives in fireproof strongbox. Hey, can't be too careful!
 
Thanks for all of the other great information from the both of you as well, rest assured I'll read all of it.
 
Anyway, problem easily fixed, as I was hoping it would be... You guys rule!

Well, unfortunately I'm back.
 
Yesterday, I used brundlefly's suggestion for trimming the beginning of the song, which worked perfectly. But, I couldn't seem to get that method to work with trimming the end of the song.
 
I then found the "Stop at Project End" pull-down and enabled it, and that did the trick during playback. The start/end of the song was also being respected perfectly during audio exports.
 
So, I came back today to do some additional mixing on the existing tracks, and for some reason when I do an export now it's including the blank space at the end of the song again. The weird part is, when I play the mix back completely before the export, it still does indeed stop at the proper place as it did yesterday... The end of the last track with sound.
 
I finally wound up doing a work-around using the From=Now, Thru=Now feature to mark the timeline with exactly what I wanted to export, and after that the song exported properly with the beginning/end trimming in the correct places. The problem with this method seems to be, even if the mixing project is saved, the next time you open it those marks are gone and you have to go through creating them all over again. Shouldn't they be saved along with the rest of the project?
 
I was thinking I might have fat fingered some option along the way today since everything was working fine yesterday, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it may have been, if anything. I also reviewed the event list, and it's totally empty as I expected it to be, since I didn't create any.
 
Any ideas where I may have gone wrong here now, or some other things to check?
 
P.S. Yes, I started reading the 2,000+ page reference manual last night, and fortunately was able to skip a lot of it since I'm not using Cakewalk for recording, video, or any MIDI work. I'll get through it all eventually, and hopefully stop bugging you guys so much here! ;^)

sethmopod
I put markers labeled "Start" and "End" in the places that I want my export to start and end at (make sure you leave enough room for your reverb tails before the "End"). Once I have those markers in place, it's easy to select the timeline between them using any number of methods, highlight the tracks you want and then export. The markers save with the file and are always there for you.

 
Hi Seth, and thanks for what seems to be the simplest idea I've heard so far! I assume your DAW playback and exported audio files come out identical in start/end and length using that method?
 
I've used "regular" markers for things along the lines you've mentioned, but it never crossed my mind to try using them for in/out points of the entire song. The step of having to select the space between those two markers before exporting still seems like it should be unnecessary to me, but it sounds a lot easier than what I've been able to come up with up until this point. Call me lazy, but ultimately I'd simply like to be able to mark the in/out points of a song, permanently across editing sessions. Hell, even my hardware recorder can do that.
 
Anyway, I'll give this a try tomorrow and let you know how I make out.
 
Thanks again for your time!
 

Hi again Seth...
 
Just got around to trying your method, works like a charm.
 
I should have thought to use normal markers for this, but the "From=Now, Thru=Now" markers seemed intended for things like marking song in/out times. I think it was just the name of those markers that threw me off. I can't see myself ever using them again for anything, as markers that don't get saved along with the rest of a project seem pretty useless to me. Maybe there's a good use for them, but right now I can't think of one, and I don't really care. ;^)
 
Enabling "Stop at Project End" seems to have some sort of intermittent bug regarding end times during playback in the DAW versus end times in exported audio files being different. Repeating myself again I know, but I can only come to the conclusion that has to be a bug.
 
At any rate, this is most definitely closest to what I was after in the first place, and very easy to do.
 
Thanks a bunch man, I really appreciate it!

Bristol_Jonesey
I never bother to trim my projects prior to exporting.
 
The method I use to get the desired range exported is simple:
 

1. Select All (ctrl + a)
2. Sweep in the timeline at the top of Track View to encompass the desired range
3. Export

You can of course use this method in conjunction with pre-inserted markers
Open the Markers View (Alt + Shift + 4) then at step 2 above, click & drag between your start and end markers

That's the way that I have always done it.

I thought that I was the only one who did it this way until DannyD told me he did as well.

Now it turns out you do it as well, Colin.

I prefer it this way, as I will often export parts of a longer project.

Multi dupe post, sorry.

I'm glad I was able to give you something helpful.  I use a Mackie Control Pro which has a selection feature that makes it super easy to quickly and accurately select the time between any markers you want to.  My next favorite selection method is to use the markers view the way Bristol_Jonesey.  Honestly, I could never make sense of the 'from=now, thru=now' business, and I started using the markers for the exact reason you describe - end times weren't always consistent - this was particularly a problem with chopping of effects tails.