I have a midi track outputting to TTS-1 which is set as the input to an audio track. The input to the midi track is a midi device set to omni. When I play a note the midi track's monitor lights up green but I hear no sound. The strange thing is, if I start recording then the input is echoed (from the audio track) when I hit a note. Even just clicking the sonar play button and then hitting a note the output comes thru the audio track. The tutorials I've seen online don't require recording or playback for midi input to be echoed, is there a setting I'm missing?
 
Hitting the sample button on the TTS-1 synth also produces sound on the audio track. 
 
I'm running the latest Sonar Platinum on windows 10.
 
Matt

I cant output my tts-1 to an audio track, it goes to either a bus , a patch point or an aux track. How does yours eventually get to the master bus?

It is the input to an audio track, which you set on the audio track itself, not the midi track. The audio track is then output directly to my sound card. There are no explicit buses involved. I tried adding a bus in the loop but it makes no difference.

The reason for this appears to be that Sonar doesn't produce sound from midi input unless it is the active window or it is recording or playing back. Not a big issue but does mean that I can't hear notes when I play a virtual keyboard such as freepiano or vmpk. 

Platinum includes a virtual keyboard Views > Virtual Controller/Keyboard
If SONAR is quiet when focus is lost, it may be the "Share Drivers With Other Programs" option is enabled in Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording.

Try disabling Share Drivers With Other Programs under Audio > Playback and Recording in Preferences. With this enabled, SONAR will close audio ports and let go of the driver when it doesn't have focus. With it disabled, SONAR will retain control and keep them open.

That worked a treat - thank you
 
...and now my midi metronome has stopped working :( - using audio metronome works fine.
 
I don't think it is related to changing that setting though.