I have been experimenting with a configuration where I do composition in Finale but use SONAR for playback.  The only extra software I use is LoopMIDI.  I run Finale in MIDI mode and send MTC from Finale to SONAR over the virtual MIDI ports.  I do not use ReWire.  The transport is controlled by Finale, and SONAR receives all the "human playback" stuff, which is mostly in the form of extra controller information. 
 
I do have one question that is not really my main issue, so let me get that out of the way.  The playback does respect all the  tempo information in Finale, including ritards and a tempo, both in real-time playback and also when I record the MIDI tracks in SONAR and play them back independent of Finale.  I expected to see these tempo variations in the View Tempo, but that information is a flat line (120 constant, which is the tempo in the SONAR transport.)  Yet it plays back correctly.  Where is that tempo variation information kept?
 
And another secondary question which is not the real reason for this thread: I noticed that if I run the playback from Finale while in SONAR I record the synth output (not the individual MIDI streams) -- and then if I play back just this audio track in SONAR without Finale being involved, there are all sorts of time stretching and distortion in that WAV file.  If I play back the recorded MIDI tracks within SONAR and run them through the synth, it sounds perfect.  Maybe that is working as designed, and I don't really need to record the WAV while Finale is running.  I am just curious about that one.
 
Now to my real issue.  Everything is working pretty well, except that SONAR keeps dropping out of slave mode.  If I never touch  anything in SONAR and just start and stop the Finale transport, SONAR seems to remain in the slave mode with the SONAR transport tracking along with the Finale transport.  But if I do just about anything in SONAR, such as edit a sustain pedal envelope, or really anything, the next time I start the Finale transport, SONAR is no longer tracking its transport, and may not even play the incoming MIDI.  I know the MIDI is still being sent, as I can see that in the LoopMIDI control panel.
 
The only way I have been able to resolve this is to entirely shut down SPLAT.  It does not work to just close the project.  I must completely shut down SPLAT.  And when I start that same CWP file again (leaving Finale and LoopMIDI running the whole time) everything syncs up again.
 
I thought if I went in and re-applied the sync settings, that would clear it up, but once SONAR stops syncing, there is absolutely nothing I can do to get it back, short of a complete shutdown.  This is a problem because my purpose for linking the two products is so that I can use the power of SONAR to get a better mix than is possible from within Finale.
 
Any ideas about this?

cparmerlee
I do have one question that is not really my main issue, so let me get that out of the way.  The playback does respect all the  tempo information in Finale, including ritards and a tempo, both in real-time playback and also when I record the MIDI tracks in SONAR and play them back independent of Finale.  I expected to see these tempo variations in the View Tempo, but that information is a flat line (120 constant, which is the tempo in the SONAR transport.)  Yet it plays back correctly.  Where is that tempo variation information kept?

 
Tempo information is also send via MIDI that's why Sonar adjusts to it without having the information itself in its tempo view 
 

cparmerlee 
And another secondary question which is not the real reason for this thread: I noticed that if I run the playback from Finale while in SONAR I record the synth output (not the individual MIDI streams) -- and then if I play back just this audio track in SONAR without Finale being involved, there are all sorts of time stretching and distortion in that WAV file.  If I play back the recorded MIDI tracks within SONAR and run them through the synth, it sounds perfect.  Maybe that is working as designed, and I don't really need to record the WAV while Finale is running.  I am just curious about that one.

 
 
Haven't done a lot of MIDI sync'ing myself but could it be down to using this option and not having tempo information in Sonar?
 
Full Chase Lock. With this option the speed of audio playback is continuously adjusted to stay with the timecode.
 

cparmerlee 
Now to my real issue.  Everything is working pretty well, except that SONAR keeps dropping out of slave mode.  If I never touch  anything in SONAR and just start and stop the Finale transport, SONAR seems to remain in the slave mode with the SONAR transport tracking along with the Finale transport.  But if I do just about anything in SONAR, such as edit a sustain pedal envelope, or really anything, the next time I start the Finale transport, SONAR is no longer tracking its transport, and may not even play the incoming MIDI.  I know the MIDI is still being sent, as I can see that in the LoopMIDI control panel.

 
Hitting 'play' should get you into slave mode with Sonar waiting for external MIDI to sync to ... hitting esc should get you back out of it so that you can do things in Sonar ...

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
Hitting 'play' should get you into slave mode with Sonar waiting for external MIDI to sync to ... hitting esc should get you back out of it so that you can do things in Sonar ...

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.  This is the problem.  It is getting into a mode where hitting Play does NOT cause waiting for sync mode.  It is as if SONAR gets entirely out of sync mode and the only way I can get that back is to shut down SONAR and start the same project up again.

cparmerlee

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
Hitting 'play' should get you into slave mode with Sonar waiting for external MIDI to sync to ... hitting esc should get you back out of it so that you can do things in Sonar ...

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.  This is the problem.  It is getting into a mode where hitting Play does NOT cause waiting for sync mode.  It is as if SONAR gets entirely out of sync mode and the only way I can get that back is to shut down SONAR and start the same project up again.

 
I need to setup a new MIDI synced project later this week. If I run into something similar I'll let you know.
 

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
I need to setup a new MIDI synced project later this week. If I run into something similar I'll let you know.

Thanks.  I have gone forward setting up a full template for a big band.  That definitely sounds a whole lot better than anything I can get directly out of Finale, even though I am using mostly the same samples (Garritan with Aria player).  In this case, I decided to not try to sync the time.  I simply echo the incoming MIDI and that works very well except that Finale does a lousy job of turning off notes when you are using the flyover method to hear individual notes.  Even the Finale "all notes off" command doesn't clear the notes.  You have to run the playback over the entire section that included the lingering note to get the note-off to work.
 
In this setup I am able to use SONAR as a background sound engine and work entirely in Finale.  In SONAR, I used a limiter, multi-band compression, 2 verb buses for blend and space, a stereo expander, and a few effects on individual voices.  Once that was all set up, I didn't have to touch a thing in SONAR while editing in Finale.
 
To produce a mixed rendering, I thought I would get cure and use the new patch points to create an aux track out of the master bus, and record into that track.  Apparently there are still some bugs in SONAR in this area.  I made quite a mess and had to go back to an auto-save version of the sonar project.  So to do a rendering, I first arm all the MIDI tracks and then record the MIDI in SONAR in real time.  It is not synced to the transport, but the timing is fine (just not correlated with SONAR's measures.)  After I have captures the MIDI, I do a normal export to audio entirely within SONAR.  That all works fine, and then I delete the captured MIDI so I can go mack into real-time mode with Finale.
 
This is all more work than simply running the sound from Finale, but there is a huge difference in the quality of the output.  And once a template is set up, it should not be much work on the next project.