Pre-roll would be better if it allowed you to apply the pre-roll as actual audio. It's vital when doing overdubs during long stops with no count off. Otherwise, I have to manually record the metronome and paste it into an intro.

Good lord folks,, how hard is it to add 4 little rimshots  C#2  to the first or second bars on any of your drum tracks??? 
I've been doing this since 1984!!! 

Thanks for all the input - final verdict is to put blank space at the beginning and put click in drum track. Bob Bone nailed it - if I got what I thought I wanted the audio would be chopped at the beginning due to trying to start the song precisely at the beginning.

For me it depends on what the project becomes when finished. 80% of my projects become backing tracks. So those need the count in as part of the finished track. The rest I'm in the habit of simply deleting the count in when I top and tail the song in a wave editor. 
For a backing tracks I always leave a blank 1st measure. 

No digs intended ...
 
Threads like this really put a spotlight on the fact that individual users have soooo many preferences and approaches to even the things that seem simple on the surface.
 
Seems I also learn something about Sonar every time I read a thread like this too - Thanks brundlefly.

Cactus Music
For me it depends on what the project becomes when finished. 80% of my projects become backing tracks. So those need the count in as part of the finished track...

My band had some gigs where we only used 3 musicians and a backing track. I embedded  short high frequency clicks at the beginning of the backing track to simulate 1, 2, 1,2,3,4 or whatever the beat was. I then designed a circuit that would mute the audio until regular audio was present to disable the muting. Another circuit would convert the clicks into a signal that would drive LED's mounted on mike stands to signal the musicians.
 
The circuit was relativily simple to impliment and very effective eliminating any annoying audible click noises.
 
Walt

Personally I try to start most projects at 1:01:000 unless they have pick-up notes or MIDI messages that have to be sent before the 'first' measure. I avoid pre-roll measures if possible because it bugs me to not have measures numbered 'normally' in pieces where sections/phrases are all 4 or 8 bars.
 
I've gone so far as to simply leave out pick-up beats or move the first MIDI note a few ticks later to help out a particular synth that misbehaves with notes starting at 1:01:000 to avoid using a pre-roll measure. But most of the time, starting at time zero is not a problem for me, notwithstanding the common notion that SONAR always needs some time to 'get rolling'.
 
Here's hoping the Bakers eventually add some implementation of pre-roll/pick-up/setup measures that allows the first measure to remain number 1.

Cactus Music
Good lord folks,, how hard is it to add 4 little rimshots  C#2  to the first or second bars on any of your drum tracks??? 
I've been doing this since 1984!!! 

I have to laugh, because so have I.
 
1- Turn on the 4 track and record the click on track 4.
2- Listen and record drums on track 1
3- record Bass on track 2
4- bounce tracks 1 and 2 to track 3
5- record guitars on track 1 / solos on 2 (with some back ground vocals)
6- record the vocals over the click track you recorded on track 4
 
when it really got technical was when you wanted to record drums in stereo using tracks 1 and 2.
because if you record the click on the drum track it always seems to bleed in to a cymbal crash or something.
that's why I always kept the click on a separate track (except the intro click)
 
 
most of my material are real instruments. I do use midi sometimes for drum samples, exc.
but definitely come from the old school and still have my Tascam 388 (8 track reel to reel)
and my 424 and my 488 and my 424MKII and many others. once I found a place to buy the motors from ive replaced almost every single belt and capstan motor in all my machines as I do a lot of transfer work.
I transfer peoples 4- track, 8 track, reel to reel recordings to Digital audio files so they can import them in to sonar, exc.