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.

Are you trying to insert some silence? Or do you need a count in before you start to play/ record?

If I'm understanding correctly, you can select all tracks and then sweep the silent intro section in the timeline to select it, and then hit delete on your keyboard. Then lasso-select all the trimmed clips and drag them back to time zero. Normally you could use Delete Special and check the Delete Hole option, but it has issues in the current release that make it more predictable to slide the remaining clips back manually.
 
After you have the beginning trimmed and relocated, you can use the same select-and-delete process to trim the end.
 
You might also want to look into using From=Now, Thru=Now, From=Beginning and Thru=End, to precisely set end points for the selections without having to drag-select a large time range with the timeline zoomed way in. I use non-standard key bindings for these functions, and don't recall the default bindings right offhand.

CraigG58
 
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

*Almost* the same thing in SONAR really.... let me explain....
 
First, a "clip" is a window into the underlying wave file. What you posted is also how it is done in SONAR (minus the "delete key" part). Using the Smart tool, hovering over the end of a clip shows a [ or ] cursor. When you click-drag that, the clip resizes (window only). The "hot spots" with the Smart Tool are listed in this page.
 
That said, slip-editing is non-destructive, meaning if you slide an edge in, you can slide it back out and the audio reappears... it is still there, just not visible/playable. If you truly want it gone, after you slip-edit so you see the "window" you want, you can right-click the clip and select "Bounce to Clip(s)." What this does is create a new wave file just of what the current clip looks like. This is a "destructive" edit, but in fact the original wave file is still in your audio folder should you ever want to use it again. SONAR creates a new file, but doesn't delete the old one.

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!

No orangesporanges, but thanks for the reply... Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. Pointer to the problem answer is in my second post.

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! ;^)

You're not alone in this, Craig.  I've tried everything and only had success part of the time.   I've tried slip-editing the ends and bouncing to clips.  Only works sometimes.  I've tried do the same thing but also applying trimming.  Sometimes that works.  I've tried using the 'S' key to cut off the ends, applied trimming, bounced to clips.  Same results.  I haven't tried bouncing to tracks, but that puts too big a dent in my workflow.
 
Still hoping to find the solution.
 
d

Here's what I do.  You may or may not find that it fits your work flow.
 
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.
 
With the markers in place, I seldom bother to trim the extra time at the start and end of the project.  I've defined the Page Up and Page Down keys to go between markers and find that very fast to navigate to different sections of songs once I get the markers in for verse 1, chorus 1, etc.
 
The other thing that I'll do that seems like it may help your workflow the way that I understand it, is that I'll have a lot of Sonar files representing different stages of song creation.  I'll have a "Song - Drum Tracking" "Song - Bass Tracking" all the way to "Song - Mixing" and then dated versions of important mixing waypoints "Song - Mix 2016-05-01".  As I get closer to the actual mix, I'll clean up the beginnings and endings a bit more and delete any alternate takes from the "mixing" file while leaving them in the "tracking" files.  This makes it way easier to backtrack when I need to.  On the mixing file, I may leave out the start marker if I'm actually starting from 0:00, but I always put that ending marker in there.
 
Hope this helps,
Seth

d_in_conduct
You're not alone in this, Craig. I've tried everything and only had success part of the time. I've tried slip-editing the ends and bouncing to clips. Only works sometimes. I've tried do the same thing but also applying trimming. Sometimes that works. I've tried using the 'S' key to cut off the ends, applied trimming, bounced to clips. Same results. I haven't tried bouncing to tracks, but that puts too big a dent in my workflow.

Still hoping to find the solution.

 
Hi d... I know it isn't very comforting, but it's a nice sanity check for me to know that I'm not the only one out there with this issue.
 
It doesn't seem like there is a true solution from what I've seen, only work-arounds, some of which seem very cumbersome. You guys who have responded and tried to help me out, please don't take that the wrong way, because I really appreciate your time. The fault lies in the software, as there should be a very easy way to do this. There's no reason on earth anyone should have to go through bouncing, exporting/re-importing tracks and the like, just to trim a song. The tracks are already loaded into the editor, so let me edit them without having to jump through all of these hoops.
 
I know I sound like a broken record (pardon the pun), but I can't understand why what otherwise seems to be a very well developed audio editor would not have a simple function to trim the beginnings and ends of songs with a mouse drag and one keystroke (Delete!). To be honest, I'd even be happy if it remembered the "From=Now, Thru=Now" features and the like across editing sessions. I never really thought about it, but that sort of non-destructive editing might be handy. But, it's really not something I'd consider essential at all, since there's always "Undo". Plus, no one in their right mind would be editing original track exports without back-up copies in the first place.
 
As for DAW software playback and WAV file exports ending in different places, that has to be a bug. The start/end and durations of those two things should be absolutely identical, down to the millisecond.
 
Sorry to everyone if I sound a little pissed off, but I am. I wasted more time today trying to figure all of this out than it took me to hash out the essentials and perform the entire mixing/mastering itself on this particular song, and I've only been using Artist for three days!