Hi folks, hope you are all well.
 
The rather excellent post below by Geoff (posted some time ago) explains how to use guitar sims with Sonar. However I'd like to ask a couple of related questions which I've listed at the foot of the post. I did post this as a reply to the original but then decided perhaps it might be better as a new post:
 

1. Run the Guitar cable from the guitar to the Focusrite interface (don't mic your own amp).
2. Launch Sonar and insert a single audio track into a new project.
3. Set the input for the audio track (at the bottom of the track inspector) to match the input from your interface that your guitar is plugged into. **tip: you might have to click to turn off the pro channel tab to see where to set the input on your track.
4. Click the Input Echo button on the track so that you can now hear the completely clean sound of your guitar. (If there is a lag between the time you play a note and the time you hear it then reduce the latency on your interface by going to
Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording and set Driver Mode = Asio.
Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings > Click the Asio Panel button and reduce the buffer size).
5. switch the track inspector to the Pro Channel View by clicking Pro Channel at the top of the track.
6. Drag TH2 from the browser window (Hit B to see it if you can't. TH2 will be under Plugins > Audio FX > VST2 > Overloud) to the Pro Channel.
7. Now when you play a note, you hear it through TH2.
8. Click the Master button at the top left. If you are playing a guitar with single coil pickups (like a strat) select Input = Low. If you are playing a guitar with humbuckers (Les Paul) select input=high.
9. Click the In Lev button at the top left of the TH2 window. This lets you know if TH2 is getting enough signal. Now, I usually let my interface auto set the level for the recording with a good 6 dB of head room. This is less signal than TH2 likes, so I often increase the Gain Nob on the Track inspector until the In Lev is showing in the GOOD range. (This trick means you don't clip and you also get the most out of TH2). (Also, don't forget to turn your guitar all the way up to 10 on the guitar body. No reason not to send a loud signal.)
10. Next click the Tuner button to the right of the In Lev button and tune up.
11. On the right hand side, third button down, click SEARCH.
12. Play the guitar while clicking on the different preset choices. Click Load Sound to import the whole row of presets to the main interface so you can switch between them. Load Variation only replaces the selected individual sound (not the row) with the currently selected sound in the main interface.
 
Advanced trick: Credit to Craig Anderton
1. Drag the EQ in the pro channel BEFORE the TH2.
2. Enable the EQ and the Low Pass (LP) filter (bottom of the EQ).
3. Set the LP Slope around 12 and slowly bring down the LP Frequency while playing.
... see if this doesn't tame some of the high end stuff created by TH2. TH2 emulates nicer microphones than most of us have. When you record an amp with a cheap mic, it doesn't have all that high end. Doing this can help get sounds more like what you are used to hearing.
 
 ** When Craig Anderton mentions 'Re-Amping' he is describing the technique of recording a guitar direct to an interface and then playing just that signal and sending it to a Real Amplifier and then tweaking that amplifier and recording it with microphones. This is somewhat commonly done. Often, when guitarists want to hear their amps and engineers want to be able to have the dry signal, they take the dry signal and then send it to the guitarists Amp. Then they also mic the amp. This gives you the best of both worlds. If the recording of the guitarists amp turns out to be awesome, you're done. If not, you can make changes by either re-recording the guitarists amp or using an in the box effect like TH2 to augment it.

 
At the moment I'm demoing Guitar Rig 5 and it's pretty good, but I've decided I really want to record the effected sound 'live' rather than add it later as an effect. The post above explains how to record a clean signal whilst hearing the effected signal but this isn't really what I'm after; I'd like to be able to use GR5 more like a hardware effects unit so that when I dial up a sound I like, it's actually recorded. Or I'd at least like the option to do that if I wanted.
 
My question therefore is can this be done? I guess if it can't then I might be better off going for a hardware processor like the Boss GT-001. A traditional guitar/amp set up might be the optimal solution but lack of space and not annoying the neighbours means I have to go down the sim route. 
 
My second question is about specific statements in Geoff's post above:
 
5. switch the track inspector to the Pro Channel View by clicking Pro Channel at the top of the track.
6. Drag TH2 from the browser window (Hit B to see it if you can't. TH2 will be under Plugins > Audio FX > VST2 > Overloud) to the Pro Channel.
 
He's talking about TH2 whereas I'm currently demoing GR5 but I'm intrigued why he's suggesting that the effect be dragged to the Pro Channel rather than the track itself? I'm sure there's a totally logical answer :-)
 
Thanks
YC

I'm not sure why you would want to record the amp sim output directly to a track but I think it can be done if you route the output of the track to a new aux track and enable that to record.

The main advantage of placing fx in the pro channel rather than the fx bin is that you can then place other pro channel plugins (and other plugins) either side of the effect. If you put the sim (or whatever) in the track fx bin you can't do that.

As for recording the sim output direct rather than using it as it's intended to be used to process a 'dry' audio track, I fail to see any advantage in doing things that way. There may even be disadvantages if your PC can't handle low enough latency for the sim to be usable while the sim is running at its highest quality processing. Tracking with an amp sim or synth set to process at a lower quality setting, then increasing latency and switching the plugin to highest quality at the mixing stage is the solution to that problem.

If having recorded the track you want the result "set in stone" then bouncing the track will achieve that.

If you really want to record live with an AMP SIM, then I know of two ways (and not the only two ways) to do this:
 
1) Get a UAD Apollo or TWIN and buy their GUITAR amp sim plugin(s).  Load UAD plugin as an insert into the APOLLO console and turn on "record with effects".  In essence, to Sonar, this audio track would appear as if you recorded with a mic and a real amp directly into Sonar.   This method would cost us about $3000 if you don't already own an Apollo.  The guitar amp plugins could about $200 each.  You could do this with a TWIN DUO USB as well for about $1500 (including the amp plugins).  This sounds marvelous and you can play and effect your signal in REAL TIME (almost ZERO latency) but very expensive.
 
2) Get a hold of a second computer (doesn't need a lot of juice) and install the amp sim software on it.  Run your guitar through this computer and just run the AMP SIM stand alone and send the audio outputs to your DAW audio input. If you already have a second computer hanging around and own GUITAR RIG, this would be the least expensive way to pull this off.
 
To try and record directly into SONAR whilst running the amp sim as a plugin to SONAR would introduce latency which defeats the purpose.  
 
What I do when recording guitars is to set up the amp sims in APOLLO, and record both the AMP audio and the clean (DI'ed) audio of the guitar/bass track so that later in mix down I have more options on these tracks.  I could always RE AMP (virtually) the DI'ed track if I don't like the way the AMP SIM sits in the track.
 
Hope this helps you,
Jim
 
 

Aux Tracks,the new feature in SPlat will allow you to do this! See the video on setting up an AUX Track. That way you can record the dry signal to one track while routing that track to its AUX Track and recording in realtime thru an amp sim. I tried it and it works great! Very easy to do as well.

BTW, Sonar always records just the dry track!!! If you switch the guitar sim off in the FX bin you will hear your dry track. This way you can switch to any amp you want after the actual recording. I can't tell you how many times I have had to tweak or just choose a completely different amp setup after the actual recording. After you have everything tweaked out then you just bounce to audio if you want.
OTOH, Aux tracks allow you to permanently keep that dry track unaltered. There are a few options for you.

TBH, the simplest (and recommended) way of #1 is to record as Geoff mentioned, and then select the track when done (with GR5 on) in the track view (TV), then in the track view - Tracks menu (top of TV)->Bounce to Track(s)... with the "Track FX" checked in the popup you will get. This will "bake" the GR5 into the new track. Then Archive the old one (just in case you need it later). The reason for this is because you DO want that dry track in years to come -  you may want to tailor the amp, create harmonies, etc. - archiving it removes it from CPU overhead, but it is still there.
 
Without that original dry (no FX) track in years to come, if you decide on something cool, you cannot "unbake" it to get a dry signal back, you will have to re-record it (and you will not enjoy that aspect).

Please don't buy an UAD card for this. If you do want to go the hardware route, at least consider a Kemper.
 
But I have to admit I also really don't see the point of doing this, for reasons stated by everyone else. Even so, as I said you can already do this by routing the output of the live track to an aux track and arming that. That way you can even record dry and wet at the same time. 

Sanderxpander....  
 
I wouldn't buy a UAD card just for this but I highly recommend that you should still buy one.  If just for the PLUG INs.  I don't want to start a native vs DSP discussion but I just want everyone to know that UA produces very very good plug ins.  I wish they ran native but they don't.
 
The new APOLLO stuff is amazing as well with its UNISON mode.
 
Just a UAD fanboy here,
Jim

I know UAD, they make very good plugins. I'm just not really a fan of their concept. But they're hardly a leading name in amp sims and besides, the OP can already do what he is asking about with just Sonar.