on the contrary Scook - but there seems to be NO solution...I cannot export a track that only has say 4 bars of audio data to anything less than the size of the biggest track. That seems to be the upshot, so yes, not solution possible in regard to the OP.
 
Sorry to see you taking that attitude! It is not like you.

joden
on the contrary Scook - but there seems to be NO solution...I cannot export a track that only has say 4 bars of audio data to anything less than the size of the biggest track. That seems to be the upshot, so yes, not solution possible in regard to the OP.
 
Sorry to see you taking that attitude! It is not like you.

For the most part that would be the desired behavior. I can't imagine a case where an entire track even with only 4 measures does not export the full length. Clips on the other hand will export just the 4 measures. Because to my knowledge MP3 has no time stamp it would appear to be the wrong format to export to.  BF waves can have a time stamp but it is an uncompressed format. You may wish to research other formats that may have a time stamp attribute. I know of no compressed formats that would. However I am not looking.  
 
Personally I rely on the way Sonar exports. It seems to me to be an ideal way. What you are noticing is it is not ideal for your usage. Considering I can't recall this ever having come up before its likely a very unusual case. You do have some control though. Exporting as wav and import those to trim any dead air after the audio may reduce the total bytes used while exporting to MP3 with a variable bit rate.  This should reduce the file size. 

Thanks John, yes that was the solution I came up with - as I wrote earlier - in fact I can do this with an MP3 of the data as well as wav (using Audacity) and it does reduce the sized somewhat, however it is not ideal and is labour intensive when dealing with multiple parts to edit. But it is a solution haha!
 
And yes I totally agree, it is the desired behaviour it was a method of running live dynamically mixable MP3 parts that got me along this path - it is the one thing I miss about MIDI, that ability for live control.
 
I am also looking at using Sonar itself as the live tool, however I have not come across any way to remove projects after they are finished, using the Playlist option. As I wrote earlier, when one has say 30-40 CWP's stacked in the background, then I can see possible issues coming from that.
 
Still there may even be a work-around for that too Unfortunately Scook did not comprehend my posts, and simply took the view I was not looking for a solution...I did try to keep it light, hence the laughs etc...he must have been having a bad day hahaha!
 
Thanks for your post!