THIS STUPID ISSUE HAS BEEN BEATEN TO DEATH A THOUSAND TIMES!!!!  6 STUPID PAGES???
 
GET A FRACKIN' LIFE!

Vastman
THIS STUPID ISSUE HAS BEEN BEATEN TO DEATH A THOUSAND TIMES!!!!  6 STUPID PAGES???
 
GET A FRACKIN' LIFE!

KPerry
In hindsight (which is wonderful of course), it would probably have been better to spend the $10 on the mp3 licence and a good mp3 export interface rather than the development time on supporting arbitrary formats.

Actually it doesn't really work that way. The development time is required to develop an export function, whether you want to export in 1 format or 100 formats. Enabling different formats is simple. 

If you don't want to buy the Sonar MP3 encoder
DownLoad lame for 32bit & 64bit
http://www.digital-digest.com/software/LAME_MP3_Encoder.html
 
For 32bit
Create a "Lame" directory in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\Lame
UnZip a copy of the 32bit Lame.exe and Lame_enc.dll into the new Lame directory
----------------
Load Sonar 32bit - Go Utilities/External Encoder Configuration Utility.
Or outside of Sonar
open C:\Program Files (x86)\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\EncoderConfig.exe
 
Click New & Enter a the following
Friendly Name: Lame High Quality Stereo 320
 
Source Format: Wave
 
Description: Lame High Quality Stereo 320 using the inbuilt "insane" preset (You can write anything in here)
 
Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\Lame
 
Command line: (Copy and paste the whole line)
Lame -m s --alt-preset insane --tt "%T" --verbose --ta "%A" --ty "2015" --tc "%C" %I %O
 
Select: Modal Encoder
Select: Save source file if you also want a copy of the .way file created in the process
 
SAVE IT!
-----
For 64bit
Create a "Lame" directory in
C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\Lame
UnZip a copy of the 64bit Lame.exe and Lame_enc.dll into the new Lame directory
 
Load Sonar 64bit - Go Utilities/External Encoder Configuration Utility.
Or outside of Sonar open
C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\EncoderConfig.exe
 
Click New & Enter a the following
Friendly Name: Lame High Quality Stereo 320
 
Source Format: Wave
 
Description: Lame High Quality Stereo 320 using the inbuilt "insane" preset (You can write anything in here)
 
Path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\Lame
 
Command line: (Copy and paste the whole line)
Lame -m s --alt-preset insane --tt "%T" --verbose --ta "%A" --ty "2015" --tc "%C" %I %O
 
Select: Modal Encoder
Select: Save source file if you also want a copy of the .way file created in the process
 
SAVE IT!
-----
*** Exports the highest quality 320Kb/s Mp3 possible, embeds the track name, the author as 'Contributing Artists' and Copyright as 2015.
 
NB: You have to change the copyright in the Lame Command Line every year!
 
MORE HERE http://lame.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lame/lame/doc/html/switchs.html

Ian Ferrin
I'm totally on Craig's side in this.  If CW has to pay a royalty to make mp3 conversion 'free', why?  There's already 'free' software like audacity and itunes that work great.  Sonar lets you drag a copy anywhere which makes porting mixes or samples simple.  Sonar is fantastic and personally I want them to keep it as reasonable as possible.

Audacity is released under a non commercial licence hence its use of the MP3 encoder doesn't attract a royalty payment..

That's not the case with Sonar which is a commercially released program hence every time it is sold a royalty is payable.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Its really simple to export multiple wave files to MP3 in a batch using SONAR's MP3 encoder. I do this all the time. Here are the steps:
 
Open a new blank project - you can use the blank project template
Open the browser and navigate to a folder that contains your waves to be encoded.
Select and drag them all into your project on separate tracks each starting at time zero
Now choose Edit | select | None  (its important that you do not select anything or it will export all tracks at the max length)
File | Export | Audio
Select Source category Tracks - this will pick all tracks in the project
Select Files of type MP3
Select Bit depth 16
Sample rate 44100 
Enter something in the file name like "mp3export". This is just used as a prefix since multiple files will be exported.
Click Export
The MP3 encoder dialog will be displayed for each file to be exported
Enter any metadata you want and click OK. Depending on how many tracks are present you may have to enter the data multiple times.
 
Thats it - each wave will be exported independently at its original length in parallel if you have the MP engine on.
For convenience you can save these settings as an export preset so that next time you just pick the preset.

 
This ^^^^^^ Should be a sticky imo!

I have been using Winlame lately.
Especially good if you encode to different bit rates.
Essentially the same encoder Sonar uses (Lame) but with a GUI interface.
Export mix to WAV, then use Winlame.