That's awesome, Bob. I haven't been to a show (or played one) in freaking ages. Probably why I'm getting crazier, lol.
 
As far as Vlad sounds like you've got her on the right track. I'd just muddy the waters with my hackery at this point. ;-)

Thank you for your replies. I was looking in to Pyro, but the day I was asking about it on the forum, no one would support that idea, so I bought encoder for Sonar. I did not think of converting wav to MP3 at a moment, but should of. There was something about Pyro that made me decide against of it- it felt outdated. I used to use WavLab 5, but not sure if it would install on Windows 8 machine, as it has to run WavLab 2 first and then upgrade.
 
LAME did not work for me. I guess- it depends on what link you use to download it. I did it, went through many sites, and at the end it did not work. Then I downloaded Audacity. When I opened it, it asked for LAME. So I gave up.
 
I used to have Nero- they just released 2014 version and keep offering it to me. May be I need to call their support- reading the web site- I do not understand if it actually converts to MP3 or not. It talks about all video formats conversion and nothing about MP3.
 
I do have new system, but Sonar is still having drama. It takes a while to scan my plug ins because I have lots of them- IK Multimedia, Novation (see my other drama thread), Komplete 9, Play and others. Feels like if I disable scan on opening, then something is missing. I am aware that it can be disabled. My point was that it was not bright decision to spend $20 for SWonar encoder as it is difficult to use for conversion. Also for some reason it takes forever to import .wav file.
 
I also can use AIF converter, so a program that can do MP3 and AIF would be great. I am not sure if that Video Grabber is what I want...
I kind of like WavPad. Anybody else had experience with it? I listened some of my songs on line, converted with WavLab and it sounded very bad- could not even hear the guitar track on a background- sounded like noise. Here- check out "Come back Clean" 1st file and Come back Clean- last file- one of them has guitar, 2 track with distortion, other- does not- hardly can hear difference. Not trying to get you to listen my music, just technical issue. The point is- MP3 converter is important- I need good one, as my music is very detail-oriented and these songs sound horrible in MP3.  https://www.musicpage.com/astral Thank you.

Again, please consider the following:
 
1.  The Cakewalk MP3 encoder is NOT NOT NOT intended to be used for conversion.  It is for exporting your project's audio to MP3.  If your audio file to be converted is already a saved wave file, then you should NOT NOT NOT be loading that into Sonar to do the conversion.
 
2.  You can export directly from Sonar to MP3, from your project, now that you have the MP3 encoder purchased from Cakewalk.  For projects created in Sonar, you just select all, or whatever portion of your project you are exporting, then tell it to export audio, and choose MP3 as the output file type.  You then get to not only control the MP3 quality, but also you can encode the song/artist info into the MP3 file.
 
3.  For converting wave files to MP3, it is best to do that with any of the zillions of free converters out there.  The YTD Video Downloader I mentioned does a great job of file conversion.  Just click on Convert and a few clicks and in about 30 seconds to 1 minute, your conversion is complete.  This same process is available in lots of converter programs - just pick one or two from what was posted earlier and try them out.
 
4.  As far as your scan time, please list the search paths you currently have set for your Plugin Manager to find plugins - I would like to see how hard you are making it work, and looking at the paths may help expose something that can be tweaked to help shorten that time.  So, please post the paths for VST searches.
 
Bob Bone
 

All Cakewalk Sonar projects contain wav so for Sonar it does not matter if it converts 1 wav or 20. It is the same thing. Not exactly convenient. Exporting project leaves it without mastering. I used to do all Mastering in WavLab. So Sonar would output row wav file that needs mastering before MP3. I have no idea how to master in Sonar. (would be another topic). I will look at your movie converter, thanks for posting. I will also look in to WavPad. I don't remember any other options.

Vlada - good morning.
 
1.  Exporting Audio as MP3.  I do not quite understand your comment about 1 wave file or 20 making no difference and being inconvenient.  I was trying to communicate earlier that if I am exporting audio to MP3, I select all of the tracks in the project, then click Export Audio, set my bit-depth and sample rate to usually 16 bits and 44100, and then export the entire mix, with all options checked (except the option to add to Cakewalk Publisher), and then export.  Any discussion I have made on this subject has NOT mentioned mastering - only the mechanics of exporting to MP3.
 
2.  Regarding your comment about encoding to MP3 from within a project leaving you without a mastered project.  As I noted above, my earlier comments did not reference mastering at all - just the MP3 encoding process from within Sonar.  There are many approaches to mastering, and a whole bunch of different topics there.  If you have finished the mixing process, but not yet mastered, you would not want to encode to MP3 yet - you would want to EITHER add some buses and use those to 'master' within Sonar OR export your finished mix as a stereo broadcast wave file and then determine how you wanted to approach mastering.  At that point, you could follow an external mastering service's instructions for how they want things sent to them and do things accordingly, you could do your own mastering outside of Sonar, or you could set up a new project within Sonar and import the finished mix and then master it in Sonar.  IF you master within Sonar, either within your original project or as a new project where you have imported the finished mix, once you finished mastering you would THEN export the mastered audio to MP3 following the instructions I gave earlier.  If instead you master outside of Sonar, then you would use some MP3 converter program OUTSIDE of Sonar to convert the mastered audio to MP3.  (Such as the convert function in the YTD Video Downloader - which is what I use when I work with conversion outside of Sonar).
 
My own approach is to use the services of a mastering company, and each one will have a set of instructions for how they want things prepared and sent to them.
 
Here are some Sonar threads I think you will get something out of going through:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Mastering-in-Sonar-X2-Producer-m2871356.aspx
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Mastering-in-Sonar-why-not-m604999.aspx
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 

Thank you for writing this information, I just don't know why you explain it. All I said was that when you encoding entire project to MP3, which may contain 20 tracks, each track will contain wav files, and Sonar will convert all of them in one MP3. The same way if you import already mixed down to Stereo track in to sonar, it will be a wav file and you can convert it (encode) to MPs.
 
I said- assuming mastering outside of Sonar- it makes it inconvenient to import it back in to Sonar for encoding to MP3. But thanks for Mastering suggestions. I may end up spending money and buy WavLab- also I was not doing much with it for mastering- only "Compress" and "Normalize". Could probably do the same in Sonar.

Well, I provided the explanation because I was not sure exactly where you were with understanding it from earlier posts.  
 
Good luck, 
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 
 

vladasyn
OMG- this took almost forever!

Yeah, that's really bizarre.  For me rendering a 5-minute program:
 
- Exporting to WAV might take 45 seconds
- Exporting to MP3 might take 4 minutes
 
If I run the WAV through WinLAME, which theoretically uses exactly the same encoder that SONAR uses, WinLAME will convert it in about 20 seconds.
 
In other words, I can render it to WAV, get out of SONAR and convert it to MP3 with an external tool, and still be done 2 minutes sooner than if I exported directly as MP3 under SONAR.  That is just wrong.
 
I wonder if the MP3 mode disables the "fast bounce" option.  That would explain the difference in speeds.

I use Aaron's Sonar MP3 Patch.
 
http://www.softpedia.com/...-Sonar-Mp3-Patch.shtml

I use Adobe Audition 3.0 for all MP3 conversion/encodings and it's now free at:
Techspot.com Just do a search there for audition 3.0
 
Also great for a bunch of other editing processes too. I have mine set up to open from within Sonar.