I recorded a live drummer and have split the tracks into sections. No click was adhered to, it was all free time and the tempo was that set by Sonar by default.
 
Now I want to decide on a tempo.
 
But when I change the BPM tempo, the clips do not stay on their absolute sample position. They move around, trying to keep their position relative to the bars within the song.
 
I understand this making sense once a song has been arranged, but not now, not yet.
 
Can I change the tempo without the repositioning feature?

Bounce the clips so they are one clip again then I think audiosnap the the "tempo locker" way to do it. The tempo change you refer to comes from the midi days and does not know about audio beats. This is why audiosnap.
 
Note that the new Melodyne 4 essential update is said to do temp map extrction from free form audio without "training". However the extraction of it's resulting tempo map requires some gymnastics to get it into Sonar.
 
There is rumor that the bakers may smooth this over in the coming update(s). I have been at odds with audiosnap because I must be an idiot. Others use it without breaking a sweat. I am patiently waing for Melodyne tempo map extraction / insertion into Sonar.
 
There are threads and videos on youtube regarding audiosnap btw.

I only have the Samples ruler active, so at first I didn't understand what was going on.
I think a feature request is called for.
 
@bitman, thanks. I worked right through the night working on the drums, so I think what I'll do now is open a fresh, empty project, set it to the tempo I need right from the start and start drag-dropping the good clips into the new project, stretch/shrinking each one to fit as I go.
 
I would have had to have done that at some time, anyway, so perhaps not such a desaster after all.

Set all tracks to absolute time... This one at a time. Set all buses the same if you want. Select all clips and set the clips to absolute time... This can be done all at once using ctrl click with all selected.

You find the property in the inspector in the track and clip tabs.

Oh, is THAT what they mean by "Musical Time"!
My tiiming is ALWAYS musical! :)
 
@gswitz, thank you very much. That works brilliantly!

I notice I "only" need to set all clips, not the Track. That seems to be for automation.
 
And the Time Format for the clips can also be set to Samples. Not sure if this makes a huge difference, but just to be safe. I can put it back to H:M:S:F after I've done my work.

Set Measure/Beat At Now (Shift+M) will let you tell SONAR where the timeline beats should align with the audio, and automatically adjusts the project tempo around the audio to make that happen without affecting the absolute playback timing.
 
It will do this regardless of the clip timebase or where clips start, and you can set as many or as few points as you need to align the timeline. It's easiest if the first hit is at 1:01:000; otherwise there are some extra hoops to jump through to lock down the initial tempo and get the first hit aligned.
 
Assuming the first hit is 1:01:000:
 
- Start by counting out 8 bars in your head while playing back without the metronome enabled.
- Stop the transport, Tab or Shift+Tab to a transient for 9:01, Shift+M, and Set that measure and beat.
- Rewind and listen through the piece with the playback metronome enabled to see where else you might need to tighten it up.
- Depending on the performance, setting a downbeat every 4-8 measures may be enough or you can set every measure and even beats or fractions of beats within measures as needed.

Thanks brundlefly for the mini-tutorial.  I just followed it to add some drums to a folk/pop song my daughter recorded 'freehand' a while back (I'm only playing around / learning).  I'd previously made some half-hearted attempts to learn to extract tempo with audiosnap but never got far.  The above was fast and easy.  There were only a couple of places where I had to go below 4 measures.  I then threw in some AD2 drums and everything was in sync, something I hadn't managed to do before.
 
P.S.  I'm really liking Platinum.  Everything just works.
 

Cool. Glad that worked out for you. It's one of my most-used features since I often record improvisations without a click, and then want to go back and tighten things up and flatten out some of the tempo variations. Of course this works best with MIDI, but can also be done with audio by enabling Clip Follows Project in Autostretch mode on the clips before deleting/adjusting the tempo changes inserted by Set Measure/Beat.

Interestingly enough, Melodyne Studio v4 has a very similar feature where bar lines can be dragged to align with audio transients, either after it's done the Tempo extraction or with a constant tempo.   I'll have to try both methods back and forth to see how they fare...