shawn@trustmedia.tv
Mr. Anderton I haven't looked into this but you've got me curious what do you use to make your own track icons??? :) -Shawn

I take a screen shot that contains what I want to "iconize," then crop to a square that contains what I want to show. I then use GIMP to scale it to 96 x 96. I often bump up the contrast or saturation a bit, because...well, because I can. 
 
I contributed a lot of new soft synth track icons to SONAR 2015. I tried to focus on the most distinctive part of the instrument so you can see at a glance what it is. 

The one's I've made are 96x96. From the Doc:
 
Create or edit a graphics file in .bmp format, preferably 128 by 128 pixels.
You can use any image as a track icon. You can use any size image, but for best results scale the image to 128 pixels square. Images must be in the .bmp format
 
And later:
 
If you want to create custom track icons, we recommend that you author them as 96x96 pixel 24-bit bitmaps (.BMP).
 
I actually have one icon that for some reason is 245x245 and it works. So theoretically size shouldn't matter. There are old threads about icon pixellating or degrading. I don't think it's ever been resolved or even a cause found. Maybe this is related.

My money is riding on it being a transparency issue.  So...any pixel in the image that has the same color value as the 0,0 pixel renders as transparent.  The pixel pushers that are making their own icons are manipulating photographs.  With 24 bit pixel depth, the likelihood of any pixel color matching any other exactly is perhaps low.  So...I'm betting that the doityerselfers aren't having issues because they're not trying to do transparency.
 
Can anyone contraindicate my conclusion?

Anderton

dantarbill
Also...why do they recommend 128x128 bitmaps...and then, in the same article recommend 96x96 pixel 24 bit?
(Or...maybe it's the bit depth?)

 
I'm surprised by that as well. I make 96 x 96 pixel track icons...maybe that's why I don't have issues?
 

Funny...

I've wondered the same since reading it too... My thought is that as it can actually be any size and Sonar will display it within the allocated space. So either can be used. They are both fairly common sizes for many uses. I think that the difference in resolution between the two when displayed in the 32/48 default space might be associated with the scrambled image issue? Just thinking...