I am confused with the 1 minute save part... the cwp only saves pointers to underlying audio files (which are already saved). The only part that I do not do is retain each and every take, so you have more pointers in play than I would, but I would still assume they are all in RAM with the project you are working on, so taking 1 minute to save a 4.43MB file seems "out there."

rogeriodec

icontakt
Yep, your kind donation to me will be highly appreciated. 

 
Come on, you're inside the heart of the beast, an SSD in Japan may be almost the price of a sushi. 

 
The thing is that I'm a laptop user and don't like to use an external hard disk drive other than for the backup purpose (I'm trying to remove as many thing as possible from my life ).
 
 

mettelus
I am confused with the 1 minute save part... the cwp only saves pointers to underlying audio files (which are already saved). The only part that I do not do is retain each and every take, so you have more pointers in play than I would, but I would still assume they are all in RAM with the project you are working on, so taking 1 minute to save a 4.43MB file seems "out there."

 
I also don't know why it's taking this long even after I used Save As and saved the project under a different name. In the near future I'm planning to record and comp all audio in another program before importing the comped takes into Sonar, so the number of audio files in the Audio folder will be significantly reduced. I hope it will solve my issue(s).
 

Perhaps your laptop HDD IS 5400rpm.

In general turning on "auto" features by default is not a good idea since as you can see there is no one size fits all for all users. This is a professional DAW and we have to cater to both first time users as well as pro's who have defined workflows. We wouldn't want SONAR interrupting the worflow to do a save since in big projects with large samplers etc saving can be costly. Its simple enough to turn on autosave when you need it.
 
Regarding slow saves its most likely instruments that take long to save although lots of audiosnapped clips are also known to slow down the save process. If you typically run at low latency and have lots of instruments one thing you can try is adding the variable "PauseDuringSave" to the Cakewalk.ini file. In preferences | File | Initialization file PauseDuringSave and set its value to 1. Restart SONAR after that and you should see that the application pauses audio during a save. This allows the save to complete faster since its not being interrupted by audio engine access.
 
I wanted this option to be the default years ago but the gapless police shot the idea down :)
 

mudgel
Perhaps your laptop HDD IS 5400rpm.

 
Nope, it's 7200rpm. I checked Sonar system requirements before buying this laptop.
 
 

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Regarding slow saves its most likely instruments that take long to save although lots of audiosnapped clips are also known to slow down the save process.

 
I have several 4 minute-long audio clips that were bounced after being slip-stretched with Audio Snap enabled. I'm not sure if these clips are contributing to the long saving time. As for instruments, my projects don't use huge libraries. All of my projects created from my custom project template that contains many empty tracks and some instruments/effects doesn't take a long time to load (except for the initial launch after a PC restart), but the saving time seems to increase more and more as I record and comp (and probably slip-stretch and bounce) more audio clips.
 
 

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
If you typically run at low latency and have lots of instruments one thing you can try is adding the variable "PauseDuringSave" to the Cakewalk.ini file. In preferences | File | Initialization file PauseDuringSave and set its value to 1. Restart SONAR after that and you should see that the application pauses audio during a save. This allows the save to complete faster since its not being interrupted by audio engine access.

 
Will definitely try it. Thanks!  

I wanted this option to be the default years ago but the gapless police shot the idea down :)
 
 
 
While I'm here I have a question.... I've noticed longer save times recently (I don't use auto-save I just obsessively hit ctrl s).
Although they only take about 6 seconds I've noticed nothing seems to happen the first 5 seconds (just the hour glass icon) and then the actual save process is less than a second.
Just curious what's going on in the first 5 seconds...I no longer use external drives on my work PC so I wouldn't think it's a slow drive spinning up.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
We wouldn't want SONAR interrupting the worflow to do a save since in big projects with large samplers etc saving can be costly. Its simple enough to turn on autosave when you need it.

 
For years I left auto-save on all the time because I mostly mix recordings where the project file just contains FX, FX params and some automation and clip data. This data is small and saves in seconds.
 
I understood why it isn't on by default when I started recording my midi guitar regularly in projects. The size of the project file would explode from a MB or two to 20. saving a 20 MB file takes a while and doing it once every 3 minutes doesn't make sense. I regularly record a couple of hundred takes on each part of the song.
 
I've often thought that keeping most recent 20 saves might make sense where I trigger the saves. I use ctrl+s or alt+F+S for a long time (I've gotten away from alt+F+S because it doesn't work properly in Console View.). It's nice to be able to go back 5 versions to recover something that changed by accident ~ EQ settings gone wrong... something like that.
 
I keep a bunch of versions and use AutoSave when I'm working in smaller projects. I don't leave it on all the time though. And it's probably less than once a year that I hunt back through the autosaved versions for a different save point.

Don't forget an assets file is being saved as well as the cwp file. 

icontakt
I have several 4 minute-long audio clips that were bounced after being slip-stretched with Audio Snap enabled. I'm not sure if these clips are contributing to the long saving time. As for instruments, my projects don't use huge libraries. All of my projects created from my custom project template that contains many empty tracks and some instruments/effects doesn't take a long time to load (except for the initial launch after a PC restart), but the saving time seems to increase more and more as I record and comp (and probably slip-stretch and bounce) more audio clips.
 

 
Bounce has nothing to do with save times. I suspect you have some audio snapped clips somewhere that you have forgotten about. In platinum you can easily strip out all audio snap markers from a project if you aren't using them.
To do this press CTRL-A to select all clips and then right click on the power button in the audio snap palette. Select "Clear all audiosnap markers" to reset all markers and then save your project. 

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
 
To do this press CTRL-A to select all clips and then right click on the power button in the audio snap palette. Select "Clear all audiosnap markers" to reset all markers and then save your project. 

DOH! I wish I had known this 6 months ago trying to find the "errant AS" in a project.