I have X3e and would like to know if "Clean Audio Folder" has been fixed yet.
Could anyone with Foxboro please try it out? Here's how it should work:
 
1. Open any project that has been started with "Store project audio in its own folder" set. This is the default, so any project will probably do.
2. Select from menu Utilities>Clean Audio Folder. The dialog pops up.
3. In the dialog select checkbox "Recurse (All Wave files below this point belong to SONAR projects)
4. Press Find. A warning regarding clipboard and Undo pops up. Click OK.
 
This is where the first problem happens.
In X3e the tool now searches through ABSOLUTELY EVERY DIRECTORY ON ABSOLUTELY EVERY HARD DRIVE connected to the computer.
And this despite the project directory being in the edit box, and despite the project knowing all its contents is in its own audio folder, and despite having told it to Recuse for wave files below the given point.
 
There is no way of stopping it either. Clicking on "Close" hangs Sonar.
 
When it finally finishes, it may pop up a window with damaged project files. This is interesting (they really do seem to be damaged-I find I cannot open them) but none of these files have anything to do with my current project so this behavior is unexpected.
 
The second problem is with the Play button in the dialog showing the orphaned files (most projects have such files after working on them for a while).
This "Play" button is so you can hear the clip before deciding to delete it.
But the Play button does not do anything in X3e.
 
Can anyone please check whether any of these issues been fixed in Foxboro?
 
The ability to clean up the audio folder is actually quite useful. My workaround has been to copy the entire project to a new directory, telling it to copy all audio with project, deleting the old directory, then renaming the new directory back. This achieves the same thing but it gets tiresome. It would be great if this feature worked.
 

The procedure is all right.
For all audiofiles "below this point" Sonar is searching für project files (*.cwp) on every disc.
Sonar checks that really no projectfile uses the audiofiles "below this point".
This is simply foolproof - because the cwp-files may be outside of this point.
There should be an advanced option to ignore some drives.
 
 

I don't understand.
Why would a different project use sound files in my current project? Especially with "Store project audio in its own folder" being on.
And why does it look in my Recycle folder? (yes, it even searched there!!!)
And why can I not stop the searching?
And why does it hang if I click "Cancel"?
And why does the Play button not work?
 

I can imagine, that some users have copied or moved their projectfiles (in different Song-Versions) to other folders or backups without copying the audiofiles. What is not good.
Therefore Sonar goes the safe way and searches on all discs, if there is any projectfile using this audiofiles.
Bothersome - but foolproof.
  
The Play button does work - I can play and hear the files.
  
We have the "great" problem, that "Clean Audio Folder" completely failed, when a Project is opened via Network drive. Although opened on a network path (for example NAS-Server) - it does not look in this network-audiofolder.
 
 
 
 
 

The standard behaviour of this is crazy. It made sense back in the mid 90s, when a/ we didn't even have the per-project folders option and b/ hard drives were way, way smaller.
 
It's outdated design, and is badly in need of at least an advanced user option to just search the current project folder. By all means, have a foolproof option. But having only that is very odd.

I have to agree, it is strange.

I ran this during Everett and it behaves the same. Even funnier was I deleted files, then ran the CWAF tool and it said some files were missing from projects (ones I deleted!).

This was prior to a planned reformat, but both tools need some love.

CWAF, while it could also use some work is much more useful than Clean Audio. It's more flexible and powerful, and gives you more information about what files go with which project and more control over what happens to orphaned (i.e. no longer referenced audio) files. And it's faster because you can limit searches to one drive, and you can exclude paths that you don't want searched.
 
Here' a sort of primer that I posted a while back:
 
Preparation:
 
- Create a folder called “CWAF Excluded WAVs” on each drive that contains SONAR projects and audio.
 
- Create a shortcut to \Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\cwaftool.exe so you can run it with SONAR shut down.
 
Usage:
 
- Close SONAR.
- Empty the Recycle Bin.
- Start CWAF Tool.
- Add your “Excluded” folders and any other paths on the drives that will never have SONAR projects in their paths to the Folders to Ignore list.
 
- Select a drive to search.
 
- Click Find – The button label will change to Stop, and you will see paths being searched in the status bar at the bottom.
 
- Wait for the Stop button to change back to Find, indicating the search is complete.
 
- Click the Status column header twice to get all the Orphaned files floated to the top.
 
- Select all the orphans, click the Move button, and select the CWAF Excluded WAVs folder on the local drive as the target.
 
- Repeat the search and sort, and scroll through the list to be sure there are no Orphaned or Missing files reported (i.e. you found all the orphans, and didn’t inadvertently move something that wasn’t an orphan).
 
- You can now safely Shift+Delete (permanently deletes, bypassing the Recycle Bin) all the files in the “Excluded” folder.
 
 

Ain't nobody got time for that.
 
Imagine a menu command: "Clean this project". You click it. A box pops up saying "In the extremely bizarre fringe case that you've got a project on a zip drive in a drawer somewhere that references this audio, there might be a problem somewhere down the line". There are two buttons, "Cancel" and "It's fine, I don't arrange my files like a madman's breakfast, just clean the project already". You click the latter, job done.

I'm not saying there isn't a need for a function that cleans a single per-project audio folder without looking outside that project's directory. I'm just saying the current CWAF Tool is a lot more useful than the current Clean Audio Folder. And it can safely clean all your per-project audio folders at once in less time than Clean Audio can clean one.