I'm often surprised how many mastering functions you can do with SONAR, even though it wasn't really designed to do that...but IMHO SONAR is thisclose to being able to be a good mastering program.
 
"Noiseprint"-based noise reduction is one of the missing elements, the others are an 8-stage version of the ProChannel EQ and/or LP-64 EQ, a really good maximizer, and some analytics - average levels and such. A pencil tool wouldn't hurt either, but that seems less valuable overall.
 
I've been known to pester the Bakers about this  and while it would take quite a bit of effort, I think it would be a useful direction for future versions to take. Just thought I'd throw this out there because the forum seems kind of quiet, not very many people having issues, so it seemed like a good time to muse upon the future of SONAR.

+1 Craig. I already do a lot of my mastering functions in Sonar, and though I also use Sony Sound Forge 11 for the final bits, SF11 is actually a 32bit dinosaur and an insult to consumers IMO. BUT it has some good analysis plugs and the iZotope stuff is great.
 
But to me mastering in a DAW makes a lot of sense because you can so easily compare tracks, plus set up parallel compression and automation for FX etc.
 
Love to see if the Bakers .. err.. bite :O)

It's been at the top of my request ever since I left my Roland VS2400 for Sonar. Being able to do fades into and out off songs with cd markers would be huge. I will master in Sonar and export to an audio editor just for the cd marker function.

Hi Craig,
 
I am another that tends to "master" (I use that term loosely) outside of Sonar. I do, however, finalise the EQ on the master bus using an instance of Pro-Q, simply to carry out a low and high cut and use the old "smiley face" curve to drop the mids silghtly.
 
I'm wondering how I would "normalise" in Sonar though... I know I can use a multitude of compression tools, but I like to see the wave file itself. Mainly because I know, now, what sort of overall shape to expect of a lightly, or heavily compressed audio file.
 
So for me, at least, I like to export my wave file, open it in Sound Forge, and then normalise (or compress) within that, and while I am there I will crop the track to length, and fade out if needed. And then finally create the finished MP3 file for uploading to SoundCloud.
 
 

Great idea!

synkrotron
I'm wondering how I would "normalise" in Sonar though... I know I can use a multitude of compression tools, but I like to see the wave file itself. Mainly because I know, now, what sort of overall shape to expect of a lightly, or heavily compressed audio file.

 
I'm actually a big fan of Boost 11.  It's always the last stage of my master bus, I can see how much is getting chopped off, it shows a preview of the final wave, and sounds fairly transparent.  Like most plugins, if you don't abuse it and limit the crap out of your mix, it works great, IMO.

This idea appeals to me I agree with the thoughts regarding SF11 some of those tools in SONAR would be very useful.

Hey Craig, submit a feature request and we can vote it up 

I'm not sure of the necessity of having all plugins within Sonar realm for mastering.
There are so many 3rd party to select from.
And many export and do mastering part in SoundForge and others.
 
Missing though, I find a project manager to manage multiple projects being an album - to manage that for mastering. More urgent, and have to be within Sonar - if to do mastering within Sonar and encouraging that.
 
Maybe an entire new view Mastering View(MV) that holds a number stereo(or surround) busses with plugin slots. Easy to shift between songs etc.
 
Now you have to emulate this by importing tracks for an album project and solo each track to shift listening between them.
 
Just a priority that I favor...

To a certain extent I already "master" in Sonar as the ability to split one stereo  track in several stem parts or make parallel processing is far easier than just be stuck with audio file to work from. Although I will say, mastering is a bit of misnomer of a  term considering a lot of it can be dubbed pre-mastering.
 
Many people will argue it's not proper unless you pay Bob Katz or somebody in a professional environment which is completely neutral from the original location it won't be good enough for commercial release or to the higher echelons of superior reference playback equipment.
 
I know my stuff could be better and someone else could make it sound far better; at least,until I manage to kit out  a room with all the mod cons of audio wizardy