I have 10 tracks. I export the first track, and it's 5:01 long.
I select and highlight the next track to export, it's a shorter track, but it comes out 5:01 long as well.
Same for all tracks in the same project.
 
I look at all the resulting audio files and they are all exactly the same size in bytes.
 
What am I doing wrong?

Exporting a track will use the longest track to determine the export length. Select the clip to export by clip length or specify a time range in addition to the track to restrict length. Time range can be set using the Select By Time, Select From/Thru or click-dragging across the timeline.

Thanks Scook! I'm not sure what you mean by "clip length" though. I do understand the time range principle.
 
 

Rather than selecting the track which creates an export based on the longest track, selecting the clips in a track creates an export based on the length of the selected clips, ignoring the length of the tracks.

Wow, I had never noticed that before. Can't think of any valid justification for this selection behavior. This is a bug and needs to be fixed imo.

I don't think you'll find it's a bug. The export will export the length of the time selected, selecting a track selects that track for the length of the project. If you want a shorter time selection then select that as suggested by Steve.

I heartily second the notion that this a unexpected behavior. can anyone from cakewalk comment on why this is so? for what I am trying to do, this would seem to be a bug....
 
 I just created another post with much the same situation... thanks for the re-direct.
 

I would not expect Cakewalk staff to comment in this thread. You could file a problem report here http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Contact/Problem-Report to solicit a comment from Cakewalk. Expect a reply along the lines of "this is the intended behavior." If you have a different way you want export to work consider posting the details in a feature request here http://forum.cakewalk.com/Features-Ideas-f76.aspx

The difference in behavior logically arises from the definition of a tack vs a clip. A track should logically run the full length of the project, just as a track on a 12 track tape does not stop until the whole tape has reached the last recorded sound. If you want to move or export just a clip, you would get out the razor blade and clip the piece of tape you wanted to splice into the full tape/project. So long as you understand the difference you have full control over what you do.

The reason with the default export is to create stem files so they can be imported into any DAW and match up. If this didn't occur, exporting clips would just create chaos.

In addition to track/timeline/export dialog selections, simply dragging/dropping a clip from SONAR should render a wave file of just that clip.