There are obviously many things about Sonar I like or I wouldn't be using it, but one of the things I dislike is how difficult it is to clean up the Audio folder of a project. The utilities provided don't seem to be very efficient.
Other DAWs seem to have better ways. Reaper has a command called Clean Audio Folder which simply gives you a list of unused files in your Audio folder, and a simple one command way to delete them. Pro Tools has a Select Unused command for it's Clips pane, and then also a simple way to delete them.
So I started looking at the browser in Sonar. It can be made to list ALL the audio files in my project, but I can't seem to get a way for it to highlight the ones that are actually used. This would help a lot in trying to clean the folder.
Am I missing something or is this not possible in Sonar?

SONAR has always had a Clean Audio Folder command as well, but its weak point is, that it scans through the whole PC no matter what you do. That's why IMO the fastest and safest (very likely more safe than any cleaning command in any DAW) way to get rid of unnecessary audio is to Save As under a new name and selecting "Copy all audio". Then just delete the original.

... and renaming the auto-labelled files to something more convenient isn't possible either. You have to rename them offline, then re-import them into the project. VERY uncomfortable.
 
Fixing that is one of my greatest wishes, too. And get rid of the existing "clean feature", as it takes hours(!) to complete on an average DAW, and it cannot be cancelled.
 
 

Kalle Rantaaho
That's why IMO the fastest and safest (very likely more safe than any cleaning command in any DAW) way to get rid of unnecessary audio is to Save As under a new name and selecting "Copy all audio". Then just delete the original.

There's no reason this should be safer than any cleaning command; the DAW has exactly the same information available in each case.
 
Really, all it needs to do is almost the inverse of the Save As command: collate a list of all the referenced audio files, just as it would if it was going to perform a Save As, but instead of saving those files, delete any audio files in the project directory that are not found on that list.
 
I would really like for them to fix this.

stac
... and renaming the auto-labelled files to something more convenient isn't possible either. You have to rename them offline, then re-import them into the project. VERY uncomfortable.
 
Fixing that is one of my greatest wishes, too. And get rid of the existing "clean feature", as it takes hours(!) to complete on an average DAW, and it cannot be cancelled.
 
 

 
You don't need to re-import the file when you change the name. SONAR will tell you that the original file is missing, and let you associate the new one on opening the project. It's admittedly still an awkward and error-prone process because you have to do it outside of SONAR, and you need to keep track of which file is which if you do a bunch of them at once, but it's better than re-importing.
 
For audio file cleanup, try Cakewalk Audio Finder (Utilities> CWAF Tool) instead of Clean Audio. It lets you narrow the scope of which drives and folders get scanned for projects that might reference audio files.

Kylotan

Kalle Rantaaho
That's why IMO the fastest and safest (very likely more safe than any cleaning command in any DAW) way to get rid of unnecessary audio is to Save As under a new name and selecting "Copy all audio". Then just delete the original.

There's no reason this should be safer than any cleaning command; the DAW has exactly the same information available in each case.
 
Really, all it needs to do is almost the inverse of the Save As command: collate a list of all the referenced audio files, just as it would if it was going to perform a Save As, but instead of saving those files, delete any audio files in the project directory that are not found on that list.
 
I would really like for them to fix this.

Another approach that would work for me would be to "archive" unused audio files into folders that can then be deleted by the user at their whim - once they're comfortable that the files are in fact unused.
 
I had mentioned once how it would nice to have xml project files, or least the details on their structure.  With this info, any one of a very large number of talented folks could whip out (a) handy file management tool(s). 
 
In other words, make things such that the user community can solve problems at the periphery, allowing the Bakers to focus on soufflé
 
 
 

BobF
 
 
Another approach that would work for me would be to "archive" unused audio files into folders that can then be deleted by the user at their whim - once they're comfortable that the files are in fact unused.

CWAF Tool can do that; select all Orphans, and choose Move Wave

Yes, CWAF is/has been my tool of choice for this chore.

I never do this, but I think that because you can reference audio clips that actually reside in other project audio folders (or other external folders I suppose), the deletion of a project folder or the audio folder within may accidentally delete audio clips.
 
I suspect the above is the reason that the Clean Audio functionality takes so long - it likely has to ensure all audio clips to be deleted are not referenced in other projects.
 
Since I never do reference audio clips in a new project that belong to another project, I can quickly clean up any given project by simply using the technique posted by others - using Save As and the Copy All Audio, to save the project and only referenced audio clips into a new project folder, then deleting the original folder.
 
Bob Bone
 

As far as naming of audio files within Sonar. when you set up a project name the various tracks before recording audio or midi into them. This gives you control over the base name before Sonar appends information to them.