Select all audio clips, press Alt+Enter. Switch "Time Base" to Absolute and check "Lock". After all your tempo changes uncheck "Lock".

My google search brought me to this thread, which taught me something, but since I am using Sonar v.3, was not much help on how to resolve the same problem the others had. For example, I cannot select audio clips and force them to absolute time. I think this feature must have come after v.3

But I found a solution that will help these others:

I was deleting some audio out of an introduction (too long), and then selecting all the other audio to the right of the deleted space and shifting it LEFT to fill up the blank spot. Many of my audio clips were now out of place, just like the issue described above.

My Tempo events were a leftover from the MIDI tracks I had started with, and were now, kinda no longer needed. But to avoid the headache of moving dozens of audio clips by so many ticks, and experimenting with all the mess (again!), you just need to do the following.

SOLUTION: I went into Tempo View, clicked the button for Tempo List, and modified all the Tempo changes in the list to be exactly 6 measures less than they were before, to agree with the amount of audio space I had deleted and then shifted. This did the trick.

 A lot of misunderstandings here.  essentially if you start with clips that you don't know the tempo of and do a complex arrangement the "midi" tempo is irrelevant as all you are doing is playing back recordings.  That is until you decide to add a midi part.  Then you need to work out what the actual tempo is.  That's when you find the clips move around when you change tempo. 
 
But changing time base does appear to be the answer.  What I wanted to add is that you need to do the same under the track, automation - time base in order to preserve the automation timing.  Hope that's of help to someone.

You realize you just responded to a thread started 5 years ago! 
 

Cactus Music
You realize you just responded to a thread started 5 years ago! 
 

And it still wasn't answered. 

I thought it was answered very clearly by kwgm.

I want to change tempo without affecting the audio tracks. I do not want any of the timing of the audio clips to change at all. I just want the same tracks in the same positions to run under a new tempo. The tempo was never right in the first place. There are reasons for that which are beyond my control. I don't want to reapply effects, bounce and rebuild my project just because I want to change tempo...and no matter how many times I read this I do not see a step by step to attaining my goal. I'm in Sonar X3.
 
All the clips were trimmed and adjusted under the wrong tempo. (It just didn't matter at first I guess to whomever started the project). So now I am left with correcting the tempo issue. It's not a show stopper though. If it is gong to be hell to fix it...then oh well. 

We all work differently, The people who make Cakewalk ( or any DAW) cannot cover every possible scenario but they do a pretty good job of trying.
Some people only work with live recordings of real instruments. The tempo is set and it's a pain to change the tempo with audio. Your morphing the the waveform and this can only result in lowering the quality of your carefully engineered recording. You CAN change the tempo of an audio recording but this is not accomplished without some damage to the track. It might be insignificant damage, but myself I would only do this to lesser important tracks that are buried in a mix, I would never do this to my important audio tracks.
 
So I always start with midi and a few scratch audio parts until I am dead sure of the tempo. Then once this is for sure I start my serious audio recordings.
 
There are a few ways to change audio tempo that are well documented in the help files and tutorials so I won't even attempt them here. A few answers above touched on it.
 
 

Yeah, it's okay. I am on to a project I am starting next so it'll be in the past soon. I'll just deal with it the way it is. thanks for taking the time to explain though. I appreciate.

i know its old but the answer was given by

Vovchik
Select all audio clips, press Alt+Enter. Switch "Time Base" to Absolute and check "Lock". After all your tempo changes uncheck "Lock".

 
Alt-Enter did nothing for me but looking at the clip properties inspector after selecting all audio clips, i changed the time-base to absolute and boom!, tempo changed, audio stayed put.