First off, I've been a long time reader of this forum. I've gained a lot of knowledge here and am hoping someone can help me out with this strange issue.

A friend of mine sent me a WAV file of a song he was working on and wanted me to add a couple guitar tracks. Here's where things get weird...
I imported the WAV file. I added two audio tracks, adjusted both inputs for mono, recorded my double tracked guitar part, and adjusted panning accordingly. I then saved the project and closed out. After some thinking, I opened up the project to add some ideas. The two tracks that I just recorded are now replaced by fragments of the imported WAV file. It's like I never recorded my parts and just cut and pasted a part of the WAV file in their places. The clips are the length that I recorded, but the waveforms have been replaced by those in the WAV file. I closed out of the project and reopened, but the same thing happened. 

Here's where things get even crazier...

I started fresh and imported the WAV file again. I added two tracks, but instead of adjusting the inputs for mono, I left it at stereo and recorded my parts. I saved and closed out of it. When I reopened the project, all is well. Nothing has changed. As an experiment, I converted both stereo tracks to mono, saved, and closed. When I reopened this time, the WAV file fragments are back and have replaced what I just recorded. 

This problem only happens when I import a WAV file to play along with, record some new tracks, and convert those tracks to mono. If I can't convert to mono, my guitar tracks only come out of one speaker and there's no way to adjust other than converting to mono and panning them. Why is this problem happening? I could've sworn I've done this in the past with no issues. During this whole process, I've also randomly received the error message saying something about a corrupt audio file being detected and it'll fill it with blank space. I got this even when starting a new project with new audio files. It just involved importing a WAV file and recording some parts in mono.

My audio interface is a Cakewalk UA-101. It's 24-bit, and I have it set for 44.1khz, which is also the same settings in Sonar 8. I'm also recording, playing back, and importing at 24-bit. I just built a new system back in February and have never had any issues. I'm running Sonar 8 Producer on a quad-core i7 with 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, EVGA Nvidia Geforce 550ti, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. 

I just spent the last 5 hours trying to troubleshoot this. It's 4am and I give up. Any advice or am I looking at having to reinstall Sonar? Thanks.

If I can't convert to mono, my guitar tracks only come out of one speaker and there's no way to adjust other than converting to mono and panning them.

Seems strange. You should definitely check out your computer and make sure you don't have a virus or malware affecting you. You should also run a CHKDSK on your hard drive. You can do that by right clicking on the drive in Start-Computer, select properties, tools tab and clicking on Check Now. If its your C drive, you'll have to schedule it to check it on the next reboot.


If your guitar tracks are only coming out of one speaker, that means you are recording a mono source onto a stereo track. When you record a mono source such as a guitar or microphone, select the mono input, i.e., Input 1 Left (or whatever way your soundcard designates its inputs). Most soundcards give you the option of Input 1 Left, Input 2 Right and Input 1 Stereo (which records input 1 and 2 onto a stereo track), and so on. 


This is not normal behavior for Sonar so I suspect you're having a hard drive problem, especially since you are getting a corrupt files message. 

I agree with Dave, sounds like file corruption.

One other thing is, you never record a mono source to a stereo track. Always choose the correct input in the dialog. ASIO lists are a little confusing to some people - it will show :

Left -UA 101 mic in 1 =  Input 1 mono 
Right- UA 101 mic in 1 = input 2 mono
Stereo -UA 101 mic in 1 = both stereo 

Use one of the first two to record in mono.

When you say you convert the track to mono, how are you doing this? I am unaware of a process other than bouncing.

Also if you have not already done this, run the  DPCLT latency test on you computer to make sure background processes are not causing issues. You problem does not relate to this but it is uprising how many new computer come loaded with bloatware and have 100 processes running hogging resources.
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

How are you "adjusting the inputs for mono"? Are you actually recording a mono track, bouncing a stereo track to a mono track, or using the "convert to mono" function?


What is the exact warning message you get about the "corrupt file"? Could it be the "SONAR has detected a corrupt audio region..." message, or does it specifically use the phrase "corrupt file"? 


If the former, that's just a routine warning you get when a file has been modified outside of SONAR, and the decimated wave used to paint the visual representation of the waveform no longer matches the actual data. 


If the latter, you could be experiencing disk corruption, but I'd be surprised if that were the case since your symptoms are consistent. SONAR can generally read corrupt wave files as long as the file header is intact, but will likely choke on a corrupt project file. To avoid that possibility, rename the old .cwp file rather than overwriting it, so that if it were sitting on a badspot you won't be re-using the same bad sectors.

Thank you all for the responses. I know it's not a virus as I don't have this hooked up to the net. I'm a computer tech by trade, so I've already run through the troubleshooting steps and know it's not hardware related. I also know it's not background processes as I've eliminated the unnecessary ones when I first built the system. My latency is pretty low and doesn't even cause a blip in my CPU usage. 

Cactus, I normally select the inputs like you mentioned by choosing the following:

Left -UA 101 mic in 1 =  Input 1 mono   Right- UA 101 mic in 1 = input 2 mono 


But that's when the trouble arises. By doing this like I normally have in the past, it causes my original imported WAV file to put itself into my two newly recorded tracks. The only way for me to get past this is if I select the soundcard inputs for stereo, but my guitar only comes out of one speaker because I'm plugged into one input. That's why I convert or record both tracks to mono and pan one hard right and hard left. If I record my guitar in stereo and it comes out of one speaker, it won't allow me to pan to the other side. When I say I converted my tracks to mono, I've tried both bouncing the track AND right clicking on the track and choosing "convert to mono". It seems as if no matter what method I choose, even by selecting the left and right side of the soundcard, it won't allow me to import a WAV file while recording two mono tracks. 


Bitflipper, you're right in that the error message I received was "Sonar detected a corrupt audio region..."  I've read before that this can be caused by tracks being modified outside of Sonar, but all of these files, including my imported WAV file, have all been created and modified within Sonar.


Now that I think about it, when I import my old Sonar projects from my old 32-bit desktop, I get the same message saying that "Sonar detected a corrupt audio region" and always assumed it was a possible 32-bit/64-bit issue. That's why I was shocked to see that this started happening on my new system. This was all working fine since February so that's why I was a little stumped. I guess I'll continue to play around with it.

am not a tech type guy but.. just because your computer is not hooked to internet, does not mean you don't have a virus. In fact, possibly the wav file your friend sent you has a virus... or some other program you installed does.

OK...let's think about what's different here.
The "X" in the equation seems to be "the WAV file from your friend" right?
I would try this:
1.   Import the WAV into a fresh SONAR project again, but then RENDER(export) a mix with no other tracks and nothing done to it - should be sonically identical so no problems there.
Do not export as a Broadcast Wave and do export it at a both 24-bits and 16-bits just for "whatever".
2.   So now we should have the same audio in a new file that, in theory, should be totally "Your SONAR" friendly.
3.   Make a new SONAR project and drop this new WAV file into it and see if you now get your regular system behavior back.

This may seem weird...but I've had "ghosts" in the data MANY times over the years and things like this tend to clear them out.

~Cheers

+1 to DPStewart's suggestion. You could also try it with another known good WAV file (i.e., rip one from a commercial) to make sure its not the file your friend sent that has the problem. All WAV files are not created equally.

Yeah I've already tried that but no luck. I've tried different WAV and MP3 files (ones that I know are good), and have also tried creating new projects. I spent a good 3 hours trying different variations. One thing I did notice yesterday was that if I save it as a bundle file, the issue still occurs. If I save it as a project file, it opens up just fine. 

Sorry, but it sounds to me like you've got a hard drive problem. If I were you, I'd be backing that drive up real soon....