I would think that vari-speed might require a separate audio engine.  Adding stuff to the existing one would make it less efficient and nobody wants that.
 

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

BenMMusTech
After browsing through over3 pages of comments, there seems to be a groundswell of opinion that this feature is now high on the priority list of most Sonar users, Noel!  And I think this is because Sonar is used by composers/producers who are of a certain ilk, so rock, pop composers.  Yes I know Hip Hop, Dance and the like also use Sonar, but it seems to be used a lot more by real musicians. ;)
 

 
 
erm I wouldn't draw that conclusion based on this thread alone :) Obviously users who are interested in this feature would respond to a thread about it...

Lol :) as a keen observer and student of politics Noel and John, I am not averse to using hyperbole to cement an idea into popular consciousness.
 
DigiMidi, it was me who suggested Reaper.  The problem for me is, I have a track where I have taken the stereo master and imported it into Reaper, then used vari speed this way.  I want to do a 5.1 mix of this track for my Honours project and to bounce everything out including bus effects is going to be a huge task.  And I feel dirty ;) Sonar is partner, not Reaper!!
 
Ben
 

BenMMusTech
 
To answer Lynns and a few others question in regards to how good is it in Reaper, the answer is it's flawless.  I can't detect any digital artefacts (noise) in the processed file.

 
I'm still curious whether Reaper's variable speed does or does not change duration with pitch. If it does change duration, and is like tape varispeed, then that's something Sound Forge has been doing for decades by resampling. So apparently it's no huge deal if you're just dealing with audio and not things like virtual instruments. However, I would also think that once the slowdown gets really slow, it would be hard to avoid aliasing or foldover distortion.
 
Also, different people define "flawless" differently. For example, the formant with tape varispeed changes dramatically but there's no distortion or stuttering.
 
If any program can do transposition +/- an octave flawlessly while retaining duration, I want it!!! And I want it even more if it can do this in real time. Meanwhile, IMHO iZotope and zplane have the recipe down best for independent time/pitch stretching.

Anderton

BenMMusTech
 
To answer Lynns and a few others question in regards to how good is it in Reaper, the answer is it's flawless.  I can't detect any digital artefacts (noise) in the processed file.

 
I'm still curious whether Reaper's variable speed does or does not change duration with pitch. If it does change duration, and is like tape varispeed, then that's something Sound Forge has been doing for decades by resampling. So apparently it's no huge deal if you're just dealing with audio and not things like virtual instruments. However, I would also think that once the slowdown gets really slow, it would be hard to avoid aliasing or foldover distortion.
 
Also, different people define "flawless" differently. For example, the formant with tape varispeed changes dramatically but there's no distortion or stuttering.
 
If any program can do transposition +/- an octave flawlessly while retaining duration, I want it!!! And I want it even more if it can do this in real time. Meanwhile, IMHO iZotope and zplane have the recipe down best for independent time/pitch stretching.

Hi Craig, it does change time, so I slowed the track down slightly and then sped it up (the track was about 3:40 and after screwing around with the time, it ended up 4:00 mins) and it is all in real time and it is midi automatable.  It does have a switch where you can keep a constant pitch whilst speeding and slowing things up which may mean it keeps constant time.  But I'd have to investigate this idea further. 
 
As for noise, I was talking about clicks or as I like to call them digital artefacts.  I had a track a few years ago and I slowed it down using Audio Snap palate, now I loved the effect but because there was already some AS adjustments, the AS over top made them stick out.  So this is what I mean by flawless.  There is no clicks.  Just a beautiful clean "tape" sound. 
 
Here is the track I did, everything was done in Sonar apart from the tape speed effect.  You might be able to hear stuff that I can't.  The tape speed is in the break down after the middle, and the track speeds up in the solo. https://soundcloud.com/the-poetry-of-sound/thehub The synth sound is done in Padshop a granular synth (I wouldn't mind one of these too Noel) and all the sounds are "found" sounds ala music concrete and Russolo: The Art of Noise.
 
Ben
 
 

Although I never use it...my pianos are never out of 440....:-D   ...But Adobe Audition's version along with Sony's, didn't seem unusable, as long as you didn't get to crazy with it.  Adobe had/has some presets..."turntable winding down", etc...that actually sounded very good.  Sony's allows for preserving duration, with Audition's didn't....IF I remember.
 
Eventide plugs?    makes me remember the days of goofing with the cue mix, to the talent wearing headphones.  You could almost make them drool on themselves with a little delay and pitch change...leaving out the "dry" of course!

digimidi
Based on what Craig and Noel said, I'm surmising that Sonar's audio engine is too complicated to implement this feature without a huge overhaul compared to Reaper.  I liken Sonar to Internet Explorer as Reaper would be to Chrome, meaning that Reaper is less encumbered with features while Sonar is much more heavily laden with routines.  I'm not sure if it would be worth it to rewrite the Sonar audio engine just for this lone feature.  Maybe it's cheaper just to purchase Reaper and use it (as some are doing now) along with Sonar, or use another program such as Sound Forge which also has sort of a vari-speed function.  Just a few thoughts...

You're welcome to draw whatever conclusions you wish but that's not even close to what I said. In the software world its very seldom that large components like an engine are rewritten. A feature like this would require some enhancements to what we have, rather than "rewrites". The details I was referring to apply to any reasonably complex application level feature we add to SONAR. There is a lot more than an "engine" in SONAR and implementing a feature takes updates to many different areas of the application to integrate it well. UI, workflow, persistence, commands are a few areas that are updated with almost any feature we do and they all have costs.

Thanks for responding to this thread again, Noel Borthwick . I appreciate what you're saying and would only add that a feature that was readily available in (now) fairly primitive recording environments like Portastudios was very simple and immediate to use. It wasn't complicated and didn't involve many (actually practically no) steps and is fondly remembered by us fossils. It would be welcomed with wizened but open arms.
LJ

Yep plus 1 to Noel and chiming in on the topic.  Now lets hope we see Vari Speed in X4, it's something I would pay a 150 bucks for.
 
Ben

I have never heard any details about how vari-speed actually works in Reaper and other programs.  For example, what happens when you play back at slow speed and apply a time-based effect?  Does it automatically adjust the timings to match the playback speed or does it apply the effects at their current settings?  Or does vari-speed playback only apply to the entire mix rather than to each track?

Update: I verified that the "Chipmunk sound" workaround I mentioned does indeed work, but I'd add two more points.
 
1. If you just use the iZotope algorithm to transpose up an octave it gets you most of the way there, and you don't have to do anything else.
 
2. If you go for the full pitch + speed change, it's best to trim the clip just before the part you want to play back (e.g., in SD3 - thanks scook) and apply trimming so you can trigger it at just the right time by hitting a key or entering a MIDI note.
 
Regarding the "how to make a track a little sharp while an instrument that's slightly sharp plays along with it," I may have found an easier way...checking it out now.