I have Sonar X3e base level using third party plugins along with a few that came with the program. There is this weirdness that I'm experiencing. Whenever I play a project all the way through to its end without adjusting any parameters whatsoever and then hit the rewind-to-beginning key (W) or the relevant button on the control module, the asterisk sign comes up next to the project name at the top indicating that the project needs to be saved because some change in parameter was made. I don't recall this occurring in older versions of Sonar. Is this the new norm for reminding you to constantly save your work or something weird? It's not really a hassle.

I have no idea, but I'd be curious what happens if you remove all the plug-ins and try the same thing. Maybe modulation effects - some of which play back differently each time if they're not synched to tempo - could be considered a "variation."

Saving a project includes everything about its state, including the position of the transport. So hitting play triggers the change in state flag. Of course you're not obliged to save it if you know you didn't change anything else.

I usually just hit the space bar to initiate Play, and don't believe that triggers any Save requirement.  In any case, if I know there is nothing I want saved, I simply abandon any save (like if I open Guitar Rig just to tune a guitar or something and then just want to play along with the project, etc).
 
Bob Bone
 

I wish there was (or maybe there is) and Sonar "drunken user mode" whereby projects can be made read only to avoid actual harm.

CakeAlexS
I wish there was (or maybe there is) and Sonar "drunken user mode" whereby projects can be made read only to avoid actual harm.

You can always deny permissions to the Cakewalk Projects folder. But I suppose you couldn't navigate all those tabs 'n stuff if you were drunk.

Could be automation changing a plugin's parameters that causes the "changed" flag to get activated...
 
Regards,
Dan
 

I've run into this as well on some but not all projects but haven't spent the time to track down the cause. I use the spacebar as well to start and stop.

Upon further investigation, there are different scenarios for this behavior. A project with no plugins and automation or a very minimum of plugins and automation this does not occur. It's when I began to build on the complexity of a project with additional plugins and automation that I noticed this behavior. A couple projects I opened in their saved state with the now time cursor set at the very beginning and hit the space bar to begin play, and right away there were indications that changes had occurred. I stopped play, rewind to beginning and saved; restarted playing the projects and everything was fine. One particular project exhibited the behavior in the opening post with additionally hitting stop in the middle of the project and rewinding to start position where all I was doing was listening. The thing is I don't hear any change. All automation and plugin settings were intact. What I wonder is if there are subtle changes going on somewhere and if they are accumulative over time as the mixes proceed with playing and rewinding, exiting and reopening.

Well if a plug-in has an LFO, a parameter has changed...yes?