Gotta say, having never used this before and having just used the default keyboard shortcuts, I'm baffled. 
 
I'm looking to disable a particular keyboard shortcut. So I go to "keyboard shortcuts" in the preferences and I can find the action in question, but no keyboard shortcut is displayed. In fact it doesn't seem to display any keyboard shortcut at all for any of the actions it lists. I have to say, this is perhaps the most poorly designed and counterintuitive keyboard shortcut manager I have ever seen, and the documentation is awful as well. For example, whereas the action to unhide all tracks is listed as "show all tracks" in the documentation, it's listed as "unhide all tracks" in the preferences. And it's not entirely obvious how to change or disable a shortcut. I have to admit - after being used to, for example, the user friendly key binding managers in things like Adobe apps, Sonar's has really knocked me for six. 

Sonar keyboard Shortcuts ~~~~>  Here

While there's no global keyboard shortcut disable function, you _can_ assign individual shortcuts to the Do Nothing command found in the Global Bindings list. This even works with the default shortcuts, (Scott Garrigus, Author of Sonar Power)

Thanks, I just figured out the "do nothing" command! Boy did they make it as user-unfriendly as possible: "do nothing: use to block pre-defined accelerators" - huh? Yeah that's going to make sense to the majority of people isn't it lol! I think the keyboard shortcut manager in Sonar one of those parts of the program they never got around to updating, I bet it's over 20 years old!

sharke
Thanks, I just figured out the "do nothing" command! Boy did they make it as user-unfriendly as possible: "do nothing: use to block pre-defined accelerators" - huh? Yeah that's going to make sense to the majority of people isn't it lol! I think the keyboard shortcut manager in Sonar one of those parts of the program they never got around to updating, I bet it's over 20 years old!

I read your post yesterday and knew that I knew an answer of sorts but couldn't remember what it was. This morning I remembered, but too late.
 
I had to use this method to disable the Ctrl+N shortcut as I got tired of starting a new project every time I really meant to apply melodyne to a clip. 
 
Computer geek logic  - like whoever once decided that in order to switch off your computer the first thing you had to do was select "start".

paulo
 
Computer geek logic  - like whoever once decided that in order to switch off your computer the first thing you had to do was select "start".

Talk about old stuff.

It's a shame that these old looking parts of the program - stuff like the shortcuts manager, the drum map manager and the controller surface manager - never got a rewrite as I suspect they played a part in putting people off as they demoed the software. They're way too user unfriendly, both in look and function. People who have used them every day for 20 years would probably disagree, but it's when you compare them with similar features in things like modern Adobe apps, and Bitwig which I'm getting into now, you realize how simple and user friendly they could have been. And the manual doesn't exactly help matters because much of it is a confusing mess.

sharke
It's a shame that these old looking parts of the program - stuff like the shortcuts manager, the drum map manager and the controller surface manager - never got a rewrite as I suspect they played a part in putting people off as they demoed the software. They're way too user unfriendly, both in look and function. People who have used them every day for 20 years would probably disagree, but it's when you compare them with similar features in things like modern Adobe apps, and Bitwig which I'm getting into now, you realize how simple and user friendly they could have been. And the manual doesn't exactly help matters because much of it is a confusing mess.

 
Take a look at samplitude and you'll soon feel much better about Sonar.

paulo

sharke
It's a shame that these old looking parts of the program - stuff like the shortcuts manager, the drum map manager and the controller surface manager - never got a rewrite as I suspect they played a part in putting people off as they demoed the software. They're way too user unfriendly, both in look and function. People who have used them every day for 20 years would probably disagree, but it's when you compare them with similar features in things like modern Adobe apps, and Bitwig which I'm getting into now, you realize how simple and user friendly they could have been. And the manual doesn't exactly help matters because much of it is a confusing mess.

 
Take a look at samplitude and you'll soon feel much better about Sonar.

I should think Samplitude is another one hanging on by the skin of its teeth due to the loyalty of long term users!

 

paulo

Take a look at samplitude and you'll soon feel much better about Sonar.

sharke
 
I should think Samplitude is another one hanging on by the skin of its teeth due to the loyalty of long term users!

The deal they offered recently did have a slight whiff of the "lifetime updates" to it I must admit, but I quite liked some of it in a kind of hey it's like sonar 8.5 way and almost bit, but ultimately the menu mess put me off. 

Reaper has a similar user unfriendliness in its mess of menus, but saves itself by virtue of the fact that it's only $60 (or free depending on how you look at it) and that it's incredibly customizable and you can trim away a lot of the scary stuff.

I think ease of use is really important these days and software design trends are headed along those lines. Kids are growing up with beautifully designed apps that are intuitive and efficient and they have certain expectations about how things should look and work. At one time I hated all this and thought "give me the geekiness and the complexity, I don't want any of this dumbed down crap" but I'm changing my mind about that now. I've come to realize that it's so much better to work in a clutter free environment without a million unused features, buttons and menu options screaming for your attention. I've gone all feng shui!

It's funny but I've heard loads of people on here express that "don't dumb things down, I like the complexity" attitude, but when you get into how most Sonar users work, they barely use a fraction of its features or power. My projects are often hardcore in terms of track count and complexity and yet I probably only use about 50% of Sonar's features, and from reading discussions on Facebook groups about how people use the program it seems that a large proportion of users make very light demands on Sonar, often never getting higher than 20-30 audio tracks with a few effects on each. Makes you wonder if they wouldn't have been better off with something far less complicated, I know I feel that way myself.