Hello, I'm still learning how to use Sonar and I've imported a Wave with Vocals into my track but its very quiet compared to the rest of the instruments. All levels of each track are pretty much the same but the vocals are drowned out completely. As a stand alone wave playing through the lap top the vocals are adequate. As soon as they are imported into Sonar the Vocal Wave becomes inaudible. Upping the levels of the Vocal does nothing. Any suggestions.
 
Thanx
 
I

Is the vocal wave a full looking wave or is it a thin, tiny, line?  Notice the difference between the brown track and the other tracks regarding the physical size of the wave. It's sufficient for what it does, but it is lower than the others. I have seen a few, back in the early days, where the track was a tiny thin line. My signal was just too low going in and I had to learn how to get a better signal input. Recording a good signal strength should give a full looking wave.  Using normalize or gain as a short cut  increases the noise levels in the track. Not good! Start with good waves. Learn how to record them.
 

 
Your waves in the tracks should look closer to the red and blue in the pic above.  If you have that, you're good and the issue lies elsewhere.
 
You can solve level issue one of two ways.... either bring up the vocal track or lower everything else to match.  Lowering the other tracks is sometimes the best way.... you can always turn things up later when you have a clean balanced mix.

Use volume envelopes to control the levels. That's what the yellow lines in the picture above are.  The volume envelopes are a great tool to use.
 

A couple ways to do this. 

Method 1: Quick and dirty but destructive.
Select the audio clip then Process>Apply Effect>Normalize
That should set the loudest point of your clip to 0dB and adjust the rest of the clip in relation to that.
You could also play around with Process>Apply Effect>Gain and adjust the amount of volume change manually until you get what you're looking for.
 
Note that using the Normalize or Gain function is destructive. Meaning its going to change the audio in the clip. You can undo if you don't like it, but once you save and close your project, you will not be able to undo later. So if using these functions end up doing something bad that you don't notice right away like adding too much hiss or clipping off some transients for instance, you might not be able to easily fix it later.
 
Method 2: More difficult but often leaves you with better options.
If you want to bring up the volume in a non-destructive way, try using an EQ plugin followed by a Compressor in the FX bin. Raise the master level of the EQ by a few dB. If you get noise or hiss use the EQ to roll those frequencies off a bit. Then use the compressor to bring up the level even more.
 
Doing it this way you don't change the original audio at all. So if you decide later that you've compressed too much life out of the track, you can adjust the compressor settings as needed. 

immortalis
Hello, I'm still learning how to use Sonar and I've imported a Wave with Vocals into my track but its very quiet compared to the rest of the instruments. All levels of each track are pretty much the same but the vocals are drowned out completely. As a stand alone wave playing through the lap top the vocals are adequate. As soon as they are imported into Sonar the Vocal Wave becomes inaudible. Upping the levels of the Vocal does nothing. Any suggestions.
 
Thanx
 
I

If the level slider of the track does not affect the volume at all, the problem is "somewhere else".
Importing should not affect the actual wave in any way, unless format or sample rate conversion is needed (then SONAR does it automatically, IIRC).

What are the meters reading in the vocal track and the other tracks? You're shooting for -18 db avg per track generally. Try turning the gain all the way down for all the other tracks as a starting point and turning up the gain as needed for the vocal. I'm referring to the gain knob at the top of the console strip.