I'd love the metronome to work without playing or recording at all, so that when we are building a project, we can figure out the tempo before starting,  to hear it sonically, and to be able to adjust the tempo until it's just right!
 
Nothing fancy, just press play, and it plays until you press stop!

Would it work to insert a midi track pointing to a drum synth, where you could loop just that measure, and make your tempo adjustments while doing this? The, just mute or delete the 1 measure click you created when done with it.
 
Or, temporarily set a larger number of measures for the metronome Count-In, so you could hear the tempo for however long you wanted to set the count in for, and then make your adjustments.  When done, adjust that count-in to 1 or 2 when ready to record.
 
Bob Bone
 

You might like this technique that I use for setting tempo to something I've been practicing and am ready to record:
 
- Disable Stop at Project End in Track View Options if it isn't already so you can run the transport in an empty project.
- Start playback with no click sounding, count off 2-4 measures in your head, and stop the transport on what should be the next downbeat.
- Shift+M to open Set Measure/Beat At Now, and enter that measure and beat (e.g. measure 5, beat 1).
- SONAR will reset the initial tempo to make the specified beat fall on the absolute Now time where you stopped the transport.
- Note that Set Measure will also insert a tempo change of the same value at the time you set. If you're going to be changing the initial tempo later, you'll want to delete that one.

I was looking for the (at least 2) threads where this great tip was explained. Does the forum throw old threads out?
 
This time I'm copy-pasting this to my "tips" folder.

Glad you liked it.
 
I Google keywords against site:forum.cakewalk.com to find things. If you have an idea who posted something or you know you posted in the thread, you can include usernames. Pretty much everything ever posted is still available which can make it difficult to narrow things down with common words like tempo and metronome.  This one might have been tricky to find if you didn't remember that 'brundlefly' posted it, and that it involved using 'Set Measure/Beat', or that a lot of the threads were about 'tap tempo'.
 
All the guys around here that seem to have minds like the proverbial steel trap are just masters of 'the Google'. 

Ah, thanks. I have so far always use the filter in my user control panel - and I almost never find what I want.

I think that's a great idea! I usually just enable click on play and mess around till I find what I want, but I like this a lot!

My Roland MC500 had an option for this, so I, too, initially wanted it.
 
But I find the mere fact that the metronome is already beeping throws me off and makes me lose the feel for of my song's natural tempo.
 
On the other hand, if I sing it in my head and play a few bars, or even just clap, I get the natural tempo without stressing. That's this method.
 
Very useful.

Thanks for all the replies guys!

I like the op's idea!