brundlefly

John
I insert a MIDI track in it and whether echo is on or not when I press a key on the MIDI keyboard and the MIDI meter lights up.
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The MIDI meters show activity on the track. Echo has nothing to do with it. It shouldn't matter what the condition of echo is for MIDI whether its coming from a keyboard or has been previously recorded.

Unless there's a config setting I don't know about, I think you're mistaken about this, John. MIDI track meters are output meters only. They only show activity if existing MIDI is playing back or live input is being echoed. Even arming the track does not switch the meters to the input side as you might expect.

Try it. In the case I outlined above the transport was not moving there was sound from the synth and nothing was  being recorded. However it was using a hardware synth a Sound Canvas which is the default for a new MIDI track as output on my system. Basically its just being used as a transfer point for MIDI. As if it were MIDI through.  If however I set that track to record it would. Before I posted I did exactly what I described on my system. Sonar has always worked this way.
BTW I use the right click menu to insert a track. 
 
Update:
OK I just tried it with a project for audio. This project is two audio tracks meant for playback only. Each one is a song. The MIDI track I inserted did not show any MIDI activity but the synth did sound. This is not as it should be.
 
I will have to look into this further. Echo had no effect on or off. On inserting a MIDI track into my empty project it did as it had before. MIDI activity was showing. 
 
I created a new project from a CW template one audio and one MIDI track and the results were the same for the empty project. Activity was seen and sound was heard. Now I am baffled.  
 
One cool thing Brundelfly is I know you know what you are talking about. I trust you completely. I'm just not seeing the same as you. 
 
I retested the 2 song project and it agrees with what you are saying. The other projects don't. More baffled.

Interesting, John. I haven't tried, but I'm guessing that it works that way when the project Clock is set to 'Internal', which is only possible in a pure MIDI project with no audio content, including the audio metronome.

brundlefly
Interesting, John. I haven't tried, but I'm guessing that it works that way when the project Clock is set to 'Internal', which is only possible in a pure MIDI project with no audio content, including the audio metronome.

I knew you could figure it out. That sounds like the reason. We are all blessed to have you here. 

Thanks to all of you who responded with suggestions re getting no audio/or track recording in my audio tracks - - only activity was in my midi tracks. I tired all of your suggestions + a few from a couple of email responses I got from Cakewalk. My Quad Capture and entire set up were found to be correct. I downloaded a trial of Ableton Live and all of my Platinum synths worked fine there. I even had my computer checked out (my two hard disk drives & if I had any viruses or other items that could have caused the problem). The drives are in good shape & all the junk files were removed, but still no Platinum audio action & still getting a lot of freezing up when I try to work with it. Bottom line: I'm done with Cakewalk & Sonar. It's a great program if it works, but I've had too many problems with it, & of course this is the worst problem I've ever had. Maybe if Gibson didn't buy Cakewalk, and you could still get help via the phone (like I always got in the past) I would stay with it - - but I'm not sure that would even help to solve this problem. I'll be going to Presonus Studio One 3 and/or Ableton Live. Sonar was my first, and only daw that I used. All of my equipment is Roland - - electric midi accordion, electric midi guitar, Quad Capture & Jupiter-80. Roland is a great company & still offers wonderful support - - that's why I got Sonar & the other items.
 
For review I have: Windows 7 (64bit), 12GB DDR3 - 1600MHz, 2TB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive, 1 TB 7200 SATA hard drive 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7570.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Well after trying all of the above suggestions, I called Roland to ask about my Jupiter-80, which I use as my controller. Sure enough, good old Roland came through again. The person I talked to said it sounded like too many signals were going into the computer. So I looked at my set up again. After having to disconnect all my cables & move my equipment due to recarpeting my music studio area, I mistakenly attached my cables. So at last, my Sonar works again! Thanks again to all who responded.
 

Hawkthornhill4366
After having to disconnect all my cables & move my equipment due to recarpeting my music studio area, I mistakenly attached my cables.

That would have been a useful piece of information to have for troubleshooting, and contradicts your statement early on that 'My input & outputs are the same they have been for years & they always worked."
 
I guess we on the forum made the rookie mistake of not explicitly asking if anything had changed since it last worked. In my day job I've learned not to rely on users to automatically mention recent changes without being prompted.
 
Hard to imagine how these changes weren't affecting other DAW software, though.
 
Oh, well, good to hear you got it figured in any case.