I've already searched the forum for an answer, but I'm gonna try here.
 
I've been using Guitar Rig 5 with my Cakewalk/Sonar for years. Love it, love it, love it. But over the weekend, I must have clicked and altered some settings because its gone weird on me.
 
When I play Guitar Rig 5 as a standalone, everything is cool. All the presets sound normal, all the features work.
 
But when I open up a project in Cakewalk and add Guitar Rig 5 to a track, (like I've been doing for a million years!), the presets in Guitar Rig 5 aren't working correctly. My guitar sound is clean, even when I choose a high gain preset. It like some of the components in Guitar Rig 5 aren't being activated or "read" properly.
 
At first I thought I had a bad cable from my guitar into my Audio Kontrol 1 interface, which is the interface that I use for the studio. In fact, the guitar tone almost sounds like you're playing out live into an amp with a bad guitar cable!
 
But like I said, Guitar Rig 5 works flawlessly when I test it as a standalone.
 
Did I mess up my routing? My driver settings? My "Audio & MIDI Setup?"
 
When any plugin ain't workin' right, where do you start investigating?
 
Rock on!
 
 

Is it possible that you've bypassed all effects in Sonar?  if so, then look for a lit up "FX" on the control bar and unlight it.

promidi
Is it possible that you've bypassed all effects in Sonar?  if so, then look for a lit up "FX" on the control bar and unlight it.

Thanks, promidi! That might be possible. I'll check it out!
 

Guitar Rig is inserted as an effect on a track. In addition to that FX bin being on as mentioned above, input echo needs to be enabled on the track to hear it.

mettelus
Guitar Rig is inserted as an effect on a track. In addition to that FX bin being on as mentioned above, input echo needs to be enabled on the track to hear it.

Thanks, mettelus. Yeah, I have the input echo enabled. The audio I'm hearing back is not what the presets are setup to sound like. No matter which one I choose, metal, country, clean, they all sound badly distorted or muddy. Like a bad cable plugged into an amp. I've used the plugin manager to rescan, I've tried to check the paths. Dunno. Its got me puzzled. Maybe uninstall Guitar Rig and then re-install it? 

If it runs in standalone mode fine, that would not be it. I am not near my DAW, but there are a lot of settings to check inside GR, and I cannot remember if the standalone and VST share them. Gut reaction is you want to run the automatic input level in GR (hammer out some full G chords and let it decide input levels). Run through the global settings to make sure they make sense first. Manually lowering input levels (AI output/GR input) would be another option, just to find where the distortion hits.

Are you running GR on a clean track in SONAR/CbB? If so, also hit "I" to call up the inspector and make sure the ProChannel is off. There have been reports that the Console Emulator is acting up again lately.