Been having a minor problem lately in Sonar 5 PE...

I use a couple buses full of effects in my tunes - usually reverb and delay - and when I've mixed down the tune to a stereo .wav file and play it back in my audio editing program,. right at the start of the .wav file, I hear a tiny snippet of "ghost" effects coming in - which means a word or so from one of my vocal tracks fires off a delay effect, then fades away, even though that part of the song doesn't appear in the beginning.

For my past few projects it hasn't really been an issue since the song doesn't actually start until a few bars into the tune.
But I have some songs that do start on bar 1 or bar 2 and I know they could be affected like this. Is there something I'm not doing correctly?

Is there something I'm not doing correctly?

no, it's just how Sonar works (for now) -

you can hear the same "ghosts" (usually just reverb/delay tails) after you stop when there's audio playing and continue playing in another point in the song - all the above happens when "play effect tails after stopping" is enabled under the main Audio options.

for some reason not just realtime playback is affected but also the bouncing/exporting engine.. i guess this is what you hear there.

Edit: oops..forgot to mention a possible solution - add some blank measures at the end... just before bouncing/exporting play the "silence" there until there are no tails of reverbs heard.. then Export.

others reasons for unexplained sounds in Sonar - bussing of fx and soloing tracks..many times you can still hear the reverbs of muted tracks.. not a bug, just a "feature" that might confuse the user..
heh..no, you're not hearing sounds..repeat after me..you're NOT !

ORIGINAL: Honest_Al

Is there something I'm not doing correctly?

no, it's just how Sonar works (for now) -

you can hear the same "ghosts" (usually just reverb/delay tails) after you stop when there's audio playing and continue playing in another point in the song - all the above happens when "play effect tails after stopping" is enabled under the main Audio options.

for some reason not just realtime playback is affected but also the bouncing/exporting engine.. i guess this is what you hear there.

Edit: oops..forgot to mention a possible solution - add some blank measures at the end... just before bouncing/exporting play the "silence" there until there are no tails of reverbs heard.. then Export.

others reasons for unexplained sounds in Sonar - bussing of fx and soloing tracks..many times you can still hear the reverbs of muted tracks.. not a bug, just a "feature" that might confuse the user..
heh..no, you're not hearing sounds..repeat after me..you're NOT !

Hmmm, I never heard these in Sonar 4 or 3...Then again I'd been using Studio Edition until now (version 5 is my first PE).
Maybe it's because I did have blank measures at the end...hmmm.

As for the reverbs of muted tracks...I discovered that's usually that case then the track's effect send is set to "pre" rather than "post,"

I hope Cakewalk is aware of this and is ready to call some Ghostbusters. :)

This most likely isn't a Sonar problem, I've seen this happen in several different programs, I think it's a plugin issue, (almost always certain VST plugins IIRC), and I have a guess as to why.

When the project is playing, all of the plugins are filling their data buffers, processing the data and then outputting it, everything's fine.

When you stop playback while the audio is active, (in the middle of the song for instance), most plugins will flush out whatever data is sitting in their buffers, some however, do not, so when playback is restarted the first thing that those plugins will do is process and output whatever data was sitting in their buffers from before, there is your "ghost" audio.

I always setup at least 1 second of silence (empty space) at the beginning of all of my projects, before doing a mixdown I'll play and stop inside of that silence once or twice to allow those problem plugins to clear out their data buffers.

:)

I didn't have this problem in Sonar 3, but have noticed it in 5. Some waves that I have exported do have that little tail at the beggining of the song. I have not had a chance to trouble shoot it yet, but I am willing to bet what Honest_Al said though will correct this (blank space, etc ... ) and this is just the Sonar export engine for the time being... I'd guess it may have something to do with the freeze feature in combo with the export engine, cuz it wasn't there in 3 - I have not changed my plugs, so I don't believe it has anything to do w/stubborn plugs, etc ... nor do I believe it has to do w/post vs pre sends cuz I never had that problem w/3

ORIGINAL: Strryder

This most likely isn't a Sonar problem, I've seen this happen in several different programs, I think it's a plugin issue, (almost always certain VST plugins IIRC), and I have a guess as to why.

Aha! I think I got it!!!

I NEVER use VST effects, and only rarely use VSTis...
But like I said this is my first Sonar Producer Edition, and I never noticed this in the Studio Editions I had before.
So if it IS a plugin issue, I can narrow it down to the delay...and which delay do I use?

SONITUS!!!

I guess I should bring this to Sonitus' atention. Is Sonitus part of Cakewalk, or just contracted by Cakewalk to provide plugins?
I've never heard of Sonitus outside of Cakewalk/Sonar.

I think Sonitus has a ghost problem here. Who you gonna call?

If you export to file the first time and get the ghosts.  Export it again and the ghosts will be gone.  Pain in the arse for me as well.  Mixdown 1 I get ghosts...mixdown again after the first file sucked and ghosts are gone.  

tbase2000
If you export to file the first time and get the ghosts.  Export it again and the ghosts will be gone.  Pain in the arse for me as well.  Mixdown 1 I get ghosts...mixdown again after the first file sucked and ghosts are gone.  

Well, for a start this is not good advice (the issue is that the time selection during Export does not encompass the full length of the reverb/delay tails)
 
The other observation is that you are responding to an ELEVEN year old thread.
 
I think this is quite possibly a record.

See this once in a while, a new member joins and bumps an 80 year old thread .
Welcome to the forums tbase2000.
 
Join in on some newer threads.
 
Peace.

Better late than never!  Though I really hope the OP hasn't been waiting for an answer this long. 
 
I get this too from time to time. Guess what I do. I cut it out in Sonar or any other audio editor that allows editing. 
In Sonar I just slip edit it out and save that file.