Hello everybody,
 
I have created several drum maps in SONAR and want to take them as a basis for the drum maps I will use in another DAW. I don't have to be able to edit the file and reuse it in SONAR. I just want to be able to extract the instrument names and their order.
 
Is there a way to do this?
 
I tried the obvious, opening the .map files in notepad, but the result is an undeciverable mix of letters.
Thanks for hints.

You might want to have a look at the map files contents using a hex editor. 

Using Cakewalk's drum map editor, create small drum map file with, say, one map entry and then, using a hex editor, see what changing values does to the internal contents of the file.

Depending on your programming skill level, you could create a program (maybe in MS Visual Studio) to programmatically extract the relevant information.  The note names are in ASCII with each character separated by a zero.  The note numbers will be in hex, so you would have to convert it to decimal.

The trick is the use the hex editor to see what actual data Cakewalk's drum map editor produces.

Long winded process I know, but unless someone has already done the above leg work, this is really the only way to do this.

I made a short description of the file format for Sonar drum maps that can be downloaded here.
 
However, the simplest way to transfer the drum names from Sonar to a different DAW may be to create the drum map in Sonar, open the piano roll, and then double click on each note to copy/paste the name and other settings.

Thanks for your ideas and knowledge. Seems like there is no quick and easy solution. Since this is something I just need once and don't want to dive too deep into, I think I will really just copy and paste from the SONAR piano roll.
I actually downloaded a hex editor to see what it is and does but for now this seems to go too far ;-)

ralf
I made a short description of the file format for Sonar drum maps that can be downloaded here.
 
However, the simplest way to transfer the drum names from Sonar to a different DAW may be to create the drum map in Sonar, open the piano roll, and then double click on each note to copy/paste the name and other settings.

I tried to download your file but it appears my AV wont let me, it says it has been blocked because of possible malware. what site did you upload to ?
 
EDIT: Never mind, continued anyway and copy/pasted it. thank you for the notes