As the subject says, when I turn on groove clip looping on an audio clip (Ctrl + L), it simply stretches longer to my horror. I undo and it comes back to its original length. This has never normally happened before for me. I sure am doing something wrong here. This can't be a Sonar error/bug (I sure hope).
 
The audio clip is 46 bars long. Now could that be a reason I thought as 46 is not a multiple of 4. So then I tried with a clip of 44 bars. Same thing occurs, the clip stretches to 128 bars when groove clip looping is turned on and the audio drags due to the stretch.
I want the clip to remain of the same length when I turn on groove clip looping on it, whatever the original length may be. Can this be achieved ? I sure am missing some step. 

Open the clip in the Loop Construction Window and enter the number of beats manually. When SONAR guesses about looping, it assumes that loops are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 measures because that's what most loops are. FYI there is a limit to how long a loop can be; don't recall offhand what it is because I don't bump up against the limit but it might be 128 or 256

Sonar has no idea of your Audios properties. (technology isn't that far yet).
you have to tell it the amount of beats it is.

Anderton
Open the clip in the Loop Construction Window and enter the number of beats manually. When SONAR guesses about looping, it assumes that loops are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 measures because that's what most loops are. FYI there is a limit to how long a loop can be; don't recall offhand what it is because I don't bump up against the limit but it might be 128 or 256

 
Thanks a lot Craig. That was indeed the trick. For my 44 bar audio clip, I got it sorted when I entered 44 x 4 = 176 beats for the groove clip. I then just had to stretch the clip back to its 44 bar size. I just wonder though why Sonar stretched my clip to 128 bars when my clip was 44 bars (in between 32 and 64 bars). Logically it should have stretched it initially to 64 I thought.
 
The other thing I noticed is that there is no way to preserve the manually entered beats. Sonar does not save it. Meaning when I disable groove clip looping on the clip and enable it again, Sonar does not preserve the 176 beats that I entered. It goes back to 512 beats to stretch the clip to 128 bars again.
 
In this regard, a question that comes to mind is : Is .rx2 the only format for groove clips ? Can an audio clip be saved as a .wav groove clip ? If not, how could we save groove clips in Sonar ? If yes, how do we save an audio clip as a .wav groove clip ? 

Try Clip > Save Loop... in the Loop Construction View.

scook
Try Clip > Save Loop... in the Loop Construction View.

Thanks Steve.That worked. Its just that I've been mostly into midi and synth programming all along. Only recently, I have started working a lot more with audio files directly. So, had not ventured into loop construction view much. But that's why this forum is so special to reach out to. With Craig's tips on the forefront and all other folks always there to help. Thanks once again.  

FYI there are lots of tips recording the Loop Construction view in Friday's Tip of the Week.