No sign of a SONAR Platinum Reference Guide that I can find. (The X3 one was 38.3MB, and yes I made use of it often!) Hope it's not toast.
 
-djh

IIRC, the pdf docs were available soon after X3 went on sale. The Reference Guide pdf is a snapshot of the web-based help at the time of release. I would guess it will be no different this time.

dhodgson
No sign of a SONAR Platinum Reference Guide that I can find. (The X3 one was 38.3MB, and yes I made use of it often!) Hope it's not toast.
 
-djh

Scook is quite right.  The manuals should be available soon after Sonar is released to the public.

Any sign of PDF's yet?
 

X3 pdf is still largely valid... I'm quite sure we'll be notified when it's ready NOT by repeatedly asking the same question  
Assume there'll be both email alerts and a sticky thread highlighting this...
 
As ususal, Scook comes to the rescue in the next thread!  Cake should do a sticky above on this for all to see...(probably in the main thread I never read...)

How about a CHM (MS HTML) help file?  I have them in both my X2 and X3 Start Menu folders, but not in Platinum.  I don't remember having to get a separate download for those, but its been a while so I could have forgotten.
I'm having a hard time finding help in Platinum-- the Help menu just has the Tutorials, What's New, and some FAQ's for Audio, MIDI, etc.
 
Thanks,

The Platinum chm is included in the "SONAR Help and Tutorials" installer. It is a complete copy of the web-based help  http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=toc.html in chm format/

Thanks scook!
 
I ran the installer but couldn't find the CHM.  I had to choose the option under:
 
Preferences\File\Advanced\Always use local help
 
and now the CHM comes up either in Help or when I hit F1.  I like using F1 because it brings up help specific to the section of Sonar that is in focus at the time.  This saves me searching through an index and TOC.
 
I now have the online help bookmarked in case I want to check it too.
 
Thanks again,
 

I was looking for the user guide as well. I found this post useful. I followed the instructions to use local help. I was going to convert the .CHM to a .PDF with a utility I have. When browsing for the .CHM I found the reference guide .PDF
 
C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\SONAR Platinum>dir /b
Cakewalk User Data.lnk
CJLibrary.dll
cpprest140_2_7.dll
CWVideoEngine.dll
DSDConvert.dll
DShowProxy.dll
iZotope_Radius_Win32.dll
libsndfile-1.dll
Readme.rtf
REX Shared Library.dll
SONAR Reference Guide.pdf   <------------------
SONAR User Guide.pdf           <------------------
SONAR.CHM
SONARPLT.exe
Splash.dib
Stretch.ax
stretch.hlp
TTSImage.dll
TTSlame.dll
TTSlibsndfile.dll
TTSRES.dll

Yes, there is a pdf, but unless something has changed, it is not a current reference, as it is not being updated. The concept of a constantly changing SONAR with changes in features and procedures every month is somewhat at odds with the non-maintenance of an increasingly out of date reference guide. The web based help system is up to date more or less, but is very poorly indexed and not all that easily searchable. Context sensitive help is useful if you have a problem at a certain point and if you are lucky enough that the robot can guess your question from where you are in the program, but it is not useful for learning the program unless your learning style is trial and error.