Soundwise
It doesn't get pasted into a lane. I can't figure how to paste automation from one track to another without it becoming orphaned... Assign envelope menu displays only controls for a PC EQ. Is this a bug then?

I don't understand.
 
Select the automation lane (there is a blue "selected" thingie in the upper left corner of the lane controls) then try pasting. Does that not paste the envelope into the lane?
 
After that you just assign it to what you want.
 
BTW... I am working theoretically here. That, I think, is how it is supposed to work.

jpetersen
Craig, thank you, that works.
Please don't think me ungrateful, but this is so typically Cakewalk. A simple task, a
non-intuitive solution. My instinctive approach was the same as John T's, but if you do that, the
Delete, Delete Special, Cut and Cut Special menus are:
1) Disabled (grey) if one or more of the tracks selected have audio somewhere (but outside the selected range)
2) Enabled if the selected tracks have NOTHING IN THEM AT ALL but if you click Delete, nothing happens.
But there is almost certainly a reason why it must be so, as with the Clean Audio Folder and CWAF tools.

 
Well it's not necessarily a good reason, but regarding 1) Cut/Copy/Paste functions are event-oriented, not time-oriented. SONAR has never known how to cut/copy/paste time, only events that occur within a time. That's why there has to be an event in there. Once you realize the event/object orientation/limitation, a lot of things make more sense. Regarding 2), that's probably something that could be fixed but I guess a programmer might think "Why bother? No one will be cutting something that doesn't exist so they'll never notice it anyway."
 
The Clean Audio Folder is a legacy doofus [technical term] from back when hard drives were expensive and audio was dumped into one big folder. No one should need to use it any more. The easiest way to clean up unused files is to Save As to a different per-project folder, and you can have it save either all the audio ("just in case") or only the clips with actual audio that's pointed to from larger files. 
 

Anderton said:
>> Based on a lot of the forum posts here, I'd say the hardest thing about SONAR is
>> reading the documentation
Well, in my defense, not even scook knew this.

 
Not aimed specifically at you, and as mentioned, not intended to be snarky. Programs like SONAR are very complicated. Same can be said of Cubase et al. There are a lot of dark corners and you have to dig to find out where they are and what they do. For example, if you look under "Markers," the help won't tell you how to cut/paste so that marker positions are unaffected...although it will tell you how to lock markers to SMPTE time. You have to look under Cut/Paste, which then describes how these operations affect markers. And how does one know to look there? Well, you don't. This is why I rummage around the help files every now and then to see what I can learn. I get consistent, reliable, creative results with SONAR and yet I still feel like I know at most 50% of the ways to help make workflow more efficient.
 
This is also why the forum is a great and valid shortcut, but you'll get better results if you start a thread with a very specific question - like "Can markers move automatically when you delete sections of a song?" The only reason I found your post was because I was looking for any consensus on particular issues to pass along to Cakewalk.
 

He did, however, suggest turning off "Always Import Broadcast Waves At Their Timestamp"
in Preferences>File>Audio Data and that cured the source of the initial problem.
But how a mere mortal is supposed to know such a thing exists, what it is, that 
it is on by default and what the consequences of that setting are is beyond me.

 
This issue cropped up so much in forums that I highly recommended having time stamp at import not selected as the default, and I'm pretty sure that became the case in SONAR 2015. However those who migrated settings from previous versions still had the preference set to importing at time stamp.
 
There are a finite number of options in Preferences and it's important to know what all of them do. Every preference page has a Help button. The Help buttons are invaluable. Once when doing a sample library with hundreds of tracks I was getting constant dropouts. It had to be latency or an underpowered computer, right? Hey, I'm a veteran, I know these things...right? But I clicked on the Help button when the dropout notice appeared, and lo and behold, audio file fragmentation can cause dropouts - especially when you're doing a zillion edits on tiny files. So I followed the advice on defragmenting the project, and the dropouts stopped...I filed under "ya learn something new every day."
 
As to the time stamping, you could just as easily ask why the files you wanted to import added a time offset unless it was really needed...SONAR is simply doing what the file tells it to do. You could make an argument that SONAR SHOULD default to reading time stamps, because if something is time-stamped it's for a reason, and people should be smart enough not to time-stamp something that doesn't need it. However that's not a given. I've seen a lot of sample libraries where the files have a start time of 1 hour. Why? I can see no rational reason for that, so I can only assume the program they used to create the files defaulted to that...which they probably didn't know...and they also didn't know to turn off exporting with Broadcast WAV metadata when they exported the files. So SONAR did what the files asked it to do, and the result was frustration that appeared to be SONAR's fault - but wasn't.
 
2-inch 24-tracks were easier on some levels, but too darn expensive 
 

Beepster

Soundwise
It doesn't get pasted into a lane. I can't figure how to paste automation from one track to another without it becoming orphaned... Assign envelope menu displays only controls for a PC EQ. Is this a bug then?

I don't understand.
 
Select the automation lane (there is a blue "selected" thingie in the upper left corner of the lane controls) then try pasting. Does that not paste the envelope into the lane?
 
After that you just assign it to what you want.
 
BTW... I am working theoretically here. That, I think, is how it is supposed to work.

That didn't work with first synth audio output option selected. I managed to copy automation envelope to a MIDI source track and reassign it to control volume. Now everything works, but that was hard...

Beepster
Meh... audiosnap can actually do what you seem to want when used at an "advanced" level. The problem is any "quantize" function can only do so much.

Ha! Never said I couldn't do it. I agree with Craig in that you have to read and study. I have done that and am quite adept at editing multitrack drums, thank you.. and a lot more. I am quite proud of my advanced audiosnap skills!
 
But I totally disagree with the notion that the quantize function is as good as it can be and can only do so much. These things do get better over time. Especially with multitrack drums as there are less options for what it could be than with note based instruments.
 
Things go bang on 2 and 4, or if a syncopated beat  or odd pattern is involved there are ways to recognize those. And there are other things that pretty much always happen on beat 1. When a run or fill gets involved, it's not difficult to determine where that should start and end. Once that's determined, what happens in between is easier to figure out. Actually I generally don't need to adjust what's in between the start/finish, just start it and stretch the end to fit. What happens in between is generally ok because it's usually the drummer rushing. The old joke is, you know how to tell if a drummer is at the door? The knocking speeds up!! 
 
I think you could write down and define a bunch of rules that would bound a drum part into something that you can move around automatically and get it right about 99.9+ percent of the time. Particularly when you know the time signature, which you do in sonar.
 
It'll happen some day, mark my word.
 
gabo

gbowling

Beepster
Meh... audiosnap can actually do what you seem to want when used at an "advanced" level. The problem is any "quantize" function can only do so much.

Ha! Never said I couldn't do it. I agree with Craig in that you have to read and study. I have done that and am quite adept at editing multitrack drums, thank you.. and a lot more. I am quite proud of my advanced audiosnap skills!
 
But I totally disagree with the notion that the quantize function is as good as it can be and can only do so much. These things do get better over time. Especially with multitrack drums as there are less options for what it could be than with note based instruments.
 
Things go bang on 2 and 4, or if a syncopated beat  or odd pattern is involved there are ways to recognize those. And there are other things that pretty much always happen on beat 1. When a run or fill gets involved, it's not difficult to determine where that should start and end. Once that's determined, what happens in between is easier to figure out. Actually I generally don't need to adjust what's in between the start/finish, just start it and stretch the end to fit. What happens in between is generally ok because it's usually the drummer rushing. The old joke is, you know how to tell if a drummer is at the door? The knocking speeds up!! 
 
I think you could write down and define a bunch of rules that would bound a drum part into something that you can move around automatically and get it right about 99.9+ percent of the time. Particularly when you know the time signature, which you do in sonar.
 
It'll happen some day, mark my word.
 
gabo

Ah... I see. Well really I think the way to roll through that is to just slice up the clips and apply your quantize actions to the segments... not the whole part. I guess that COULD be made a little more intuitive with some kind of tool where you could select time ranges and set your quantize instructions for each range individually WITHOUT splitting things up but I'm not sure how much faster that would be because you still have to set the ranges, program in the quantize and hope it works.
 
Also doing it section by section means if the process borks up you can just reverse it on that section instead of the whole thing.
 
Then again maybe this theoretical tool could account for that and allow for specific sections to be "undone/recalculated" easily while retaining the successful adjustments.
 
Is that kind of what you mean?
 
Edit: BTW... the lock/merge markers option does that stuff across mutli mic'd drum tracks... which you probably know but just in case it should be mentioned.
 
Cheers.
 
Edit 2: But if the issue is faulty transient detection... well that can be a pain. They supposedly improved on that but it's probably still a little hit or miss/needs some user tweaking to make sure the transient markers are indeed on the transients... otherwise everything will most definitely turn to poop.

slumbermachine

1. A wish - a special freeze audio button that just creates a new audio track and copies the audio to it, leaving the original un-frozen. Just could speed up a workflow for me, and yes I know I could just record the audio to a new track, but I want a way to quickly just lock in a sound mid workflow.

 Your wish is granted, it's called "bounce to tracks"  Just select the track you want to "special freeze to a new track" and pull down the track menu and select bounce to tracks. It creates a new track with all the FX, automation, whatever you select in the dialog. The original track is left un-frozen or as is.
 
gabo

gbowling

slumbermachine

1. A wish - a special freeze audio button that just creates a new audio track and copies the audio to it, leaving the original un-frozen. Just could speed up a workflow for me, and yes I know I could just record the audio to a new track, but I want a way to quickly just lock in a sound mid workflow.

 Your wish is granted, it's called "bounce to tracks"
 
gabo

That doesn't do what I want, right? That will freeze the entire track. I want to just extract the audio only leaving the source as is.

gbowling
Ok, I guess I'm confused as to what you're asking.. 
 
Do you want the audio from the track copied without any FX or any processing that you've done on that track? Basically the original raw audio? 
 
If that's what you want, I would clone the track prior to working on it. BUT, you can still do it after the fact with either clone track or bounce to tracks. Just un-select cloning/bouncing everything except events in the track. 
 
gabo

No I get that. There are multiple ways I can do it. I just want a fast way to do this:
 
Have a button like the "freeze" button with the same right click options (fx on/off, tail, etc), but instead of freezing the track, it takes the current track state and creates a new audio track with just the audio. Not affecting the original track in any way. No linking, just a straight audio track with the raw audio.
 
Just a quick way to be able to do A-B comparisons so I don't have to do the process or freezing, add audio track, copy, paste, unfreeze.

Mastering multiple songs

jpetersen
Having said that, I have programmed WAV file header manipulation
code for akai samplers and have never even heard of Broadcast Waves.

That's not really surprising, they're two different worlds. BWFs were adopted by the European Broadcast Union in 1997 and have been updated a couple times since then, mostly because the original spec didn't accommodate files over 4 GB. Ooops...so now we have RF64 to get around that.
 
The big advantage of BWF for us lowly musician people is if I give you a bunch of time-stamped clips I created in SONAR and you use a different DAW that can import time-stamped clips, they'll magically end up in the right place on the timeline when you import them...which is actually kinda cool.

 
What's the hardest thing you do in sonar?
 
Getting the song to stop at the end of the last track.
The transport keeps running for 15 minutes beyond the end of the song.
Now I have 3 songs that don't stop at the end of audio/midi tracks.
It seems that adding volume automation to a sub-master channel starts this problem.
And yes, I have checked for stray midi/audio/automation events and there are none.
 

Zargg71
I would say Automation and MIDI editing is the hardest things I do in SONAR.
The rest is up to me to get right

Yes, add these to my list!