I have a song written and want to change the tempo without changing the audio tracks' tempo.

When I go to delete about 8 tempo changes from the instrumental of the song, the audio files change also. Is there a way to prevent these audio files from changing tempo? I have never setup audiosnap on these tracks, yet Sonar wants to change tempo when I delete the tempo. When Sonar changes tempo, its timing is off on the audio tracks by a few milliseconds which in this song does not need. The singers / audio tracks need to be on time, and not changed. If I wanted to move them around, I know I can split the audio files and move them to the location needed.

Does anyone know how I can prevent Sonar Producer 8.3.1 from changing the tempo or any change to my audio files while I delete and modifiy the tempos thru tempo view?

I have tried to select only the midi files I want to change / delete tempos on, but that does not work. The way I do tried that was to hold control down and left click on each track that I want to change tempo on .. but like I said it did not work that way.

Any suggestions will help greatly.


Thank you so much for your time in reading this question.

What you're describing doesn't happen in Sonar, at least not by default.

When you change the project Tempo, Sonar doesn't rebounce the audio clips to that tempo.

Sonar will change the Ruler and display in the Track View, but you should expect this... For instance, say you have an audio clip with a length of two measures in a project with a Tempo of 60. If you change the tempo to 120 for the project, the clip will remain the same, (play it and listen), but will now extend 4 measures instead of two, since the tempo is twice as fast.

Maybe you're confused by how Tempo works? In a Sonar project, there is no Project Tempo, there is only The Tempo. Each tempo setting in the Tempo View defines the tempo for Now Time. It's a little like driving at the speed limit. You see a speed limit sign, you look down at your display to see if you're driving at the current speed limit, call it 50mph. You see the next sign says 65 mph, so you speed up to 65. You drive a few miles until the next sign, which says 40 -- you slow down to 40. Sonar doesn't care what the speed (Tempo) "used to be", it only cares about the Now.

Measures and MIDI follow the tempo, not audio -- unless you rebounce the clip using an Fx (like Process / Fit To Time).

is there a way to make it not change the ruler of the audio tracks?

Well yes if you change the time signature, but I don't think you want to play in 4/8.

Think about my example above and you'll realize that if you want the audio to last the same amount of measures when you change the tempo, then you have to re-bounce the audio at the new tempo.

The simple facts are:

A 4-beat measure at 60 bpm is 4 seconds long, using a 4/4 time sig.

A 4-beat measure at 120 is twice as fast, so runs half as long, 2 seconds, when a quarter note gets one beat.

So what is it you really want to do?

Yah, unless you're using groove clips, I think you're seeing it wrong.

When you change tempos and have regular audio clips, the clips do not change at all, but everything else around it does. So, yes the time ruler will be different, but that's because you changed it. A beat has a different time value at a different tempo. That's why your timing is off when you muck with the tempo. Kind of obvious when you think about it.

I'm not sure if I understand you problem exactly, but what I think you are needing to do is change the time base of your audio clips to be "absolute time" as opposed to MBT or the MIDI. Select the audio clips in question and then in the clip properties change their "Time Base" to absolute time. After that, make your tempo changes and see if that gets you where you want.

Time Base
Choose one of the two options in this section to control what happens to a locked clip when you change the tempo:

Musical (M:B:T)--if the clip is set to the Musical time base, the clip's M:B:T position stays constant, and its Absolute position shifts.
Absolute--if the clip is set to the Absolute time base, its Absolute position stays constant, and its M:B:T position shifts.

I actually wish there was a global option to set this default to "Absolute" instead of "M:B:T". Most times this is what I have to do to avoid shifting audio clips when adjusting the tempo map after the fact.

Unless every clip starts at the very beginning, if you change tempo they will shift relative to each other. This freaked me big time. You can lock the clips to keep them from shifting. I think sonar is this way because of a looping design mindset (rex files etc.). For those of us who work in mostly audio, think linearly, and use the DAW like a tape machine, its terrifying that a slight alteration of the tempo doesnt just shift the grid, the clips might move by such a small amount relative to each other that you might not catch it immediately. I frequently like to record without a click. I will later use tempo changes to make a grid that matches the performance to make the project organized (sane). If you have various overdubs here and there in the performance they will shift relative to each other if you change the tempo and dont lock them first. I wish there was a preference where all audio clips are always locked unless you unlock them, including a warning..... DANGER, DANGER ALL YOUR HARD WORK IS ABOUT TO BE DESTROYED

I've been wondering the same question for ages now - how can I temporarily change the tempo of the song without screwing up the audio?

The reason I'd like to do this is so I can record some fast MIDI parts at a slower tempo. What I'd like to do is mute the audio tracks, change the tempo, record the MIDI part, then change back to normal tempo and have the song go back to normal.

However, whenever I've changed the tempo Sonar seems to make some drastic changes to the entire project (I seem to even recall instances of obvious audio-processing). I then get scared and immediately hit the undo button.

I've never seen this happen. I sometimes import a CD-track to copy the chords or something. I then change the tempo of the project to roughly match that of the imported audio. I do it first just visually matching the transients to the bar-lines. Nothing has ever happened to the audio when I've played with the tempo.

If all your audio starts at zero on the timeline no shift will happen. If you overdub a harmony part on the 3rd verse you wouldnt start recording at zero, maybe a measure before the third verse. If you then change the tempo, the overdubbed part will shift in relation to the original track you are overdubbing to unless you lock it. I wish Sonar had a default mode where audio clips would NEVER shift in relation to each other unless unlocked, not the other way around.