cparmerlee
With StudioOne, I hit export and that's what happens. No muss, no fuss, and no lengthy explanations of why I didn't set my options just right.

 
I set up presets for all my export options, saves me a ton of time. And the export options with Mix Recall are fantastic. If the tradeoff is having to drag across a timeline before hitting Export, I can cope.

IMO, an export option to have the time honor a pair of markers would make things really simple.

cparmerlee
With StudioOne, I hit export and that's what happens. No muss, no fuss, and no lengthy explanations of why I didn't set my options just right.

 
I don't think you're telling the whole story. Studio One is no different from SONAR: You have to specify the time over which it should export.
 
The only difference is that SOP sets a song length when you start, which defaults to 5 minutes. So it places an End marker automatically at 5 minutes. 
 
If you choose to mixdown something that's only two minutes, then you'll still export 5 minutes. That's a lot of wasted space. So, you need to move the end marker and specify an ending time if you don't want that to happen. Yes, you have to drag in the timeline to specify the region you want exported. You have to locate and drag a specific marker instead of just dragging, but you're still dragging in the timeline to set the end point where you want the export to end.
 
Furthermore, if the reverb extends past the End marker, it is not true the tail will be preserved. It will be cut off at the end even if it has another 10 seconds to go. Again, no different from SONAR...if you specify a time in either SOP or SONAR that indicates the end of the song and time-based effects spill over that, the tail will NOT be included in the export. I don't know of any DAW that can, based on analyzing a clip, determine how long a reverb tail will last and intelligently move the end of an export to accommodate it.
 
If you want the same behavior in SONAR, add a single marker and call it End. Now all you have to do is click in the timeline before the end, and you'll select the song from start to finish - the end you chose, not an arbitrary amount that was either chosen arbitrarily when you opened the project, or which you chose because you estimated how much time your project would take.
 
My guess is the reason why you think SOP is so easy is because your songs don't last longer than the default song time, you remember to always specify the mixdown to happen between the start and end points, and you have nothing where reverb or delay extends over the end point. Violate any of those, and you'll have the same issues as SONAR. Add an End marker in SONAR, and assuming you don't have other markers prior to it you'll have the same basic results as SOP. And if there are other markers, then drag in the timeline to specify the end...like you do with SOP.
 
FYI - when I first hit Export, even though there were clips in the project, there was a dialog that said I had to select a loop region or the start and end markers, because it had defaulted to selecting loop and I hadn't defined a loop yet. So no, you can't always just "hit export." Nor can you choose the various export options SONAR has, which brings up a very important point: with power comes a learning curve.
 
This is by no means a diss on SOP,  they made the decision to trade off power for simplicity. But because you want simplicity does not mean a program that trades off simplicity for power is any less valid. Some people are willing to study a program and learn it in depth in order to take advantage of that power. As I've said before, there are enough DAWs that there's something for everybody. It's just as meaningless for someone to deride SONAR for offering power as it would be for someone to deride SOP for ease of use. You just need to have your eyes open about what each option entails, and which fits better with your needs.

BobF
IMO, an export option to have the time honor a pair of markers would make things really simple.

I have been exporting songs from Sonar for as long as there has been a Sonar. I have developed my own way to do an export. If new users need to know how to export the manual is a very good place to start. One thing that seems to have escaped this discussion is the nearly unlimited ways Sonar has to export audio.  A lot depends on how you setup a project.
 
 

Craig, the thing is that you would normally set the beginning and ending markers once and forget about it, as soon as you have your song structure down anyway. Any project of mine might have anywhere between 5 to 15 exports between the initial sketch and the final mix going off to mastering. That's a lot of dragging on the timeline.

And of course it's not that difficult to press CTRL A of SHIFT CTRL A and drag across the timeline. But it's something very unintuive and sometimes I still mess up. This NEVER happens to me in Ableton, nor in Logic when I used it more.

It's sometimes quicker to open the Markers view and just click/drag between the first & last marker.
 
Obviously the more markers you have in a given project you'll be adding a few extra milliseconds to get the selection you want, but it's worth trying.

John

BobF
IMO, an export option to have the time honor a pair of markers would make things really simple.

I have been exporting songs from Sonar for as long as there has been a Sonar. I have developed my own way to do an export. If new users need to know how to export the manual is a very good place to start. One thing that seems to have escaped this discussion is the nearly unlimited ways Sonar has to export audio.  A lot depends on how you setup a project.

... and I've been right there with you. 

While we're talking about START/END markers and how cool it is that SO3P has them, we should talk about other cool markers.  For example, separate loop and punch markers.  I use loops with a smaller punch region inside quite a bit.  To me it's very handy.  SONAR has them, SO3P doesn't.
 
Does everybody feel warmer and fuzzier now? 

Sanderxpander
Craig, the thing is that you would normally set the beginning and ending markers once and forget about it, as soon as you have your song structure down anyway. Any project of mine might have anywhere between 5 to 15 exports between the initial sketch and the final mix going off to mastering. That's a lot of dragging on the timeline.

As I mentioned, in SONAR you can designate one marker as an end marker, and one click in the timeline selects the region to export, from the start to that marker. That's not a lot of dragging on the timeline. In fact it involves no dragging on the timeline.
 
I feel it's silly to get hung up on this kind of thing. SONAR has more powerful export options that are more complex. SOP has less powerful export options that less complex. It shouldn't be a revelation to anyone that different software designers make different tradeoffs in the programs they write.

cparmerlee

BobF
Does this one do it?
 

No, I don't believe so.  My understanding is that applies only to the process of bouncing clips. I wish it did apply to the file export process, but I went around on that one a few months back with Sonar support. They said it was never intended to work with export, only with bouncing.
This is the kind of thing that makes Sonar so maddening.  It is a powerful program, but many things seem way too complicated.  Who would ever want the option to not finish the tail, and to dump it at the beginning of the next file exported?  I mean, that is just absurd. Nobody could possibly want such behavior, so why even have an option that has this result? With StudioOne, I hit export and that's what happens. No muss, no fuss, and no lengthy explanations of why I didn't set my options just right.

It's now called "Always Stream Audio Through FX".
 
Dan