I have a bunch of recordings that have no click, and the writer/performer has no idea about the BPM on any track. I tried looking at audio snap to see if it would help, but no luck. It would be easier if I could turn on the metronome and dial in a BPM that fits the track. But the metronome is tied to the track and can't operate independently.
 
How would you solve this?
 

Assuming the reason why you want to know the tempo is so you can base a song around it in Sonar...
 
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr14/articles/sonar-notes-0414.htm
 

There's several ways. How is audiosnap NOT working for you? It does take a reasonable guess at tempo when it analyzes a clip.
 
If track is NOT groove clipped or has had audiosnap applied to it you can still adjust project tempo with the metronome on and get pretty close by lining up the first beat and adjusting til it gets close.
 
You can also tap tempo along with the track and see what gets spit out, that should be even closer.
 
Of course, these are probably all mentioned in Anderton's article.... so there's that.

I'm not going to be much help here, but hopefully it will prompt someone else who knows what I'm on about. I read about a method a few months back that helped get a BPM spot on for a track I'd recorded a while before and had no idea on BPM. It involved cutting 4 bars, going into properties and looking at something like sample rate (I could be wrong on what I had to look at), then some weird math around multplying and dividing using number of bars, sample rate and something else and it came out with the BPM.
 
As I warned, above is not much help but will hopefully trigger someone more in the know.

Ah, this is what I used before:
 
https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013223/Finding-the-Tempo-of-an-Audio-Clip

You could use a program like MixMeister. i have used this with very good results. Like the second reviewer states, you have to know cNet's ways and be alert on install to decline all ad trickery. If you don't want to chance your DAW (I used my work computer), then load it on a lappy or alternate computer. But I've had no problems with the install and like a stated, works fast & well.

http://download.cnet.com/...290906.html#userreview

I have had some success using audiosnap on the kick drum track. If you bring up show tempo map from the audiosnap palette you may be able to use shift+m at the first beat and the last beat and come pretty close. Once you move things around as needed click set project tempo from clip. Karl AKA Fast Biker Boy has a tempo map video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VR7WkHywTo that has bailed me out in the past.
BTW, where has Karl been?
 
Rocky

Thanks for the ideas.
 
I'm helping a friend that wants his simple folk style songs to have tracks built around them. There are lots of folks giving their time for the project (like me) and the more schooled are requesting click tracks. I have to determine the tempo and add a click for the musicians that will be coming in to lay down the beds.
 
I read Craig's SOS article and looked at the suggestions. I've been on the right track but didn't follow it long enough. I'll be at it this weekend with calculator in hand.

You'll have to do more than just determine the BPM for the song, because it probably varies unless it was recorded to a click.
 
AudioSnap can create a tempo map that will adjust to any tempo changes. However, how good a job it does depends on what you can give it to analyze as a reference.As Rocky says, a kick drum works best. But if it's just guitar, or worse, guitar and vocal on the same track, then AudioSnap is going to have a hard time figuring out the tempo. 
 
If that's the case, you might try creating a click track by hand. Record a hi-hat sound using a MIDI keyboard, playing along with the song. Because you're recording MIDI it'll be easy to nudge notes as necessary until the hi-hat's playing along in good synchronization. At that point you can route the MIDI to the TTS-1 and freeze it, then have AudioSnap create a tempo map based on that click track.

I have used Audio Snap's Sync Project Tempo to Clip to build a tempo map, and it captures all of the slight variations in a given song and changes the song's tempo to match that of the reference track's various tempos.
 
This worked well for me, on a song that had a BUNCH of tempo changes throughout.
 
Here is the Sonar documentation link for how to do this:
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR%20X2&language=3&help=AudioSnap.06.html
 
And, since there is more there than just that one function on that page, here is a snippet of doc from that page with the info you need to match the project's tempo map to that of the selected clip:
 
To sync the project tempo to an audio clip
 
1. Select the audio clip(s) that has the desired tempo map.
2. Press A to open the AudioSnap palette.
3. Click the Set Project Tempo From Clip button on the AudioSnap palette.
 
The clip tempo map is copied to the project tempo map so the tempo maps are identical.

Note 1: The Set Project Tempo From Clip drop-down list lets you specify at which resolution the clip’s tempo map should be copied to the project tempo. The options are as follows:

Beats
Measures (default)
Clip

Note 2: If multiple audio clips have their Clip Timebase property set to Musical, changing the project tempo will affect the relative positions of the audio clips. When using the Set Project Tempo from Clip command, SONAR will offer to convert the timebase to Absolute.
 
Bob Bone