I like to think of it more as not storing the guitars interspersed with the drum kit. Or the digital tapes along with the film lights.

As I said - it only needs to make sense to you :)
 
Bob Bone
 

...wicked
As per Craig's point: yes, we can store things that way (I described)...I do store that way. But something since X1 has been wonky with the "global" audio folder setting and even though I have my projects still broken out like described, new recorded material gets dumped into the root "audio" folder.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. I thought by "global" folder you meant the Cakewalk one, not a separate one you've created and named. I haven't had any problem with files being dumped where I don't want them unless I forget to specify where I want them to go.
 

I like to think of it more as not storing the guitars interspersed with the drum kit.

 
So ideally, you would want to be able to store all the guitar tracks for an album in a folder, all the drum track in a folder, etc.? How would that work if you wanted to back up a single project? Or maybe you think only terms of an album, not individual projects? Just trying to wrap my head around this in case I'm missing something that could be universally useful and not just for your workflow of choice.

The physical layout of the data are dictated by access, performance and maintenance issues. Using the default per-project audio folder scheme (note the default scheme provides for multiple projects sharing an audio folder or multiple projects using unique audio folders in the same project folder) and the preferences described in #4 above, waves never show up in the Global Audio folder. Never run CWAF or Clean Audio folder utilities myself. For audio clean up I rely on the "Save As" function. For project file cleanup I rely on bundles. I do not use bundles for archiving instead prefer to copy directories. Projects can be organized by content creator, collection name, state, date (although I use YYYY-MM-DD so they sort well) or any combination of subjects creating as sophisticated hierarchy as needed. I do not advocate anyone use a particular method but if the method used has access, performance or maintenance issues it may be time to look at alternatives.

Sorry, let me explain:
 
I've got 3 hard drives. Drive 1 (C) is my system drive. Drive 2 (D) is for Cake project files, various other project files (Vegas, etc.), annnnd, for my samples and presets for virtual instruments. Drive 3 (E) is for audio for my cakewalk projects and all my other non-virtual instrument samples. The Cakewalk area is broken out into a single "audio" folder, which then has a folder for every Cakewalk project and all the audio "per project" goes in there. 
 
So, I browse and load my project data by looking directly at my project files. Those are saved with the folder specified per its project into the "global" audio folder. It's more or less per project, I just keep the actual project files grouped together for reference.
 
The problem? Well as of X1 I had to select "global audio folder" even though I specify a project folder to save the audio to. But, newly created audio seems to dump into the "audio" folder and not it's specified project folder. I haven't done that much research into it because I honestly don't care that much. I can view the files specifically within SONAR, and I can also see what they belong to just by looking at them since they're named with the project name first anyway. 
 
But, the only two options available by default are "one big audio folder for EVERYTHING", and doing it with each project file in it's own folder with an audio subdirectory for that audio...It's just not as ideal for finding things or looking at a collection of project files (like an album project for example). 
 

Apologies for thread jacking btw. :-)
 
Oh also apologies for using unclear metaphors! When I said "guitars" and "drums" I was referring to actual instruments, not audio data. :-)
 
 

I use per project folders. All projects are in a single directory with each project having its own sub folder.
 
Unfortunately I also have very old projects that were created before the per project folder was an option. Thus in that same directory I project that rely on the global audio folder. This is not a problem as long as Sonar can find the audio for those old projects. 
 
With per project folders enabled I have never had a problem loading a project and finding all its component parts excepting no longer use plugins.