I can't seem to find a reference to this anywhere in the Sonar manual nor in the online help. At the moment, I don't have studio monitors and use only headphones. The headphone outputs are 3/4 on my audio interface. Every new Sonar project sets the Master out to 1/2, which is the main speaker out on my interface. I always have so manually switch that in every project I start.

I was wondering if there was a way to select the default output assigned to the Master bus for each Sonar project so that I can skip this step every time. I don't see any relevant settings in the audio preferences menu. Thanks.

Make the change to the project template(s) you use. By default SONAR uses the Normal.cwt for new projects.

Open the Normal.cwt template file, change the Master bus output, and resave it. Or customize it further, save it as a custom template with a new name and choose that template when starting new projects.
 
EDIT: See page 1164 of the X3 Reference Guide for more info on project templates.

Now that I've seen your responses and how simple it was, I feel kind of silly having asked the question. My bad. I haven't messed at all with project templates so far, only track templates. Time to learn some more stuff.

Thanks brundlefly and scook.

Mantofini
Now that I've seen your responses and how simple it was, I feel kind of silly having asked the question. My bad. I haven't messed at all with project templates so far, only track templates. Time to learn some more stuff.

Thanks brundlefly and scook.

Don't worry about asking the question. Sometimes the simple stuff is the least obvious.

Setting per-project defaults comes up regularly. This is a pretty trivial change to the Normal.cwt but I like to be able to restore SONAR back to factory defaults quickly. To that end, one of the first things I do with a new install is copy the Normal.cwt to Normal-original.cwt before modifying the Normal.cwt.

You're welcome, and please don't take abrupt answers as condescension or exasperation with "dumb" questions. We're just trying to be concise and efficient. 
 
This is actually one of those things that would be hard to divine from searching the Reference Guide and doesn't get asked that often because most users are fine with the Master bus defaulting to the first available output pair.

brundlefly
We're just trying to be concise and efficient. 

For me, it's just being lazy.