John
My concern is that the idea that we can't be sure about playback absolutely mirroring render is a huge problem. Clearly I don't think Craig had that in mind when he posted this thread. I think he was trying to solve a problem with clicks and pops that some few have reported. 
 
However the ramifications of saying that playback can miss things and render may not is extremely troublesome. 
 
Therefore this is a very important thread that needs to stay put and hopefully a good resolution will come out of it.
 
I'm hoping to hear from CW and members that can shed light on this.  

There are a few ways in which playback and render could differ, just down to settings. Like whether or not 64 bit processing is on for one and not the other. Also, anything in a "live" audiosnap clip will always be different for playback and render to some degree. That's off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more examples.

Also, I know this isn't pertinent to the audio slivers thing, but some plugins and instruments behave slightly differently in real-time to how they do in fast bounce. Not a Sonar issue, that, just a thing that comes up from time to time in any DAW.

I'm not sure I've ever found a sliver, but I could see that it could occur and that it could cause a pop/click when it was truncated (where the wave wasn't at a 0 crossing as the clip abruptly ends).
 
Good stuff.

I often get them when copying and pasting, e.g. if I select a bar to copy and the previous bar's clip overlaps the bar line slightly.  When pasted these can be almost invisible, especially if the "slither" is under the main clip, and can get copied over and over again.
 
I have also seen them when comping.
 

John T
 
There are a few ways in which playback and render could differ, just down to settings. Like whether or not 64 bit processing is on for one and not the other. Also, anything in a "live" audiosnap clip will always be different for playback and render to some degree. That's off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more examples.

Yes, that's why I deliberately threw in the "All other things being equal" caveat. Barring differences in render settings from real-time settings and plugin randomness or response to high data rates, SONAR should (and generally does), produce the same output on render that you hear on playback. And something as problematic as pops vs. no pops should not happen in any case (with the possible exception of stretching artifacts from differing Audiosnap algorithms). Even that difference can be eliminated by the "Same as Online" rendering option for the Groove Clip and Percussion algorithms.
 
Like john, I just want want to be clear that the audio engine itself does not behave differently on Fast Bounce or Export than during real-time playback, other than in the rate at which buffers are processed and that the buffers of processed audio get written to file instead of being handed off to the audio driver.
 
 
 
 

Thanks Brundlefly. Your post explains the concerns perfectly. 

Anderton
Good point. Instead of deleting, I took out the material that could have led someone down the wrong path, changed the title, and left the useful stuff in.

Too late. I'm already half way down the wrong path and since you deleted that material I can't seem to find my way back. Can you please reinsert it?
 
 
Just kidding, of course.