I recorded about 3 dozen passes of a guitar solo about 32 bars long. Take 12 great! But keep going. Take 19 that's super but I can nail it. Take 36 I like.Check some of the earlier ones.It looks like all of them are there. Wait a second, only the last 8 or so actually have waves in them. I did manually stop and rewind a ways back but the loop point is still up and functioning. Did I accidentally erase some of these or can sonar just hold on to so many? Also I had to isolate the clips to get that stupid red circle with line through it to disappear to audition. Is there a better way to do it? Windows 7, i7 quadcore, 16gb ram

Did you check that no waveform means no sound? They are not connected. Or do you mean there's no clip at all?
Unmuting the clip in 8.5 goes for example right clicking an selecting "unmute", and I'd guess it's something similar in
X-series. Did you try the help files? That's the fastest way to find these answers.

The only way( so far) that I have been able to audition a clip is to click on it and"isolate "to it. No clip in the lane to click on. Help file on take lanes is oretty rudimentary and describes the basic setup procedure.I am able to do that and had mant successful takes. The old ones seem to be empty though