I could have sworn that a few years ago, someone at Cakewalk said the Clean Audio Folder routine had been fixed.  I remember reading something to the effect, "It was a simple programming error that just somehow went undetected for years."
 
Well, on my 2nd day of trying to use X3, I had a number of deleted audio tracks in a project, so thought I'd run Clean Audio Folder, and expected to see something zippy, unlike on Sonar 8.5.3 where it scans the entire computer and comes up with long lists of totally unrelated files that have nothing to do with audio.
 
Noooooo - For me at least, on this machine, the utility immediately started scanning the entire C drive - I could see all sorts of programs being scanned.  I thought I'd give it a chance, so took a walk - Over 5 minutes later when I came back, the thing was still struggling - I watched it - it stopped running.  When I tried to close it, that crashed Sonar. -- Determined me - I tried again, opening the project with the unneeded audio files, but the same thing happened again, getting stuck after scanning for several minutes, and then crashing Sonar when I tried to close it.-- I deleted the files by hand, the FORBIDDEN ACTION, because I had no problem seeing which files weren't needed anymore.
 
So - This is a known issue?  Clean Audio Folder is still broken the way it has been for many, many years?
 
Randy

rbowser
I could have sworn that a few years ago, someone at Cakewalk said the Clean Audio Folder routine had been fixed.  I remember reading something to the effect, "It was a simple programming error that just somehow went undetected for years."

Hey Randy, good to see you around again. I sincerely hope you can finally make a successful transition to the X-series. Believe me, it's worth the pain overall.
 
As for the above, however, I think you must be imagining that any error was ever acknowledged and promised to be fixed. Clean Audio has always scanned all drives for projects that might use audio in the folder you're cleaning. This is WAD; it's just SONAR trying to protect the user from himself.
 
I recommend you get to know the Cakewalk Audio Finder (CWAF) tool instead. It's much more flexible in terms of what it searches, how it displays what it finds, and how it lets you handle orphaned audio files.
 
Cheers,
Dave

I still use clean audio folder, its a bit strange at times, but it does work.
sometimes it is a waiting game, not that long though, I have a 1TB HD it scans and typically for me its about 3-5 minutes max.
 
I agree with Dave, try the CWAF tool for more options.
 
good to see you around man.

brundlefly...Hey Randy, good to see you around again. I sincerely hope you can finally make a successful transition to the X-series. Believe me, it's worth the pain overall.

As for the above, however, I think you must be imagining that any error was ever acknowledged and promised to be fixed. Clean Audio has always scanned all drives for projects that might use audio in the folder you're cleaning...

I recommend you get to know the Cakewalk Audio Finder (CWAF) tool instead. It's much more flexible in terms of what it searches, how it displays what it finds, and how it lets you handle orphaned audio files...

Howdy, Dave - I probably will be popping in more often, now that I'm learning X3 (and trying to get used to all the menu diving and multiple clicks).  Good to see you again, and here on this thread!

AH, CWAF - I've never used it, took a brief look before replying.  Yes, that looks much better.

I'm not hallucinating about that old post though, swear!  A Cakewalk rep said a simple error had been discovered in the way the Clean Audio deal worked - What doesn't make sense to me is that it does Not only search for things that might have audio.  For one example, it looks through my PhotoShop projects.  That program has nothing to do with audio!-- And then, in 8.5 anyway, when the utility was through running, the foreground menu would have all these PhotoShop project files listed, along with tmp files from all sorts of things having nothing to do with audio.  I'd just close that window, and then the actual orphaned audio files in the actual project audio file would be listed and I could delete them. 
 
OH well - I'll definitely be using CWAF instead, thanks for the tip.

chuckebaby

I still use clean audio folder, its a bit strange at times, but it does work.  Sometimes it is a waiting game, not that long though, I have a 1TB HD it scans and typically for me its about 3-5 minutes max...

3-5 minutes!  That's nutso - Didn't take that long in 8.5.  But I've tried Clean Audio several times in X3 now, and it never finishes, hangs, crashes the program.  I dunno what's going on there, but as per Dave's tip, I'll use the CWAF tool, or just simply hand delete for simple projects with just a few tracks, when I'm positive about what to delete.

Thank you both.

Randy

Clean Audio checks all paths for anything with a Cakewalk extension that might reference audio, so it looks for TPL and CWT template files as well as WRK and CWP.
 
Anyway, here's a cheat sheet for using CWAF I put together at some point tha tyou might find helpful:
 
Preparation:
 
- Create a folder called “CWAF Excluded WAVs” on each drive that contains SONAR projects and audio.
 
- Create a shortcut to \Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\cwaftool.exe so you can run it with SONAR shut down.
 
Usage:
 
- Close SONAR.
- Empty the Recycle Bin.
- Start CWAF Tool.
- Add your “Excluded” folders and any other paths on the drives that will never have SONAR projects in their paths to the Folders to Ignore list.
 
- Select a drive to search.
 
- Click Find – The button label will change to Stop, and you will see paths being searched in the status bar at the bottom.
 
- Wait for the Stop button to change back to Find, indicating the search is complete.
 
- Click the Status column header twice to get all the Orphaned files floated to the top.
 
- Select all the orphans, click the Move button, and select the CWAF Excluded WAVs folder on the local drive as the target.
 
- Repeat the search and sort, and scroll through the list to be sure there are no Orphaned or Missing files reported (i.e. you found all the orphans, and didn’t inadvertently move something that wasn’t an orphan).
 
- You can now safely Shift+Delete (permanently deletes, bypassing the Recycle Bin) all the files in the “Excluded” folder.
 
 
 

Hi:
I also gave up on Clean Folder option.
The fatest way for me is I save the song as a bundle file, close Sonar, and open the bundle file and resave as cwp file under a different folder. Fast and easy. The new folder now does not have all the unwanted stuff.
dan
 

brundlefly
Clean Audio checks all paths for anything with a Cakewalk extension that might reference audio, so it looks for TPL and CWT template files as well as WRK and CWP.
 
Anyway, here's a cheat sheet for using CWAF I put together at some point tha tyou might find helpful...

 
NICe - Thanks much for that, Dave - That's slick, I'll do it. -- My Clean Audio function also plucks out .psd files, project files for PhotoShop--go figure.  I'll never use it again since it just crashes my X3.
 
Dan le - Thanks for that tip, also clever.  I worry about bundle files though - if they go bad - there's your project up in smoke if it's the only version you have.  Maybe they aren't as prone to failure as they used to be.
 
Randy B.

The Clean Audio Folder utility seems to be geared towards users who keep their audio files together in a single folder instead of using per-project folders. I'm guessing that these users are in a minority by now.
 
I would be happy with a utility that would simply identify and list the audio files used by a project so that I could delete the redundant ones myself manually.

Kev999
I would be happy with a utility that would simply identify and list the audio files used by a project so that I could delete the redundant ones myself manually.

Project > Audio Files

You can also copy your project (CWP) to a different location and choose to copy all audio with it - that will result in only the wave files used by the project at that time being copied over.