A few weeks ago I was thrilled to find that I could now bounce a project out as an mp3 without pyro.  Saved me some time and one less file..very cool. 
 
Then I added this "a" upgrade and I get the message that I need to do something at "cakewalk.com".  It wouldn't be quite as irritating if it actually told me where to go at "cakewalk.com".. sorry..I'm just venting.  Need to bounce this thing.  Anyone help?

Sometime in the Past "Sonar" included an activation code for the mp3 encoder.
If you don't have that code, you purchase it in the Cakewalk store.
If you purchased it in the past, log into your account, and get the "code".
My guess is it runs in "trial" mode awhile and your time has run out;
I don't think its an "a" thing at all.

HTH,

T

SONAR ships with a 30 trial license for the mp3 encoder. I am not familiar with pyro but if you have previously purchased an mp3 license from Cakewalk, contact tech support and they will help you unlock the full version of the mp3 encoder in SONAR.

I don't know how to do it in sonar but I'm guessing you could use the lame encoder for free. It's a snap in reaper.

Not sure what Reaper has to do with it but if I wanted to use an external encoder in SONAR I would start by going to Utilities > External Coder Configuration Utility to add a command line encoder.

Tho I own the Cakewalk Licensed encoder, I did set my system up to use an external LAME encoder long ago...

I found it easiest to create individual batch files (.bat) that contain the command string and have separate entries for the various mp3 configurations that I might want...

I'll look to see if I can find any of them and make them available...

Keni

+1 for lame. I have other encoders, but Lame is the best one I have. I have never paid for Sonar's.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2268643

if you look at legal in "about" they give a credit to Lame.. so I'm guessing they use that to decode, say imports..

Here are my notes (Word doc) on how to obtain and set up the free Lame encoder in Sonar:
http://www.johnsongs.co.uk/Lame_Encoder.doc

Can anybody comment on the quality and performance of LAME versus the one that Cakewalk requires you to license for $20?
 
During my 30-day period, I used the SONAR encoder a few times.  I didn't do rigorous measurements, but it seemed like it was about 5 times slower than using LAME externally.  It was so much slower that I actually saved time by exporting to WAV, and then running WinLAME as a separate step.  I'd rather not interrupt my workflow like that, of course. 
 
Since that time, I have changed my system configuration.  During my 30-day period most of my project and audio files were on a network attached RAID drive running across a wireless network (very slow) and now they are on a local SSD (very fast).  So even if there is still a performance difference, I can probably live with it.
 
But what about quality of MP3 conversion?  It seems that LAME hasn't been updated in a few years.  Is the SONAR encoder any better?