Bit of a duh question probably.

I wonder if I have been doing this wrong for years.

I would like to use the Store all Audio in Project Folder feature. But it never works how I want it to. In Preferences I have set E: as my audio drive, so this is where audio should be placed by default. However when I start a new project there is a tickbox to store audio in project folder in the Save As dialog. I want to tick this as this would be very helpful organisationally. What I expect to happen here doesn't. I would expect SONAR to create a project audio folder on my audio drive. It knows which is my audio drive because I told it in Preferences. But it doesn't do that. It puts the folder with my project in C:Cakewalk Projects. Obviously I do not want audio storing on my C: drive. 

Am I being stupid here. Is the only solution to move my Cakewalk Projects folder to my audio drive? Is it ok to have the project files on the audio drive or does it make no difference at all performance-wise where they are stored?

That's what I have done since Sonar 5. My "Cakewalk Projects" folder is on my Audio drive. I have a separate drive just for this, and another just for samples (Kontakt, etc).

Regards,
Dan

There's no right or wrong but it's generally agreed that audio is stored on a separate disk to system files, just to reduce disk activity while reading audio.

If you want to use "Per Project" audio folders then yes the CW projects are best stored on your "audio" drive. You need to set this path in Preferences---->File---->folder location.

Remember that the CWP files are relatively small and just contain any file information, MIDI data and pointers to the audio so I would imagine that they have little impact on playback.

That's how mine have been set up for years.

I had this exact same problem without realizing it until a couple months ago. When I'd set up my project I'd leave the project file options to default (C drive). Then I have to manually create a folder on my E drive for the audio (not sure if this can be set to happen automatically with the project name). 

Well a couple months ago I realized my C drive was getting used up very quickly. I poked around the folders and sure enough a bunch of audio had been writing to my C drive. WTH? It seems every time I was doing a Save As the audio folder was defaulting the Audio location back to the C drive. I'm not sure if it was making another copy of everything or what but my system is a total mess now and I'm gonna have to go through and clean it all up. I'm 700 pages into the manual and this topic was only briefly touched upon. The few times it was mentioned very little was said on multi drive set ups or this default behavior.

Now when I'm using Save as I make sure the audio path is correct but since I've noticed it it doesn't seem to be happening. It's like observing something at the quantum level... look at it and it behaves differently. lol

For small projects, working with one drive will work fine, but once you start working on medium to large projects, separate drives are usually needed for better performance.

Drive 1: OS/Software/Plug-ins
Drive 2: Project files/Audio files
Drive 3: Streaming sample files

To tell SONAR to store your projects on a different drive, press P, choose the File > Folder Locations category, and then enter a new drive location for the Project Files field.

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com - SONAR X2 Power! - http://garrigus.com/?SonarX2Power
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

Thanks Scott. So your example setup suggests that cwp files and audio are fine on the same drive?

My current setup is
C: OS, program files, VSTs and cakewalk projects
D: Sample Instruments and VSTi's
E: Audio

So to move my cwp's, etc to the audio drive still has me with the optimum setup?

You sort of have to have your projects on your audio drive if you want to keep a project and its audio together.

zoffmeister

Thanks Scott. So your example setup suggests that cwp files and audio are fine on the same drive?

My current setup is
C: OS, program files, VSTs and cakewalk projects
D: Sample Instruments and VSTi's
E: Audio

So to move my cwp's, etc to the audio drive still has me with the optimum setup?

Hi Dean... yes to both questions. When you use SONAR's per-project folder option, you save the project file in its own folder and that folder also contains an audio subfolder, which holds all the audio for that project. So having both the project and audio files on the same drive keeps things organized and doesn't hurt performance in any way.


Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com - SONAR X2 Power! - http://garrigus.com/?SonarX2Power
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

So by selecting the C drive for my project destination and my E drive for the audio I wasn't being quite as cunning and brilliant as I thought I was?

D'oh!

I thought having the two separated would make it so the HDDs didn't have to work as hard.

Might be a good idea to turn off autosaves during tracking ?