Heya - Is there a means to "read" a cwp file made with an older version of Sonar in order find out what patches or soft synth settings were used?
Cheers!

Only by opening the project in SONAR.

I have the older versions ( Sonar 4 and X3 ) installed. I open the project in the one it was created in and then take screenshots of the plugin settings, save it to .jpg and then copy them manually.

Thats good thinking. You'd think i'd have learned some hindsight like that by now!

If i understand you correctly, you could open the old CWP and save the synth settings as a preset.  It should still be a preset when you load that synth into another project.

There is "Project Scope". 
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3584169
 
 
 

ProjectScople lists the plug-ins used in a project, not the plug-in settings.

scook
ProjectScople lists the plug-ins used in a project, not the plug-in settings.

 
And it only lists fx, not softsynths. That's a serious omission really.

As long as you still have the same plugins, you should be able to open even very old projects in the current version of SONAR, which has always been very good about backward compatibility.
 
Some years ago I ran across an old floppy disk full of Cakewalk 1.0 projects. The hard part was finding a floppy drive to read it from, but once I got them on disk I was able to open them in SONAR 8.5. Granted, those were all-MIDI projects; you might have issues with audio projects prior to SONAR 4. If your goal is to convert the old project to the newest cwp format, all you have to do is open it and save it, optionally under a new name.
 
Of course, if you no longer have the soft synth that you'd used in the old project, then it won't matter what version of SONAR you use to open it - there'll be no information forthcoming.
 
 

I like opening old projects and then remixing them with the tools I have now.  If no longer have the VSTi installed I will swap out for a new one and it gives the songs a new lease of life.