I have not been able to create the Metronome bus in X1 or X2 when opening some pieces from older versions of Sonar.  In the X series, I also noticed that the bus ProChannel preset says "Metronome", but when I click the Load Preset button, there is no preset named "Metronome".
 
Is there something wrong, or am I not understanding something about the way the Metronome bus works?  Why can't I create it in older projects?
 

I had that happen on one project, and I didn't know what was going on.  I created a new bus and gave it a different name and went to edit>preferences>project.metronome and told it to send output to the new bus I created.

Would that work for you?

Bob Bone

I'll give it a try.  (I just had a crash simply opening PC on the Master bus.  Lost work.  What happened to that thing where Sonar tried to save your project if it crashed?  Ah well...)
 
The interesting thing is that in the X series, Edit|Preferences|Project|Metronome|Use Audio Metronome|Output allows you to select "Metronome" as an output.  There is no way to do this if you simply create the bus yourself.  The Metronome bus is apparently a special one in Sonar; I don't understand how it's configured and what makes it special.
 
In fact, I forgot, in this project (from Sonar 1), when I go into Preferences, the entire window is a shambles:




(Thanks @arachnaut for helping me get this image up.)  'Don't know why it's so blurry.  You can see a better copy at http://www.4shared.com/photo/pzF4f8DH/Sonar_X2_Preferences_Issue.html), if you like.

As you can see, the Preferences window is a mess; you can't navigate to change anything because the left-hand margin with the categories isn't there.  That seems like a serious issue.

I ended up having to copy all the midi tracks into a fresh X2 project and go from there.
 
 

I wanted to bump this so people could see the image of the error I got.  I edited my post above, but that didn't move it to current status, so hopefully this will.

I also want to renew my request for information on what the actual properties of the Metronome function are: How does the Metronome bus output to its own bus?  Why does there appear to be a ProChannel preset called Metronome, but there's none to be found anywhere.

Anyone know about this?

This looks like a video driver issue.

Meaning there's something I have set that I can change, or I need to change my video card?

I've suspected I might not be using the best video card for this for a while.  I'm using EV3A GeForce GT and GS dual-monitor cards in my three systems and found later that those cards seem to be mostly for gamers, which I'm not.

First, I couldn't run X1 on my XP SP3 machine because soon as I did anything after X1 came up, weird things would happen on the screen and the program would freeze, requiring me to have to kill the process.  It definitely looked like some kind of memory or graphics problem.  Other people on this forum said they were running machines very similar to mine and had X1 up with no troubles.  8.5.3 and previous all ran with no problems.

So I bought this Win7 machine.  Mostly a dream to work with, except for that problem in the picture and the problems I've written about with R-Mix.  Others have had great success with R-Mix, so I tried it on my notebook and had absolutely none of the problems I'm have on this desktop, so again, video could be the issue.

Do you or anyone else know anything about EV3A GeForce (NVidea) cards or have recommendations for dual-monitor video cards that are better for use with the X series?  Or changes to settings for these cards?

so, did you try what I suggested?  Did that work?

Bob Bone

No that didn't work for me, Bob.  Or rather, I couldn't test it.  It only happens on a very few projects, mostly from Sonar 1, and when I open them and go to Preferences, I get the screen in my post, therefore I never get the chance to switch to audio metronome or select an output bus.  I just have to do a Select All, Copy, then paste it all into a new project and move on from there.  Something funky about S 1, I suppose, as I don't recall it happening with any S 3 projects I opened.  (I remember there being problems with S 1 and S 2 where when a Pro Audio 9 project was saved, it ballooned to about 3-4x the original project size, with no changes made.  Sonar didn't begin to settle down until S 3.)