Rhytenow
I checked and there was a long amount of silence.  File is now about 53 mb.  

This is very easy to do with SONAR.  You have to make sure the range is set properly on the ruler at the top of the tracks, but those markers keep moving around as you select tracks.  IMHO, this is the number one most annoying aspect of SONAR.  I  have used SONAR a long time and I still ruin about 10% of my renders because they are either way too long or else I have chopped off part of the song or not included all the tracks.  SONAR makes you select everything manually in the most tedious way imaginable.  They refer to it as a "Flexibility feature".  I refer to it as a PITA.

I disagree and always prefer to go through the "select all and then select a portion on the timeline" approach

For every project I insert a "select from here" marker at the beginning and a "select to here" marker at the end

This ensures consistency between different exports and allows me to fine tune exactly where the exported file will play from and where it will stop (e.g. Ensuring there is enough space for a fade out or for reverb/delay tails to naturally dissipate)

Boydie
For every project I insert a "select from here" marker at the beginning and a "select to here" marker at the end

What good does that do?  You still have to go back in EVERY ^%^%$^%#^$% time you export and set the ruler range.  If I go to the trouble of setting a song beginning and ending marker, why doesn't the program simply use those markers automatically every time I export?  That's what StudioOne does and it makes perfect sense.  It is very unlikely you will want to change the start and end points once you have set them for a song.
 
And why is it necessary in SONAR to select every track every time you export?  If I didn't want the track included in the export, I would mute it?  This behavior seems insane to me, or at least ridiculously tedious.  The export ought to be "what you hear", regardless of which tracks happen to be selected.
 
And of course, every time you go to select your tracks, that CHANGES the ruler, so then you have to go back and change your ruler range, but make sure you don't de-delect any tracks when you do that.  Catch-22.  It always feels to me like somebody at Cakewalk in enjoying messing with me.
 
I have been doing this since SONAR 7 and I still end up with exports that have the extra 10 minutes of silence (such as the OP) or exports missing important tracks.  And that latter mistake can very easily go undetected.  I have gotten to the point of publishing material (electronically) with tracks missing and had to pull it back.  Very embarrassing and I do not take responsibility for that.  That is crappy software design.  I don't buy the "SONAR has always worked this way -- you must conform" argument.  It is a crappy design, plain and simple.
 
Seriously, this is the kind of thing that makes people say StudioOne is a lot easier to use.  There are a lot of things that SONAR does very well.  But stupid things like this drive new users away.

cparmerlee
And why is it necessary in SONAR to select every track every time you export?  If I didn't want the track included in the export, I would mute it?  This behavior seems insane to me, or at least ridiculously tedious.  The export ought to be "what you hear", regardless of which tracks happen to be selected.
 

 Well, some projects are not songs. What about doing library creation work? Or scoring where you want to isolate a cue? I love being able to export parts of projects for various reasons. And it's pretty simple to CTRL-A before you export to get the whole project.
 
Of course if you use automation you can sometimes get that weird node that makes your song have twenty minutes of silence on the end. Sigh. An END marker would be great, or even a regular marker you can select to for this purpose. But, it's easy enough to chop it off in the Mastering phase. 

Rhytenow
Thanks Chuck.  I checked and there was a long amount of silence.  File is now about 53 mb.  
 

Ya.. I've never done that before.
 
How do you think I knew what was wrong

cparmerlee

Boydie
For every project I insert a "select from here" marker at the beginning and a "select to here" marker at the end

What good does that do?  You still have to go back in EVERY ^%^%$^%#^$% time you export and set the ruler range. 

Ya Parmerlee has a good point. But I also agree with Boydie.
 
I've been doing it this way since Cakewalks inception.
Once im ready to export I either select the range in the time line or Use the "From now/Thru here"
 
So what I do is-
1- Hit CNRL+A to select all tracks
2- Choose my "From now/Thru here" points
3- Go to the Export/Audio dialog menu.
(I wont even go in to the possible confusion in the Export dialog menu )
 
Final point: Cakewalk needs a Point A/Point B marker for project start/end.
Maybe like a purple marker or a photo of a pink unicorn, so we can select Permanent start/end points
 

...wickedit's pretty simple to CTRL-A before you export to get the whole project.
 

No, that resets the time line.  If you do Ctrl-A, you then must go back and fix the time line if you want to leave room at the end of the some for effects tails.  And if you aren't careful when you do that, you deselect tracks.  Catch-22.
 
I am all for flexibility, but the DEFAULT behavior should be the simple case that is what most people do with their projects.  IMHO, if you do export and don't select any options, the export should automatically include all clips (what you hear) and the time line should run from the beginning of the earliest clip to the end of the latest clip, plus a tail length that can be saved as a preference (say 3 seconds as default.)
 
Alternatively allow the user to set explicit song start and song end markers that don't move around randomly.  That is the Studio One method.  Set it once and all your exports will be good.
 
Another solution is as Audacity does it, allowing you to set up multiple market ranges to delineate individual songs within the recording.  Again, the markers never move unless you explicitly move them.  That method works great for mixing a whole program.  When you are done, you do an Export Multiple Tracks (or whatever the menu item is) and Audacity automatically exports each song you marked on the time line.
 
For anything else, there ought to be an "Export Special" or "Advanced" mode.  And I would use that on occasion.
 
It seems to me SONAR is forcing the most complicated process on every user.  The default behavior should be simple, reliable and intuitive.  I am all for making SONAR more friendly and inviting through improved start screens, but lets fix some of the other more substantial turn-offs.
 
I love working with SONAR, but I just cannot recommend it to anybody I collaborate with because it is too arcane and frustrating to new users.
 
As long as I am dreaming, it shouldn't always be necessary to do an export at all.  If SONAR has a separate mastering mode, then maybe all I have to do during the mix is mark the song begin/end, and the mast3ering mode will automatically pull the mix into the mastering session for me.  These are the kinds of things that will make the DAW more inviting to new users.

I've been lobbying for years for CW to implement "start of song" and "end of song" markers. These could be easily implemented using the existing marker system, by adding a flag to the marker object and making it an option when exporting to automatically select the data between those markers.
 
In the meantime, I use Boydie's method. It requires three extra keystrokes before every export, but it works well. It lets me be precise about where the song ends, which isn't necessarily the place where the last event is located. Sometimes you need to add another second to avoid chopping off reverb tails. And yes, sometimes you do want to intentionally leave some silence before the beginning or after the ending, so it's not as simple as "export what you hear". And yes, you do sometimes want to export specific tracks rather than the whole thing (see "stems").
 
It's not "crappy software design". It's a design that allows everyone from the casual user to the professional to adapt it to their own needs. The tradeoff, however, is that flexibility always necessitates a learning curve. You can design your house with MS Paint or with AutoCAD; one is easy to pick up, the other requires effort. But both are excellent designs.

bitflipper
 
It's not "crappy software design". It's a design that allows everyone from the casual user to the professional to adapt it to their own needs. The tradeoff, however, is that flexibility always necessitates a learning curve.

Great point and I totally agree.
 
Sometimes having flexibility at our fingertips requires a little more work (A few more clicks).
It might take a new user a few times to adapt to the way the start and end points are set in Sonar but I can honestly say once I learned how to do it years ago, I've never had a problem with it since.

chuckebaby
Sometimes having flexibility at our fingertips requires a little more work (A few more clicks).

It is crappy design.  The extra clicks should be for advanced functions.  The extra clicks should not be forced on everybody when simple defaults will get the desired results 80% of the time. 
 
That's a basic principle of UI design.  Make the simplest, default path the one that covers the largest number of cases.  If you really need to allow for other boundary cases, set them aside in an "advanced" view so the new user immediately understands he/she probably doesn't have to deal with that while learning the basics.  I don't make this stuff up.  There is a science behind UI design, and programs as old as SONAR often struggle with that, mainly because of resistance from an old user base.