This month’s release for SONAR Artist, Professional, and Platinum brings new features along with fixes & enhancements to many key elements of SONAR. 
 
New Features 
 
The Start Screen is an important part of SONAR, in this update we have continued to refine it by making the project creation process more straightforward with new templates, we are now displaying Demo Projects when installed (Coming Soon), and with the Discover tab you be able to more easily find news about Cakewalk and SONAR.  
 
The New Discover Tab 
(Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
 
The Start Screen will now display new notifications through the Discover Tab. In this tab you’ll see news about Cakewalk and SONAR, New Expansion Packs, Free content from our 30th Anniversary Celebration and be able to find all the latest issues of Tech+Music. 
 
New Demo Projects (Coming Soon) 
(Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
 
When the forthcoming Demo Projects installer is installed onto the computer the Start Screen will now display a Demo Projects tab. The Demo Projects installer will be available for all versions of SONAR including SONAR Artist, Professional, and Platinum. The Demo projects are a great way to get started with SONAR for first time users but can also be used to experiment with new features. We’ll be continuing to add new news as well as periodically refresh them with new content.  
 
Start Screen Improvements
 (Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
 
Using Ctrl + N or Ctrl+O it is now possible to create a new default project from the Start Screen as well as open a project from your drive. Clicking the New Project tab will now display templates and in this update we have streamlined the templates that are installed with SONAR. In addition, using the list view now display 16 projects simultaneously.  New users will now see 6 templates installed for each version of SONAR; Empty Project, Basic, 4-Track, 16-Track, Guitar Amps, and Vocals.
 
To remove older templates, you can navigate to the Cakewalk Content folder and select your version and open the Project Templates folder. 
 
Simplified Help Menu
(Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
The help menu in SONAR previously had many many things in there and could sometimes be confusing to navigate. We have simplified this greatly and made the menu much more straightforward. 
 
Fixes and Enhancements
(Platinum, Professional, and Artist)
 
General

• Paste Special did not respect Destination Track in some situations during Paste
• Creating FX Chains previously not add parameters to a control unless it was added twice

Stability

• Dithering to 24-bit when exporting FLAC previously could cause unexpected crackles in the exported file
• Resolved an issue where SONAR may crash on OMF Export

Track View

• Drag reordering a bus would was off by 1 when moved to a new position
• Editing minimized Track View clips was previously difficult to slip-edit/crop on the right edge

Piano Roll View

• The Transform Tool no longer bounces clips together when doing velocity changes
• The Transform button now reflects Hard or Soft mode in the button when switching
• The Transform Tool’s Mask mode will now respond to Hard and Soft mode when Drawing through the Transform box
• Transform Tool now responds correctly when “Show Velocity on Selected Notes Only” is selected
• Transform Tool did not display preview correctly in certain conditions

To participate, you can obtain the Early Access release via:

• Cakewalk Command Center under the Rollback menu. Steps:
  • Start Command Center
  • Click the Settings button
  • Click the Check Now button
  • In the Connected Products list, right-click on the product or suite name you want early access to
  • Choose Rollback > Early Access 2017.08 from the context menu
• Through your products download page, under "Available Downloads."
  • Click the "Show Other Downloads" button to reveal the link.

If you encounter any critical issues prior to official public release, post them to the Problem Reports Forum. Please include SONAR 2017.08 Early Access in the post title, and refrain from including issues not related to SONAR 2017.08 as they may get missed. We’ll do our best to lock posts as we confirm the reports.
 
Thank you for your participation,
Cakewalk

Is that it? Seriously? You've had all month and this is all you've managed to come up with? Only joking :) Seeing as you mentioned the start screen a couple of times, I'll be interested to see if I can use it again - for a while now when launching a recent project from the start screen it crashes on load up. If I launch the project from File > Recent it loads fine. I have had to get into a habit of killing the start screen as soon as Sonar loads for that reason - for me it causes problems.

I like it.  I know this isn't the kind of hard core feature set that gets the heartbeat up with long-term users. But this is the kind of "front door" that will allow new users to walk in and not be intimidated so much, and that is good for everybody.  And it looks like a good ratio of bug fixes to new features.

Like the new Discover tab. Looks good. Checking the rest out now.
 
 
[edit]
I like how there is now a link in the Discover section for the Tech Mag! Good thinking.

I think it's really great to focus on delivering one feature during a monthly sprint. 
 
I'm really looking forward to the new start screen.
 
~ Tony

It would like it if the "existing projects" are as shown as the "recent" projects. With a preview picture as well.
And not only opening a dialog box and closing the start screen.

I also like the Discover tab.  This looks like a solid release this month with features vs. bug squishes.
 
Thanks Bakers!   

OK... I couldn't hold off any longer, so trusting in The Bakers. I've updated...
 
Thankfully, The start screen is still not forced... So I'm feeling great!
 
I took a look at it again just in case I found I was missing something, but I still find no advantage for myself...
 
Now to check out the fixes....
 
Thanks Bakers!
 

I like it!

THambrecht
It would like it if the "existing projects" are as shown as the "recent" projects. With a preview picture as well.
And not only opening a dialog box and closing the start screen.

I'm not understanding what you mean. I have in excess of 888 files in my projects folder. All are Sonar project related. I would hate to have all of them listed with pictures and taking up the time and room to display them in the start screen. Plus I can get to them very quickly by hitting the proper tab with my mouse or my finger with a touch screen. That is if this is what you are talking about.
 
I get the wish to re-engineer it to suit our own personal needs but I don't think that is possible. I like it as it is and appreciate the tweaking it has received. So far CW has improved it well without needing to consult me.