Unless I'm really overlooking something I've never really liked the way the sample rate is set globally for SONAR in the driver settings.  I would prefer if that was where you set a default and then have the ability to change the settings for an individual project without it affecting your other projects.
 
Case in point: I do a variety of types of music, from simply recording one track of classical guitar and adding a little reverb to fairly CPU intensive soft synth arrangements.  This past weekend I was working on acoustic and classical guitar projects, and changed my settings to 96K and then later to 192K just to see how things would turn out.  Fast forward to today and I decided to open up a project that has Geist, Blue II, Fusor, and a few tracks of Omni, but no recorded audio yet.  Instead of opening it at the 44.1K rate that I had it set at when I started the project it opened it at 192K, which is where I had the setting the last time I recorded some classical guitar.  It seems you have to have some recorded audio in addition to virtual instruments to get the setting to stick to what you had it set at. Naturally this caused the CPU usage to go through the roof and the project wouldn't play.  I knew what the issue was, so I tried to change the sample rate and SONAR crashed. 
 
It just seems to me that there has to be a better way to manage sample rates. Anyone else ever encounter something like this?
 
 
edit: updated subject w/ [Implemented] - scook

If Sonar crashes when setting the sample rate it sounds like a problem with your interface driver.

Thanks for the suggestion, but the crash wasn't really the point of the request; the point was that something like this makes more sense to be tied to a project and not to a global setting.  It seems that no matter what you start a project at, SONAR will change the project to whatever you have set in the option unless you have recorded some audio into a clip... which is really kind of weird to me. To me a global default makes sense, but you should be able to set it differently on a single new project without it messing with any existing projects that may not have any actual audio clips yet. (I hope I'm explaining this clearly.  Basically I'd like my projects to stay at the rate I start them at without having to record any actual audio into them.)
 
It has only crashed on me once when changing sampling rate, and it was when I loaded up a fully-loaded soft synth project (using 30-40% at 44.1K) that was started at 44.1K and it changed it to 192K, because that was what I had most recently been using on another project.  My RME drivers have been solid with every other scenario, so I think it has more to do with the fact that SONAR upped the sample rate and went beyond what the CPU could handle on my existing project when I went to reload it. 
 
Sure, I could try to remember every time I load a project to open up preferences and make sure I haven't left anything set like that... but... it's a bit of a pain.  For now, looks like I'll use Studio One for my classical projects and continue with SONAR on the

Possible workaround:
 
Record a snippet of silent audio at all the sample rates you use, and save project templates that have that snippet on a hidden, archived track.
 
 

You know... something similar had crossed my mind, and that might actually work.  I only use higher sample rates for very simple acoustic and classical recording with no more than about 4-5 tracks.  I won't have to touch my regular full mix templates, but if I just create a couple for the higher sample rates, then set my default setting back to 44.1 I should be set.  Thanks for the idea!

Yes, a project setting to use system or project specific samplerate would be nice.
 
But maybe do it all the way and also make audio hardware config part if it.
If doing some projects in 96k, that means if audio interface has ADAT that you number of ins/outs is cut by half. To fiddle with this back and forth is a mess.
 
Like Cubase and Studio One has - a table that follow project - and where the own named connectionpoints are in project, and you easily adjust hardware ins/outs.
 
And also simplify collaborations.

It would be cool to be able to specify a sample rate with a project template. Or another simple solution would simply be to ask what sample rate you want your new project to be regardless of whether or not you were using a template or not as part of the create new project window. Brundlefly's idea is the work around at this point and it works.

implemented with new project dialog in Gloucester