Another way to think about it is this: recorded audio waveform stuff is "down on the tape". Synth tracks are "live" inputs, unless you freeze them. The midi data tells the synth what to do, and it gets performed live by the synth on every playback. This means there's no audio data on the track to play with when you're not playing the song.

Is this helping at all?

Got you.... So I'm just seeing the metering. So I want to rewind the tape, arm the tracks and press record (as the synth playing along with my SMPTE striped on track 24). :)

Or in other words it won't freeze. I can't capture it.

Cheers

From memory, I don't think you can press record to capture it in Sonar, which is a bit of a limitation. But you can use the Freeze functionality to achieve more or less the same thing.

So what is the best method to get audio files from these? Export to wav and import them back in?

You can simply drag audio or midi (depending on how you set your prefs) from maschine directly onto any audio track.

Nope you can't do any of this with "waveform preview". You can't even drag.

If you route the output of track 13 to a new audio track (not to master) you will be able to make a live recording from the synth (from a midi track or your real time playing). Btw the metronome track behaves exactly like that. In one project I wanted to use the metronome sound in a song and I and solved it as above.

Well The idea of creating separate tracks was to be able to record sounds coming out (i.e. a snare) as a separate track (I can monitor them just can't record them).


If I take an output of the maschine on track 13 I can only take just the stereo output, and I can only push that onto a buss. I can't record that either (shows waveform preview), and no freeze option either.
 
Oh BTW if I start a new project and just create a Maschine softsynth track on it's own (no others) I can arm record, hear playback of the Mashcine's stereo but nothing actually will record in Cakewalk, I don't even get a "Wave Preview". And no I can't freeze the synth either.
Well maybe X3D will sort this?

Apologies, Alex, I glanced at the screenshot and assumed the track had been frozen. John T nailed it when he said waveform preview is a "metering function". Purely a visual aid.
 
Freeze the synth, then drag the frozen clips into another audio track. At that point you can archive the synth, which you don't need anymore unless you want to edit the MIDI data behind it.
 
BTW, this is a technique I use often when I want to isolate and capture a single drum hit and apply special effects to it, like a big snare hit with reverb, or a reversed handclap. I've even transferred sounds from one synth to another this way, stealing a cool patch from a soft synth and loading it into, say, a Kontakt library.