Waveform preview on synth tracks and buses is essentially a fancy historical representation of a meter. It was an idea I cooked up way back in 2003 as an extension of confidence recording. It captures the historical metering data and plots it horizontally on the track so it looks like a waveform, when in reality its the peak output from the meter :)
As such its just a UI representation of the past meter output and cannot be copied.

CakeAlexS
 I guess I'm going to have to work around this with a plugin. Any suggestions?

http://hgsounds.com/product/hgs-wav-recorder-vst-plugin/ is one

Yes, you're right Alex, I was suggesting an alternate method that might work for you. I realize it's something different from what you're trying to do, because what you're trying to do is (as far as I know) not possible in Sonar. If you have a soundcard with its own software mixer/patcher you may be able to get around it. For instance my E-MU patchmix lets me route any input to any output, software or hardware. I suppose a third party program like Jack might allow it, but it's never been super stable for me. Perhaps ReWire is an option? Just not sure if Maschine can also act as a client.

> As such its just a UI representation of the past meter output and cannot be copied.

Thanks Noal....
#33 - How come I'm able to bounce this meter to another track and play it back as a clip? :) I must be smoking

Alex, when you bounce it to another track your are materializing the data... writing it to disk. Then you can treat it as a clip. When you just play it back and check out the preview you aren't writing the data to disk.
 
Wave form preview is useful for watching a master bus for clips (a line of a customizable color gets drawn vertically to show clip points). You can also use it to double back on a playback to find loud or soft sections which may need special attention without going to the trouble of a bounce.
 
When you can quickly find the louder sections in a tune you are working on, you can use the max level to get an idea of at what point your limiter will limit when you apply it.

Familiar with the concept of metering (esp with the good 'old days of tape), however more smoking...
 
> Alex, when you bounce it to another track your are materializing the data... writing it to disk

But it's a meter? It's not data apparently, it is just a graph of audio for reference, not data :).
BUT THEN... Oh but I can bounce it - so it is data (well hidden away somewhere in the depths of the machine!) So materialize basically means we can magic this from thin air ! :)

OK Just like that! (Not like this - like that!) - Sorry only UK people will get this line...
 
At the end of day what I'm seeing is, it is totally possible that we can get these outputs into a clip within a Sonar audio track in realtime (after all the sound data doesn't come from thin air otherwise we could not bounce), but right now the Sonar functionality doesn't go that far? Correct?
 
As Scook says...
 
SONAR cannot record plug-in effect or synth output without a plug-in recorder in the FX bin to save the output to a wave file outside of SONAR or use a loopback through the audio interface.
 
So time to file a feature request?
 
Would that be right? Noel?
 
Thanks
 
Alex

Sounds reasonable. Ableton does this just fine and I've used it effectively in the past.

CakeAlexS
Thanks Noal....

 
 

CakeAlexS
Would that be right? Noal?

 
Who or what is a Noal?

Oh I get it. Your "e" key is broken.
 

Sorry Noel my bad (I forget it's XMAS). Corrected...
 

 
 
 
And don't call me Shirley.