That shouldn't happen. What you export should sound exactly like what you hear out of the program during playback.

What are you using to listen to the exported material? Are you burning it to CD? Different monitoring system?

My friend had a similar problem with Sonar, but that was about a month ago, and I haven't heared from him since, so I don't know if he solved it or not... I'll ask him and let you know... Cheers !

So if I read this correctly, you are stating that when you Export a mix in Sonar2, you are hearing a reduction in bass, vocal quality, etc.??

Things to Look At

- Are you reducing bit depth or sample rate when exporting to a file? If so are you dithering or otherwise compensating for the reduction?

- Are you exporting to a lossless format like .WAV?

- Is your Master bus level correct, i.e. not clipping or seriously low level?

- Are you using any mastering plugins or other plugins on the Master bus? If so, what are they?

- (as stated above), are you playing back on the same system as you record?

- When you play the exported 2 track file, what Player are you using (win media player, winamp, etc.)?

- Is the audio output device config in sonar different than your audio input device config (i.e. multiple soundcards or different drivers, etc.)?

That's it off the top of my head. I've used Sonar since Cakewalk v1 (late eighties, no shit) and unfortunately know it inside out and sideways. Since v2 I've switched to Samplitude pro 7 which has made life infinitely better.

Hope this helps-

This is how I monitorI have a mackie 1604vlz. i set allthe faders, gain, sends, etc to flat and I use the sorar2 console to control the mix & add effects.

After export to stereo .wav, I listen to the 2 track stereo using sound forge & then save the .wav file & then burn.

I use dithering.

no plugins on the master bus.

drivers are the same on inputs as outputs.

thanks,
Pat

This is odd.

One way to test out if the two track is exactly the same (bit-wise, ignoring dithering noise for a moment) is to re-import the bounced two track into your project, then invert polarity at unity gain.

If it's identical, you shouldn't hear anything at all (if source - bounced = 0, source = bounced).

Make sure that the bounced track doesn't go through any plugins inside SONAR.

Originally posted by Pat Lyons:
After export to stereo .wav, I listen to the 2 track stereo using sound forge & then save the .wav file & then burn.

I use dithering.

no plugins on the master bus.

drivers are the same on inputs as outputs.

thanks,
Pat

Well Pat at this point I can only guess that-

a) Since you said you "dither" upon mix down, can I assume you are bit reducing from 24bit or higher? If so what are you using to dither the waveform? As far as I know Sonar does not have any dithering built in and truncates instead. I could be wrong on this (v2 stuff?). This may be adversely affecting the sound.

b) Playback in SoundForge is somehow different... I wonder what happens when you import the 2-track wav back into a new Sonar project and play it?

c) Some rougue mix automation or curves are present in your project but not clearly visible (this can happen if you delete nodes or part of the audio track, Sonar tends to freak and handle it very inelegantly in terms of how the curves react. Usually you have to whack the entire curve and redraw it (!).

Hope that helps..