Today I’d like to introduce you to my method of creating a new recording project in Sonar. I’ll also show you how to set up your sample rate, bit depth, project folder location, and further, how to form a default project for each time you start a new recording project that already contains all of your audio settings. Let’s get started!

The first thing we are going to do is open Sonar. We are immediately presented with this screen-

This menu allows us to open a previous project, start a new project, and view tutorial resources. For our purpose we’re going to choose Create a New Project. Before the interface opens we need to choose a project template and give the project a name-

Personally at this point I chose the Normal template and chose the Store Project Audio in its own Folder option. The reason to store audio in the project folder is that as you create more and more projects a system audio folder would become very confusing and quite unmanageable! Plus, using a single folder for all your project work will make it that much easier to share and collaborate with others. Now that we have completed our initial setup we can get into the nitty gritty. For the project name I would suggest you use “Default” as this will be the default project for every recording project you create once we are done with the audio, driver, and project settings. Don’t worry about the save locations right now as we’ll be fixing that later on.

Ok, let’s dive into some settings now! With the interface finally opened go to Edit/Preferences to allow us to adjust all our settings. We’ll start with the Audio section first. First up we want to choose our I/O devices, here referred to as Recording and Playback. Make sure you check all the inputs and outputs you will be using.

Now that we have our device selected, let’s adjust our driver settings-

Here’s where we find the Sample Rate and Buffer settings. Personally I prefer recording at 96khz but you’re going to have to make your own “bargain with the devil”…there’s a lot of discussion about using the higher sample rates and whether there’s a noticeable difference, you’ll have to do your own research and make your own choice. However, one truth to realize is that the higher the sample rate the larger the audio file sizes!

You may have noticed that there’s an ASIO panel in the center of the driver settings pane. This where the buffer setting is made.

You’re going to have to experiment to know what buffer setting to use. It all depends on your soundcard and your sound sources. Due to the fact that I record at 96khz and use a lot of VST instruments 512 works out great for me. Latency is negligible and I’m able to use audio processing as I progress. Take your time, you should only have to set this once.

Next stop is Playback and Recording-

This is the place to set your Driver Mode. Choices include MME(worst in my opinion), WDM(windows own audio driver model), and ASIO(best-Audio Stream Input/Output driver created by Steinberg). Once again you’re going to have to experiment to see which driver mode is best for your soundcard.

Now let’s choose our Midi input and outputs-

To simplify things make sure you only choose devices you are actually going to utilize.

We’re going to look at some folder options now. By default Sonar places certain program related files in certain folder locations, there’s really no need to change these-

There’s still something important we haven’t gotten to yet but we’ll take care of that now- bit depth. You’ll find that here under the Folder options-

If you look below the bit depth settings you’ll also see the Use Per Project Audio Folders, we definitely want to make sure this is checked! Now the thing to remember about your bit depth setting is that using 24-bit as opposed to 16-bit will increase your sampling accuracy and dynamic range.

Another important setting is how the metronome works. You can set that here-

We also need to set our clock source whenever we are working with external equipment. Our clock settings are here-

Now that we have the most important settings set we’re going to use the File/Save As in order to save our new Default project to a folder of its own. Next time you want to start a new project just open the Default project you created and use Save As to a new folder once you have a name picked out. It’s a huge time saver to avoid having to setup your project and audio settings every time you start a new one!

Finally I’ll just show you how I have my project folders set up. My DAW has 5 harddrives, approximately 4.1TB of space…a Windows and Programs drive, 2 sample drives, a Project drive, and an external drive for docs, manuals, etc. Here’s a look at my Project drive-

Inside one of the project folders looks like this-

And lastly the inside of the audio folder looks like this-

Hopefully the information here will help you no matter what DAW you use. A lot of choices are made by personal preference and opinion, these just happen to be mine. Thanks for staying awake 😉

Bill