Cakewalk have released a free performance upgrade to SONAR 4. Unfortunately, they still insist on spelling the product name in CAPS. Anyway, the press release describes the SONAR 4.0.3 maintenance release highlights.

Audio engine optimization to improve performance during playback while copying, moving, nudging, splitting and slip-editing clips; moving events in the Piano Roll view; inserting/deleting effects (including delay-compensated effects); enabling/disabling looping; moving the Now Time (in projects without video); inserting/deleting new tracks or buses that route to existing audio ports; enabling/disabling a send on a track or bus that routes to an existing audio port; opening the GUI of an inserted VST plug-in. Additionally, the audio engine has been optimized to withstand heavy CPU loads without drop-outs.

The default auto-punch behavior has been modified to automatically mute previous takes when punch recording audio or MIDI to the same track using Sound-on-Sound (Blend) mode; this behavior can be changed to not mute previous takes.

Set Timecode at “Now Time” command has been added to the Transport menu providing a fast and easy way to sync an audio score to external video.

Availability: The SONAR 4.0.3 maintenance release will be available for download July 29, 2005.

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