AZSlow

Hey AZSlow -

Thanks so much for the fantastic project! I have a dated collection of .cwp projects I'd like to import into reaper. They're from ~2006, Cakewalk Sonar 2.2. I have installed the latest ReaCWP plugin version available, 0r5b91, and am using an up-to-date Reaper installation, v 7.79, on a linux distribution which is an ubuntu derivative (pop_os 24.04, kernel 7.0.11). I have installed the plugin from _lin64 folder in the ReaCWP build artifact into REAPER/Plugins/ directory.

When I attempt to import a .cwp project file, I get a popup from ReaCWP which says "Unfortunately something went completely wrong, sorry..."

I then press OK button, and get a new popup seemingly from reaper: "Title: Project Open Error ;; Content: Unable to open project: unknown extension!"

I have tested this with several of the dozens of project files I have preserved, and get the same error with all of them. I've uploaded one of the Cakewalk tutorial project files for you to examine, which reliably reproduces the error.
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And also here, as the above link only has 3 day TTL:
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I'm hoping it's a simple fix, as I would absolutely love to restore these projects and bring them back to life. I was lucky to pull them off a 20 year old HDD. Before I risk booting that whole computer to try exporting audio project stems, I thought it would make sense to contact you here to see if it's possible to support Sonar 2.2 .cwp files. Looking forward to your response, and thanks again!

edited: to remove file links

Sorry for late reply... ReaCWP is more or less work with projects created in Sonar 8. It was developed for X2+

If you own Sonar 8 - X2, they work file under Wine in Linux (at least for the purpose). Otherwise you will need Windows, install current Bandlab Sonar (Free version) and re-save (a copy!) of projects.

I still get one "error" during conversion with your test project and I can check from where it comes, but after re-saving in current Sonar, ReaCWP can open it.

If you have a lot of projects, re-saving can be a bit annoying. But in comparison to the time you will need to bring them back to "live" in REAPER, it should not be a deal breaker.

Sorry it is not as easy as it could be, but it will quite difficult for me to support Sonar 2.

PS. if you get deal breaking errors when converting re-saved projects, I will try to fix them.

Thank you so much for responding with a workaround. This works!

Hardest part ended up being finding someone with a windows laptop I could borrow for a few hours. Otherwise the workaround was a bit tedious, and rough around the edges for some projects, but overall went fine.

My process for anyone curious:
- copy the whole cloned drive to the windows machine
- install cakewalk platform and then sonar DAW from within it
- add "browse folder" for sonar projects where my old .cwp project files lived
-- Note: this had weird behavior on "Desktop" directory in my case. I simply copied the .cwp from the cloned Desktop to their own new folder and used this instead.
- open a project file, and provide sonar with the location of the first audio track referenced...from there, it can find the rest of them for a given project.
-- For me, this was in the old Cakewalk Sonar install location, Audio Files folder.
- save the projects into a new directory, and ensure the checkbox is set for copying the audio files into it. (you can also save as .CWB instead, but i wanted separate audio tracks as part of the export). This gives us the .cwp format ReaCWP is compatible with and all the associated audio tracks contained in their own folder.
- import into reaper. For songs with nested audio tracks, ensure the load recursively checkbox is checked.


I did this for about 80 projects, and have tested around 12 of them with successful imports so far. Working great!

Thanks again. Marked this thread [Resolved]

Thanks for letting me know the workaround works. Note that .CWB will not do the trick, ReaCWP can't open them.