Cakewalk has announced that SONAR v4.0.3, a maintenance release for both SONAR 4 Producer Edition and SONAR 4 Studio Edition, will be available as free a download for registered SONAR 4 customers from July 29th, 2005.

Version 4.0.3 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.