Sonar 9

No doubt that is coming, it is usually the offer they make when they are about to release the next version/update, if history means anything.

I see the footprints of those who 'know' among us and you can be sure they are giggling and fretting at the guesses and double guesses of what it will be called, the features it will have and all that.
The silence from Cake employees is the loudest. Deafening in fact.

Nobody from Sonar Towers is chipping in to correct any missaprehensions. One thing that you can be sure of, is that the featureset was set a long time ago and has been toiled over for many, many months. It's now way too late to try and get anything added and changed and I'm sure a few have been shelved as 'too much to do in too little time'.
The new 'look' will have been set and you will either like it or not (unless its skinnable of course). 

Personally, I don't fully appreciate why all this has to be quite so secretive. The needs of the many should really dictate the future state and that really is not secret that needs or should be kept. Groundbreaking new features not even dreamed of by your competitors maybe should, but to be honest its a bit late in DAW evolution for many of those to exist.

Nope, this is a waiting game. We will know when we are told and they are ready to release details.
It is irritating to not know when to jump but there you go.

You can be sure that they know we are waiting and that the new version already exists and is being toiled over praised and cursed at, in many studios right at this very moment. It will be here when it done. Hopefullly not before.

creynolds
Personally, I don't fully appreciate why all this has to be quite so secretive.

I agree. We're not the enemy after all, we're the user base and purchasers. I can understand a lot of it having to do with flame-starting wackos on the forum... but sheesh man it almost feels like we're being punished. I doubt Cake changes their release schedule so often that they can't say "yup, we're hoping to have the new version out in x days." Or even dropping bits of what to expect. 

lfm

...wicked

creynolds
Personally, I don't fully appreciate why all this has to be quite so secretive.

I agree. We're not the enemy after all, we're the user base and purchasers. I can understand a lot of it having to do with flame-starting wackos on the forum... but sheesh man it almost feels like we're being punished. I doubt Cake changes their release schedule so often that they can't say "yup, we're hoping to have the new version out in x days." Or even dropping bits of what to expect. 

I don't appreciate this either.
 
But I think it's due to that next Sonar is not arriving this year even. That's pretty clear to me when not using Roland's worldwide announcements Sept 1st to get the good news out, or at least something.
 
All Sonar users expect stuff this time of year, and sales is stalling due to everybody is not knowing what is going on. The only thing announced was Roland's new policy moving all hardware away from Cake bringing more uncertainty.
 
What I reserved for upgrading even to Producer this time is now used for other stuff. I'm not waiting and really lost my appetite to upgrade at all. V-Vocal seems to need serious overlook, Audiosnap as well, and a number of plugins are not yet x64 , so I invest in Melodyne and other vendor plugins instead and skipping Sonar upgrade.

Agreed.
The Roland announcement that Cakewalk was now the source of 'software only' was a worrying one. It actually suggested to me that the Cakewalk hardware foray, that puzzled so many of us, had been a failure. I always felt that the Cakewalk badge was a negative when stuck on hardware as it sort of suggested 'not built for your DAW, Cubase incompatible, not ProTools ready'.  I liked the look of the Stienberg CI2 but would it work with Sonar? The fact that all that Cakewalk hardware was black also threw a bummer on it for me. It felt like a beloved pet should be buried in it. Joyless.

I really hope that they have addressed the dreadful V-Vocal crashing bugs and integrated it properly or replaced it with a functioning routine.
Pitch correction is now a absolute essential for any DAW and it should be part of the core feature set not an add on.  Hopefully the overcomplex and confusing audiosnap has been fully revisited, the operation of which still largley evades me. But my hopes are merely that. This was all decided a long time ago. We cannot turn this baby, its way too late. We can only hope.

Meanwhile, there are a large number of irritated people out there with some hard earned savings in their possession, desperate to hear a crumb so they can commit to an upgrade or an alternative before that cash is claimed by Christmas and the hard times hovering round the bend.

I remain hopeful that in retrospect, we can all say. 'Ahh that's why they kept quiet. They wanted to keep the XXXXXXX a secret until the day of release. That makes sense. Silly me.' Honestly, why not give us some respect by announcing that the normal schedule will be adhered to or not.