Boogit
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Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
Greetings, Forgive me if the topic has been beat to death or, if you feel it does not matter....for the rest, PLEASE HELP AND CHIME IN!! - COLORS - A long time ago I began my relationship with Cakewalk. I am pretty old school and have really only used Cakewalk as a tape machine. About the time of Sonar 4 I decided to see what this "digital thing" was all about and I discovered something called "Track Folders". There it was, proof that this digital recording thing was very cool. Since this time I have picked up a few things but still consider myself to use the software for tape machine purposes. I have seen some gripe on several issues and I will not expand on any of them. I just want to complain about one thing. The color and look. As I sit watching the X1 video and playing around inside the program, I just feel like something is missing. When I began setting up tracks in console view, I KNEW SOMETHING WAS MISSING!! When I sit and think about what is important to me in life..I think, family, guitars, more studio gear and always seem to forget that air is the most important. It's just always there, I never need to think about it. I have recently realized the look and color options have had the same impact in my recording world. I never think about it. I would never mention how it is important. If I sent a letter to Sonar regarding changes, I would never take the time to worry about the look or color. All of a sudden, it is all that matters. I cannot dig deep into X1 simply because of this. I miss the rich, deep, almost 3D look of 8.5. I miss the color options (which are actually even better in earlier Cakewalk products). When I pull up console view and have 16-24 audio faders, a half dozen effect sends, groups/busses etc., I end up with 40 faders of the same color. This is very hard to work with. We should be able to quickly select any channel/channel strip/group of channels we want and change the color, the whole color, and nothing but the color...in a second. Some of this same idea or better yet options, can apply in the track view as well. But even the general look seems drab. I want to feel like my software is professional and the greatest thing out. I don't want to feel like I bought the discount or alternate version of Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase etc. I want it to look fantastic. This is the other side though, someone thinks this look is indeed fantastic. None of us will have exactly what we want, right? So, I am simply asking for the option. I even understand it is a different program and I may not have the option of exactly what I am used to. I am sure there can be an option of "very close" to what I am used to. And I am certain I can have an option of a color for a fader in console view. I support new versions. I am ok with nothing being perfect out of the gate. I respect that a company needs to put something out with a price tag in order to generate dollars. However, I feel like with the push of X1, something as simple yet as critical as air, has been overlooked. I am sure some think the bland look is great. I am sure some will agree with me. I am only asking for support of this thread to convince Sonar for the option to pick a look. I think besides the look, most will agree that some color options in general, or better yet make some actually work, is needed. And for the console view, I think we all could agree that a fader color is a must. So please chime in. I hope I did not start a thread to discuss several issues and bugs. I am hoping to really drive the point home on the look. Change is great and I am loving some of this stuff, the docking, the options and on and on. But again, just not such a bland overall look. To me, it seems they have completely destroyed console view. It is almost like they have ruined it and flattened it for prochannel. I cannot move the channel strip, dock it, move it, grab it, slide it over to another group of tracks and COLOR a group of drums or guitars etc.. Nothing. It is just this useless section. And sadly, this section is a deal breaker for me. The console view is a major view that I use for mixing. I can't record a shaker track and then slide it over to the drum tracks and group the whole thing and "color" it. At 6 to 12 hours a day in front of a monitor, I don't want to take the air for granted. It is the base for all that I do. Thanks for taking the time to read this rant. -NickandPam
post edited by Boogit - 2011/02/20 21:11:08
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/20 21:09:49
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I would love to see color options.. not just for faders, but for entire console channel and buss strips, as well as track headers.
SONAR X1 Expanded (64bit) HP Pavilion dv7 Windows 7 (64bit) 8 gig ram
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Boogit
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/20 21:14:12
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Just changed what I meant for others. You caught me before I updated it. That is was I was meaning. I just added a little extra to my original post to make it clearer.
post edited by Boogit - 2011/02/20 21:23:05
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...wicked
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/20 21:30:14
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I suspect they'll return many of the color options. I bet a few return with this update, and the next major version will bring more of them back. I appreciate X1's "return to simplicity" but any major DAW has to have major customization features.
Of course, especially after seeing the mod thread, I still hold they should just make the whole UI skinnable and let the user community do the heavy lifting.
=========== The Fog People =========== Intel i7-4790 16GB RAM ASUS Z97 Roland OctaCapture Win10/64 SONAR Platinum 64-bit billions VSTs, some of which work
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Keni
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/20 22:28:33
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Return to simplicity? Bah! this is the music work we're doing here... It is NOT simplistic... There are many tools that need to be around and hiding them just means having to find them when you need them...
(no slight on you wicked - Just stole your line)...
Yes, I believe more color control will return in time... but we will not be able to change the availability of tools... the current TV wastes so much space to make it look "simple" that I can't get enuf data on screen to work comfortably... the buttons need to be re-sized and re-grouped so that we can see them and position them to our needs as before. It's now gonna take years until we get back the customization and control we had before... What a great way to double the life of a software... After it's got everything, re-package it in shiny new clothes without everything so that everyone will have to buy for another 10 years to get everything back!
I better stop now... I'm getting wound up again...
Keni
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stevenpanter
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/21 08:17:49
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While I like the colour scheme of the track view, I do agree that it should be fully customisable as before, and I also agree with everything that has been said about the console view. They should have left the same console view from 8.5, but added the Prochannel where appropriate. I was doing some mixing last night using the Console View and wanted to re-arrange the position of a couple of tracks, so I tried clicking and dragging them as before and..... nothing. Not a big problem for those of us who have dual monitors as we can have the console on 1 monitor and track view on the other, so it's easy to just zoom your mouse across and re-arrange the tracks there. While we're on the subject of colours and appearance, in 8.5 and earlier, when tracks were in a folder and the folder was open in the Track View, they would appear to be slightly indented so you could easily see at a quick glance which tracks were in the folder and which weren't. X1 doesn't do this; they all stay at the same level so it's not so easy to tell which tracks are populating the folders. Anyway, I'm getting off the point here, so +1 for the return of full customization, and a more exciting and inspiring console view.
post edited by stevenpanter - 2011/02/21 08:29:14
Steven Panter - Musician, Composer, Producer.
Sonar Platinum Producer Edition (and all previous Sonar versions back to 3), Kontakt 11, Z3TA+ 2, BFD2, FM8, Vocaloid and others
PC: Custom-built i7-6080, 16Gb RAM, 3 * 1TB SSD, Windows 10 64-bit Korg Kronos, Minilogue, M3 Module, Triton ExtremeRoland RD700-GX, Jupiter 80, XV-5080, Fantom XR, V-Synth XT, VariOS
A collection of guitars, basses, and amps.
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giankap
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/21 08:26:12
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I believe that the main reason of the simplified interface has a lot to do with fatigue. It's been proved that the more the colors, the more our brain tries harder in order to stay focused. When you work for long periods with many colors and you don't know basic tachniques in order to rest your eyes from time to time, you are likely to experience headaches!!! read about this, you'll learn a lot! http://sangrea.net/ohs_dbase/colour-color.htm
sincerely, Ioannis Windows - some Dual Core CPU - a little bit of RAM - not so bad soundcard - i think it's called Sonar - a silver mixer with colorful knobs - black speaker monitors - my ears some work
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trimph1
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/21 08:27:51
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Keni
Return to simplicity? Bah! this is the music work we're doing here... It is NOT simplistic... There are many tools that need to be around and hiding them just means having to find them when you need them...
(no slight on you wicked - Just stole your line)...
Yes, I believe more color control will return in time... but we will not be able to change the availability of tools... the current TV wastes so much space to make it look "simple" that I can't get enuf data on screen to work comfortably... the buttons need to be re-sized and re-grouped so that we can see them and position them to our needs as before. It's now gonna take years until we get back the customization and control we had before... What a great way to double the life of a software... After it's got everything, re-package it in shiny new clothes without everything so that everyone will have to buy for another 10 years to get everything back!
I better stop now... I'm getting wound up again...
Keni
Wasn't that called planned obsolescence at one time?  I do understand the frustration though...it certainly appears a little strange that one has to go on a major hunt to do things when it is hidden... ...and with my eyesight the way it is...it certainly would help if they were a little easier to read...
The space you have will always be exceeded in direct proportion to the amount of stuff you have...Thornton's Postulate. Bushpianos
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stevenpanter
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/21 08:31:40
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...and with my eyesight the way it is...it certainly would help if they were a little easier to read...
Hence my point about the folder indentation.
Steven Panter - Musician, Composer, Producer.
Sonar Platinum Producer Edition (and all previous Sonar versions back to 3), Kontakt 11, Z3TA+ 2, BFD2, FM8, Vocaloid and others
PC: Custom-built i7-6080, 16Gb RAM, 3 * 1TB SSD, Windows 10 64-bit Korg Kronos, Minilogue, M3 Module, Triton ExtremeRoland RD700-GX, Jupiter 80, XV-5080, Fantom XR, V-Synth XT, VariOS
A collection of guitars, basses, and amps.
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Keni
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/21 13:09:35
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stevenpanter
While I like the colour scheme of the track view, I do agree that it should be fully customisable as before, and I also agree with everything that has been said about the console view. They should have left the same console view from 8.5, but added the Prochannel where appropriate.
Yeah... I not only agree, I believe they should have done the same with TV and made the entire Silverlight interface an option! More involved for them, but would have squelched a huge amount of disappointments and the likes... Keni
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stevenpanter
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/22 07:39:11
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Keni
Yeah... I not only agree, I believe they should have done the same with TV and made the entire Silverlight interface an option! More involved for them, but would have squelched a huge amount of disappointments and the likes...
Keni
I think so too. Having said all that though, I'm finding that the addition of a good control surface (a Mackie MCU Pro in my case - love it!) eliminates a lot of time spent looking at Sonar because of the functionality available. Not so much of a problem then!
Steven Panter - Musician, Composer, Producer.
Sonar Platinum Producer Edition (and all previous Sonar versions back to 3), Kontakt 11, Z3TA+ 2, BFD2, FM8, Vocaloid and others
PC: Custom-built i7-6080, 16Gb RAM, 3 * 1TB SSD, Windows 10 64-bit Korg Kronos, Minilogue, M3 Module, Triton ExtremeRoland RD700-GX, Jupiter 80, XV-5080, Fantom XR, V-Synth XT, VariOS
A collection of guitars, basses, and amps.
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Danny Danzi
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/22 08:12:11
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giankap
I believe that the main reason of the simplified interface has a lot to do with fatigue. It's been proved that the more the colors, the more our brain tries harder in order to stay focused. When you work for long periods with many colors and you don't know basic tachniques in order to rest your eyes from time to time, you are likely to experience headaches!!!
read about this, you'll learn a lot!
http://sangrea.net/ohs_dbase/colour-color.htm
Actually if my memory serves me right, one of the bakers commented that they felt it was best to have less color options so we could get more work done. Though I can appreciate the concept, I would have liked to have had a poll or something regarding this. Color options and the like, should always be made available in my opinion and it gets left to the user to spend the time tweaking colors or not. That's one thing I really like about Reaper...if you can dream it up, you can just about have it. I'd also love the ability to just right click on an area and be able to adjust its colors by seeing a color menu come up. When I right click it, it knows what module and space I selected. Some of the Sonar color text explanations have always been a guessing game for me. Maybe I'm just a dope, but sometimes THAT was the thing that was time consuming. To me trying to figure out what was what by trial and error was more time consuming than being able to adjust colors once you knew what part you were adjusting. Some people just look at a DAW for work, others look at it kinda like a soul mate. And when you're looking at something for several hours per day, several days per week, you would love for it to be YOUR DAW with YOUR colors....and have as many options as possible for those colors. Sure, it's all about making music in a timely fashion as well, but there is nothing worse than not enjoying the look of a DAW in the recording realm these days. I hated pro tools years ago because it just reminded me of DOS. I didn't care how powerful it supposedly was or who was using it, it just looked like @ss and there was no way I could sit there with it for all the hours I work. It really is important to some people and several of us have voiced our opinions on this. What gets me is when I see "the helper team" as I'll call them, creating cool things for us to use within the program. You know, guys like Ben and panup, the other guy that was making custom faders and LED colors. Cake sees the interest in this, why the heck won't they give us these options? The threads about that stuff are miles long with several views. I really do find stuff like that annoying and thank God for guys like "the helper team" hooking us up with cool stuff. How hard could it be for Cake to implement that stuff? Instead of someone over there saying to themselves "those poor baystids are going to corrupt their .dll's or their res files...heck, we could implement this into the system for them...there seems to be plenty of interest." We even had a huge thread on color schemes that Child hooked us up with. That thread is a monster....yet, they take our color options away and additional tweaking? LOL! That just makes no sense to me really. Some people are hobbiests....they would enjoy tweaking their DAW to their specs because when they use it, they wanna be blown away by not only how it works, but how it looks. For the pros, even more so because it's nice to impress clients to where they say "dude, that's the new Sonar...wow it looks badass and what a killer color scheme!" For example, I'm a video game junkie. I have been since I was 8 years old. I'll buy a racing game for Xbox 360 and spend 4 hours with different paint jobs on the cars before I run my first race. LOL! I just dig stuff like that. You know, trying to be different and experimenting is part of the fun of tweaking ANY option really. So yeah, this is extremely important to me Boogit and I sincerely hope the Cake guys are listening to us. When X1 works well for me and I push the little annoying things to the side, I almost don't pay attention to the colors...or lack there of. Probably because I'm too busy watching every little thing I do so I don't really allow it to get to me. But once things are fixed and running smoothly, it's definitely going to have more of an impact on me for sure. I've shelved it for the time being though and will start fresh after the X1b update if all goes well. :)
post edited by Danny Danzi - 2011/02/22 08:13:52
My Site Fractal Audio Endorsed Artist & Beta Tester
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Keni
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/24 04:25:10
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stevenpanter
Keni
Yeah... I not only agree, I believe they should have done the same with TV and made the entire Silverlight interface an option! More involved for them, but would have squelched a huge amount of disappointments and the likes...
Keni
I think so too. Having said all that though, I'm finding that the addition of a good control surface (a Mackie MCU Pro in my case - love it!) eliminates a lot of time spent looking at Sonar because of the functionality available. Not so much of a problem then!
Hi Steven... I can undeerstand some use for a control surface... They can be very helpful, but that will not keep me from looking at Sonar... I still need to see what I'm doing... For basic things such as transport control... sure.... As to faders? I prefer to write my level/pan changes than to execute them on a controller... I get (exactly) what I want much faster... I do have an old controller (the Peavey Studiomix) and while it's far from a great controller, I use it in the tracking room for remote control of Sonar when I'm recording my vocals and such... (transport)... But all the editing I do requires Sonar... I don't see how a controller will change that for editing (splitting/copying/moving clips etc.) Keni
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Katie_Katie
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/24 08:10:03
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Danny Stated:
"Actually if my memory serves me right, one of the bakers commented that they felt it was best to have less color options so we could get more work done."
Well, maybe they have a similar mind-set to auto makers. Maybe with less color we can drive faster.
I am starting to wonder if the "less color" is part of the new millennium. I don't know if any of you have been car shopping lately, but the color choices are dismal. One of the cars I'm looking at is the Audi A8 (favorite). Here are the color choices....and I kid you not. Other makes MB S550 and BMW740, limited and similar muted colors. I don't get it.
White
Black Metallic
Very Dark Beige
Black Metallic
Silver Metallic
Night Blue (Dark)
Gray
Gray Metallic
Black Pearl
This looks similar to the color palette of X1...humm...I wonder if the same guy that picked the colors for CW......Nah...can't be.
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trimph1
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/24 08:15:30
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It's the new rage!! Colour Minimalism!!!!   We should be so lucky that they did not choose neutrals..... 
The space you have will always be exceeded in direct proportion to the amount of stuff you have...Thornton's Postulate. Bushpianos
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stratman70
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/24 08:28:47
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I am guessing an individuals workflow comes in to play here. The colors don't bother me at all. Started with CWPA6 and upgraded every time except Sonar 2 and I have never changed the colors. well maybe once. But I sure did customize everything else.
Which, of course, I also miss dearly
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c5_convertible
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2011/02/24 10:42:47
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blindguitar
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Re:Help me convince Sonar to make an X1 change
2012/09/22 02:51:53
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YES! YES! YES!
I have been away from Sonar so looking to save some time and get an answer. I actually recently posted a question on this.
Has x2 jumped on board with the rest of the world or are the options still the same? My real concern is the console. Can you change colors? Not "color group" but actually change the entire strip like other DAW's Man, it means the world when mixing for several hours and trying to find tracks. Actually, everything in this thread is spot on....for me that is. Is any of this in x2?
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