Open Letter to Cakewalk on SONAR X2: My thoughts and observations

Dear forumites -

Rather than battle with the forum software, I have prepared a shared document using Google Docs for your reading pleasure:

Comments and Observations on SONAR X2: An Open Letter to Cakewalk (from an 8.5.3 user who skipped the X1 release.)


Please enjoy, discuss, or ignore as you like.


(Aside: this was my first experience authoring an article with Google Docs. I found it to be a good experience.)

Stickman,

Excellent work. I'm sure that took a lot of time to put together and I hope it ends up being read by the right people. One thing I really liked about your observations was having the slider colors match the envelopes. That's logical and it would look really cool. I really miss that from 8.5. I would like to see the color options open back up as well. Too many of them are locked down right now. Hopefully that is something we will see in X3. Overall I think X2 is an excellent update and since installing the quick fix it has been rock solid here. 

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for posting a thoughtful critique of X2.

That was a well thought-out and reasoned document.  Good work.  I agree with some of your points, but while it bothered me at first, I didn't hate X1.  I was confused as **** for a while (the Smart Tool drove me f'ing crazy), but it's gotten much better in X2.  Sometimes I still feel like I have to do too much poking about to find things I was used to in 8.5.3, but all-in-all, Sonar was overdue for a makeover and I'm good with most of it.

I am concerned about the UI not being re-sizable, which I don't think you mentioned.  While Skylight looks great on my dual 22" monitor desktop, it's nowhere near as attractive or functional on my 14" notebook.  Things don't adjust to fit the window, they just disappear into some nether region requiring scroll bars to reach.  Not very conducive to productive workflow.  I've had to get very familiar with keystrokes so I could get the Inspector, Browser and Control Bar out of the way so I could have as much Track Pane as possible.  And I had to give up the Console view altogether, which is a drag because I devote my whole second monitor to it on the desktop, so it's an uncomfortable adjustment.  That's not Cakewalk's fault, though; how much can you get on a 14" notebook screen?  So no Console view, but Skylight should adjust better to notebooks.

Anyway, I hope CW takes some of your arguments and suggestions to heart--before X3.

On:

'Munged Routing Names'


You can change the 'friendly names'.


Just click 'P' - preferences,
Devices


Click the Friendly name column entry and type your own name.

arachnaut


On:

'Munged Routing Names'


You can change the 'friendly names'.


Just click 'P' - preferences,
Devices


Click the Friendly name column entry and type your own name.

Hey there Arachnaut, 


Exactly. I do use friendly names, that's exactly what I showed in the screen shots. X2 jumbles them up regardless.

They are a mess - yup.

Hovering the mouse over the inputs gives you more to go on.

Bob Bone

Nice letter Colin. I'm particularly with you on the Pro Channel and colors.