How Many Here Use Touch Control?

  I was an early adopter and I've never understood why this hasn't been a big deal to every Sonar user.
  It's not perfect, but to me it's more perfect than any other solution. And the fact that the touch screen can also be used for every other function outside of Sonar on your PC.
  I do have it mounted like a mixing board and have a second screen (42" TV) mounted to the wall as a secondary monitor.
  The funny thing is, using touch to move multiple faders is what I use it for the least . I find it fiddly to grab and accurately move multiple faders.
  For navigating the project and zooming in and out and the fly out EQ, it's awesome. If you do take the plunge, do yourself a favor and buy a stylus. I can use it for every button on the control bar easily. To me , it's much easier than mousing around. 

Think Cakewalk got into it prematurely, but it's just as well it's there now... who can fail to be exited by touchscreens when you see this... The only way forwards for most Windows applications right now is to go touchscreen in a big way IMHO. Cakewalk understands this, as all we see is big buttons from them nowadays  - but I think a full frontal thrust in that direction is in order...
 
And before people bark in fear, you can have an excellent touchscreen UI and desktop... it can happen and does...
 

 
Touchscreen has arrived (finally).. no really... I know you thought it had been around for years...

Well, I currently have mixed feelings about this. I have a Surface Pro 1 and Multitouch works great there, it is precise enough, that made me think buying multitouch monitors for my desktop computer may be a great idea. So I bought 2 multitouch monitors (Acer FT240HQ), and the behavior is very different there, the smaller increases/decreases I can make to my faders are 1.8db, the Pans 14% or so, etc. So basically they are not useful at all, there is not enough information around to troubleshoot this, Acer support couldn't tell me if this is due monitors limitations. Also, I think faders are very small for touch use, larger faders will be a great improvement.

I have a 15" laptop with a touch screen with Win 10 and Sonar Platinum installed.  My "fat fingers" have problems with touch control.  I'm back to using a mouse with Sonar.

Fwiw when i bought my touchscreeen monitor i went from 2 - 23" side by side widescreen monitors to 2 - 27" (lower one on the desk - (touchscreen) tilted back 15-20 degrees, upper one on shelf, non- touch.
One caveat is that the view angle of the touchscreen monitor doesn't lend itself to too shallow/flat an angle. So you either have to tip it up more, or set your chair up higher than would be considered comfortable for a mixing desk/control surface. 
Also, fwiw, i got more usefulness out of my iPad using AC7 but found the wifi connection to be problematic.  I would still like to pick up a camera kit/midi port for the ipad to try setting it up with a hard midi connection rather than rtp via wifi.
i  think the best way for sonar to move forward with touch would be to come up with a touch daw/ac-7 style "control surface" window specifically designed for touch, within sonar itself, rather than trying to customize everything to make touch workable (at least for me, my opinion only)

Craig, I will follow your story carefully.  I am happy with my VS-700, but someday I am sure I will have a monitor in a normal viewing position and a second one lying nearly horizontal to replace the control surface. My big hesitation is around ergonomics.
 
My mental image of a studio is still a long mixing desk with physical faders and knobs, but that really makes no sense for what I do (or what I've been doing for years).

A timely forum.  I had been wondering how touch screens were viewed by Sonar users.  I use the one on my web surfing netbook all the time but don't see much benefit for my Sonar work flow (recording and composing). I have an A-300 Pro keyboard that has a Sonar control pad but I still resort to the mouse most of the time.  Visually I like having the monitor an arm's length away so I wont be changing over soon.
 
Cheers.

No touchscreen here.
 

I use a touch screen, but not an optimum solution.  I have touch on my 15" HP laptop and in my studio I have two 23" monitors that I use to extend and expand my view.  As my eyes age, it's more important to have those close-up views.


That said, I would invest in a larger (largest?) 10-point touch screen with Win10.  As mentioned, install in a position that is half monitor and half keyboard.  Maybe a 30-40 degree angle.  I still would use a keyboard for data entry, notes, text (obviously), and productivity apps, but the touch screen would be my primary interface for SONAR.


I also agree that the bakers could do more to capitalize on current touch capabilities with the goal of performing all functions efficiently using the screen, the keyboard, the mouse, or any combination, but their brilliant product development strategy is almost certain to extend current utilization.  

These are all very helpful responses. Still haven't screwed up the courage to move to W10 yet, and W7 doesn't support touch, so...right now it's down to imaging my C drive so if W10 makes things blow up, I can still get work done.
 
I'm sure that after updating to W10 I'll kick myself for not doing it sooner...on the Mac I'm still on Mavericks because it's rock solid, but I'm about to make the leap into Yosemite because I figure with El Capitan happening, they probably fixed all the issues in Yosemite by now.
 
Speaking of which, why did they stop doing cat names? I was so looking forward to the "Hello Kitty" version of OS X.
 
Thanks again everyone for the comments, looking forward to more. 

Craig, FWIW, I had absolutely no issues upgrading from '7 to '10. In fact, it all seems to run a little better. Lower CPU. Less crashes. And I HATE being out of my comfort zone as I have a massive workload on most days.
 
I downloaded 10, but BEFORE installing I cloned my C drive (that way it's only one download). Then installed and it's been great.
 
Your mileage, kilometers or light years may ,of course, vary :O)
 
Great thread though - I am also keen on getting all touchy feely shortly.

I'm on Windows ten and recently learned how to permanently disable Windows defender on my mobile rig. I believe that defender re enabling in the middle of a gig caused me to lose a recording.

It has to be disabled in group policy.

My windows 7 desktop runs WAAAAY better with 10 than it ever did with 7! I just upgraded, no clean install. I wish 7 had run this good all that time! The only problem I experienced was that the internal HD audio controller got turned back on some how in the upgrade. After I dis-abled that, it's been running like an Indy car! And the latency is the lowest in Sonar so far.

I am VERY interested in buying a touch screen for SONAR for my dell studio 1747 laptop (now running WIN 10, with benefits).
 
MY CONTEXT AND OBSERVATIONS
 
I, for one, am bad as SH** when I try to setup any control surfaces that does NOT come with presets for SONAR (and I seem to have the habit to be interested mainly by controllers that DOES NOT offers presets for SONAR...) The result being that I am just partly using my MKP mini controller and I am almost never properly unsing my Yamaha 01v96 as a controller for Sonar. (I know there is ACT and messed around with it... i'll get it eventually...)
 
So, my experience with SONAR and control surfaces so far: very frustrating (But it is mainly my fault, as I am not good with work-arounds when presets are not avail...)
 
My opinion is: touch is the future (as a lot of controllers seems not to work properly right out of the box with SONAR. The most common problem being "The controller sends messages to Sonar correctly, but does not seems to receive some messages back from it..."
 
Touch solutions will be more affordable than controllers offering "motorized faders" and the likes. Reaction to the DAW's / PLUGIN's current state is ESSENTIAL to a workflow using a controller. I much prefer mixing only 1 parameter with a mouse knowing at what value I am starting FROM instead of messing with 8 non-motorized fader by first putting the thing BACK at the value showed in the daw BEFORE actually being able to input the values I want to at that moment... Also, current affordable controllers almost NEVER support motorized faders. Heck, even INFINITE ROTARY ENCODERS seems to be a luxury (I cannot believe that new controllers are still offering only "FINITE" rotary encoders... a complete non-sense for me... the new BEHRINGER line seems to be getting the idea...)
 
The MICROSOFT SURFACE as a controller combo using REMOTE DESKTOP seems promising. I would like to try it but I want to be able to use the surface AND work locally on that laptop at the same time (Isn't a remote desktop session logging off the "local" session of the machine it is connected to?)... So, have not yet looked into it.
 
MY (hopefully correct) CONCLUSIONS
 
For touch to really take momentum in Sonar, a lot of work still needs to be done in the UI (the sooner the better). For me, updates to the CONSOLE VIEW's code to allow us to configure displayed parameters to better react to any finger size is essential (same applies to any of the DAW'S windows IMO).
 
Putting work into CODE development to better support natively ANY touch device, instead of new CONTROL SURFACES designs for the next 2-3 years, WILL be profitable. Afterwards, there will still be time for Tascam to develop good (and affordable) controllers flexible enough for the 2020's. Heck, I am thinking of a product that could offer 1-2 motorized faders, infinite rotary controllers and a touch surface. I think AKAI is offering things like this now. More like those needed....
 
TOUCH MONITORS will still have the better advantage for me, as I would be able to use it with other softwares. So any control surface having a too high price-tag will not be considered by the semi-pro-hobbyist audio producer that I am.
 
... BUT... I will only be buying a touch monitor IF the bakers are rolling out some new features in that area... full circle, chicken / egg situation...
 
Hope this helps a little.