tenfoot

Sanderxpander
One thing I miss in Sonar that Logic does is nondestructive quantization. In Logic, you can select a recorded (i.e. "human timing") clip and apply for instance 16th swing quantization at 70 percent strength. You can set quantization strength for each clip and you can change it after the fact. In Sonar if I quantize at 70 percent strength and later realize the part needed to remain a bit more human, it's not so easy to fiddle with that number anymore. 

+1 for that Sanderxpander.
 
There is a way to do it in Sonar though. Rather than using the quantize function from the process menu, you can insert the Cakewalk quantize midi plugin into the tracks fx bin. That way you can go back and make any changes you like at any time.

kb420
1.  The Piano Roll View.  It may just be a personal choice,  but I'll take Live, Studio One,  and Maschine's Piano Roll View over Sonar's any day of the week.  All 3 of them seem to be so much more responsive and easier to make edits on.  There's never any hidden muted notes.  No guessing about which parameter you may or may not be editing when you attempt to select a note.  Nudging notes,  and manipulating the grid on all three are incredibly easy when you compare it to Sonar.

2.  Non Linear Midi Composition.  Sonar does have a groove matrix,  so this may not be as much of an issue,  but I've never dug in to it much.  I doubt it's as flexible as Live's Session View.

If you take a look at Studio One,  which is primarily a linear sequencer,  you still have a super flexible way of recording midi when you consider the Arranger Track and the Scratch Pad.  With the Arranger Track,  you can actually treat whole sections of a song like patterns in a hardware sequencer and string them together any way you want to on a Scratch Pad.  The Arranger Track and the Scratch Pad are new to Studio One 3,  and they are what really gained my attention.

3.  Take Lanes.  I absolutely hate this for midi loop recording,  and nothing else I've ever used has anything like them.  You can't truly disable it. No matter what you do,  you always can tell that they are there in your arrangement window unless you comp them all.  It just seems like it's extra work for no reason.  I can understand the usefulness of Take Lanes when recording audio from a musician,  but I just wish you could completely disable it when working with midi,  especially midi loop recording.

• If I want to record kick drums, then go back and layer on hi-hats or whatever... 2 takes. I have to bounce them to clips, then trim the clips, etc. I have to work to stick the clips together.
• If I want to edit a new drum pattern in the measure after some existing one... Sonar will sometimes just arbitrarily decide that I'm extending the previous clip and add my new drums to the old clip. This is ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING when that clip has 15 linked copies elsewhere in the song, all of which now overlap with the clip that comes after them, and now I have to perform some convoluted combination of copy/paste/split/undo/lock/whatever to get the old clips back to how things were without losing the work I just did in the new clips.

Sanderxpander
Thanks I'll try using that instead. If it works well my feature request is mainly a matter of reorganization - put a wuantize midi effect on every clip by default (set to zero strength perhaps) and put some sliders in the PRV or imspector. Although, does the quantize midi effect actually visibly move the notes? Sometimes that's quite helpful. 

KPerry
And I thought there was a key press/mouse combination to mute notes, but I can't work it out right now (and don't have time to dig through the help files).
 
The old (SONAR 8.x) configurable tool definitely did allow you to set up key+mouse to mute a note (and the configurable options were so good - really want them back).

Sanderxpander
This thread is starting to prove immensely useful haha :) 
 
Another one then - I wish there was a better visual indication in PRV of which clip I'm editing. To be honest when I open a clip in PRV I expect to see only that clip. Instead, I see basically all midi on the track. 

tenfoot

Sanderxpander
Thanks I'll try using that instead. If it works well my feature request is mainly a matter of reorganization - put a wuantize midi effect on every clip by default (set to zero strength perhaps) and put some sliders in the PRV or imspector. Although, does the quantize midi effect actually visibly move the notes? Sometimes that's quite helpful.

That would all certainly be great Sanderxpander. Unfortunately  the notes do not move when using the quantize plugin which I too think would be very useful. 

azslow3

tenfoot

Sanderxpander
Thanks I'll try using that instead. If it works well my feature request is mainly a matter of reorganization - put a wuantize midi effect on every clip by default (set to zero strength perhaps) and put some sliders in the PRV or imspector. Although, does the quantize midi effect actually visibly move the notes? Sometimes that's quite helpful.

That would all certainly be great Sanderxpander. Unfortunately  the notes do not move when using the quantize plugin which I too think would be very useful. 

General MIDI plug-ins do unpredictable from Sonar perspective changes. In general, they can generate different result every time they run (like some Synth do, there was long thread about it and the result was patch points feature in Sonar). And so, in general it is not possible to show what some effect produce till it is applied. And every time it is applies, the result can be different. If they try to show that in PRV, every time you modify some note they re-render effect for the whole clip and you see all notes are changes. Can that be helpful? I do not think so. The only possible solution I can imagine is "freezing clip" with all local effects applied, so it function like "bounce" but with possibility to unfreeze and tune parameters/modify notes. But I guess that is not exactly what you want.
 
Another possibility is to introduce dedicated set of MIDI effects, so there behavior is known (for example they always produce the same output for any particular note). That can do the trick. Unfortunately what is going to happened we can see in audio "filters", introduced in Sonar long time ago. At some point they was converted to ProChannel. And while the effect on audio is exactly the same as from normal Audio FX, thanks to "very special" logic that part is quite buggy from many perspectives...

azslow3
As an ordinary user I have no control over CAL. But I was thinking about binding some scripting language with MFX. LUA looks reasonable (I have just visited there site for the first time). Do you have an interest in such project? I mean at least one "beta tester" is good to have to not feel myself lonely... As my other tools that is going to be free to use.

Kylotan
 

If you take a look at Studio One,  which is primarily a linear sequencer,  you still have a super flexible way of recording midi when you consider the Arranger Track and the Scratch Pad.  With the Arranger Track,  you can actually treat whole sections of a song like patterns in a hardware sequencer and string them together any way you want to on a Scratch Pad.  The Arranger Track and the Scratch Pad are new to Studio One 3,  and they are what really gained my attention.

 
This is where I'll be spending my money next time around. Ableton is probably not quite right for me, being biased towards electronic music and MIDI-first composition, but Studio One strikes a good balance.