Noel is simply the best.
Master of his craft... and a damn fine musician.
That is a rare skill-set.
 
One thing I've always liked about the Cakewalk staff (even long ago) is that they interact with their users. 
It doesn't get any better than the CTO helping you trouble-shoot.  

Well deserved praise and I hope the Cake guys know how appreciated their support is. In fact, it makes it hard, because you almost expect that it may happen elsewhere, but it just doesn't. I'm not talking DAWS here, but similar. The only time you will get a company person to assist elsewhere, is the small guys. Although I'm going to mention an exception in IK, because I had a pretty amazing experience with them recently, similar to what Noel has done here.
 
But, this is the reason I would never consider changing DAWS. Here, problems can be resolved, and they care enough to want that too. Thanks for that. Your a rare breed Cake.

Marshall
Great story - in a much smaller way, I have been incorrectly gnashing my teeth at Sonar because of an apparent issue with TH3. Thanks for sharing, keeps my woes in perspective. 

I too experienced a TH2/TH3 issue the day before having to leave for LA to do an amp sim workshop at AES. Noel & Co. sorted out the problem - I was able to do the workshop, and I wrote up the solution for this "Friday's Tip of the Week."

Very nice story to share. Noel has definitely gone above and beyond in many ways over the years. I am rather disappointed about who the culprit ultimately was though... going on 7 months without a fix for issues that have been affecting a lot of folks.

Happily, there are a number of companies in the music-tech space who go above and beyond the call of duty like this, but CW is absolutely one of them and it's not just Noel. I've had various bakers chime in here about a problem, send me tentative fixes via PM to get things sorted, that kind of thing - often without me even having to go through actual support channels, which I have hardly ever needed to do.
 
One of the realities of this business is that for the size of the market there are a lot of people and companies competing to provide the products and services we need, so the pressure is on to make a high level of personal service part of the package, as well as (of course) technical innovation. The smallish scale of the market makes this possible, but also necessary; it's a happy thing for us users, even if the profit ceiling is likely rather low for the companies competing for our disposable income...
 
However, as has been remarked before, this is not really the business to be in if maximum profit for minimum effort is your main concern; one often has the impression that a product like Sonar, or any number of others in the market, is as much a labour of love as a product competing in a marketplace... and since we musicians are in a similar predicament, we tend to recognise this and reward it with our loyalty. It's not surprising, to me at least, that CW's attitude, baked (as John points out) into the DNA of the company early on, has resulted in the remarkable community of loyal users this forum represents. 
 
Plus, more than a few of us are eccentric quirky weirdos, which keeps things interesting!

FCCfirstclass
Noel deserves all the good vibes, as do other Chief Magic Bakers, and don't forget Craig.

Craig who? 

+1 to all the above.  Since Pro Audio 9 and before!  ...and to all you helpful much-smarter-than-me Forum contributors.  It's fantastic knowing that, if you really can't figure it out by yourself, there's a generous-spirited community you can reach out to.  A real music tech family.  Thanks to all.

Noel is as professional as possible.
And he plays guitar which is always +++. :)
 

Thank you for giving the development lead some praise! Noel and the team deserve it many times over!  All I can say is Sonar is awesome.  What I love most about it besides the fact it is absolutely loaded with high quality modules, plugins and features is how intuitive it is to use.    IMHO, even the very complex stuff isn't that difficult to master.  Recently with additions like patch points, aux tracks amazing drum replacer, the amount of value we all get is just incredible.    All this would be worthless if the **** didn't work but for me at least, it works amazingly well!  This, again, is all due to the design and development team at Cakewalk.   I absolutely love the current Agile style of monthly updates and am excited every month to see what's new, even if the bulk of the changes might be bug fixes. In the scheme of things, I really have had little to no issues with the software and that is no small feat.  Being a former developer and PM myself, I totally understand the dev cycle and how software quality if both measured and implemented and Sonar is extremely stable, and when it may not be, a few basic precautions that are built into Sonar almost guarantee that no loss of data will if a crash does happen.  Noel, being the lead, deserves much of this credit and should garner much praise from this community.  I've mixed on many other platforms and Sonar for me just makes sense.   You want a new bus, you create and name it and its there!   Seems obvious but other DAWs don't work that way, or at least didn't used to.   I took this intuitive functionality for granted until I mixes on say PT.  My biggest questions is that I just don't get why it isn't more popular but regardless, the level of attention we get in this forum from Noel and other members of the team is second to none when it comes to support for ANY product, DAW, audio or simply ANYTHING!  The fact that this forum gives us a chance to work DIRECTLY with the development leadership is amazing and is quite often not the case.  Believe me, there are many (good) reasons for avoiding direct customer interaction it but for whatever the reason, we, the users community,  should be thankful that Noel gives us direct access and helps those in need and listens to and implements our suggestions!   Keep up the great work!  I hope Gibson and Cakewalk appreciate your efforts like we, THE USERS do and you are treated well!! We need you to stick around as I have LIFETIME updates!! LOL  Thank you all!!

I've used Cakewalk since 1992. Long before it was called Sonar and before digital audio. It seems like I remember Noel even back then. He helped solve a strange problem I was having with Ivory that was a show stopper for me. I had to skip X1, X2, and X3 and he made sure the problem was fixed in Platinum. I always feel good when I know he's on the case. He's the best, very dedicated.

Amen. The staff and this entire community are part of the reason I've gotten on with SONAR all these years. ....... well, that and SONAR IS an incredible DAW in which to work!
 
The only thing I see changing for myself in the future, is possibly going to a (I can't believe I'm going to put this in writing!) Mac computer when SONAR is set to do so.