Is Cakewalk planning to improve the Tempo View in Sonar Platinum? Like Cubase?

Photon
Why has Cakewalk neglected the Tempo View, and let Cubase get so far ahead? I hope a Cakewalk employee will explain this.

 
Well I don't know if a Cakewalk employee will chime in, but which is ahead tends to depend more on your application. It seems what you want is for audio to follow a changeable tempo map whose nodes can be manipulated in a way similar to automation, and Cubase is ahead in that respect. The ability to define a range of existing tempo changes and "tilt" it at a higher or lower angle is something SONAR cannot do. You would have to draw a line that followed the tilt, which would overwrite any existing tempo changes where you drew the line.
 
SONAR has gone in the other direction, and excels at conforming a tempo map to a freely-played audio file. The only other program so far that comes close is Studio One Pro, because it too makes use of the ARA (Audio Random Access) protocol developed by Celemony. So for example if you play something on an acoustic guitar without playing to a click, then decide you actually want to build a song around it, SONAR can create a tempo map that conforms to whatever tempo changes happened while playing the acoustic guitar. It's really quite impressive because it can handle extreme tempo changes, and all you need to do is drag the clip to the timeline - done. However, if you now overdub an audio track you need to play along with the tempo because the tempo map will not change the audio. (MIDI of course is not a problem because it will follow the tempo map regardless.)
 
I think more advanced versions of Melodyne than the Essential version bundled with SONAR may be able to conform audio to a tempo map, but this is something that I haven't checked out because I use Groove Clips for this purpose (even when not using loops). As long as the changes aren't drastic, they work but you can't do something like a ritard that drops the tempo by 15%.
 
Because different DAWs specialize in different applications, many professionals use more than one DAW. For example I use SONAR for recording/mixing and most mastering, Live and Traktor for live performance, and Studio One for album assembly and DDP/image export. Although I'm not specifically recommending this because I don't know enough about your workflow, if you find SONAR's tempo situation unuseable but don't like Cubase's workflow, a possible workaround would be to sketch out the arrangement in Cubase with any tempo changes, and mix down to a premixed audio track. Then, bring the premix into SONAR, conform the tempo map to the premix (as described above), and do the rest of the project in SONAR.
 
Maybe someone who's a Melodyne expert can chime in with whether the Editor or Studio models can conform a clip to a tempo map.