Unbelievable, Notation Editor now Worse than Ever

I am really beginning to wonder if someone at Cakewalk hates the staff view and wants to sabotage it.
It's now nearly impossible to drag a note, or place a note with the mouse, onto the right part of a beat. 
The snap function doesn't work at all.
 
Also, why would developers remove the track numbers from the staff view track pane?  That makes it really difficult, when working with many tracks, to correlate the event list and the staff view.
 
I am running Platinum, March 2017 release.
 
Finally, no way to reach Cakewalk by phone anymore?   My problem reports go unfixed, my emails go unanswered. 
 
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com
 
 
 
 

Well Jerry, if you say it's fubar, I believe you. You've never hesitated to spread good news about Sonar and are probably more notation savvy than the majority.
 
Wish I could help but I'm not sure how to make the Cakewalk folks listen. If you've filed reports describing the problems and they aren't listening then it's a problem for all of us. I have an issue right now that really needs me and a tech guy to be on the phone, but no number to call. To me it's their biggest failure and worse than a bug.

What I don't get is  . . . that if we haven't had any Staff View improvements for such a long time, why are there occasionally staff view bugs creeping in ? Could it be that Staff View is still at the heart of the code, and gets affected by other improvements . . . ie. the recent PRV updates ?
 
 I really hope Staff View is important enough to get some quick fix attention, or there may be a (minor) bit of a churn on the forum.
 
Personally, I have seen a number of staff view anomalies creep in, but I must admit I'm reluctant to report them since there appears to be no interest in addressing them . . . so I have been assimilated towards the PRV, where there has been more recent coding attention.

I've done more investigating and discovered a few things.  When inserting a note using the pencil tool, it's not that difficult to place it at the right part of the beat the first time as the snap is "stuck" at 60 (assuming a timebase of 480).  Although with smaller staff sizes, it gets more inaccurate. 
 
The problem of lassoing and dragging is a bit more complicated.  If you hold the CTRL key and the left mouse button and drag, there's usually not a problem landing on the staff space or line that you want, you have to keep your eye on the black box with the cursor location and try not to be a 32nd note off. 
 
But if you hold the CTRL key and hold down both mouse buttons, which is what you do when you want Sonar to take into account chromatic, rather than diatonic, movement, things get more messy.  Say you are dragging to the right a group of notes beginning on E-flat.  Drag it to the next measure, with both mouse buttons pressed (the left should be pressed slightly before the right button) and if you notice the cursor in the black box, you'll see only diatonic notes, but when you let go at the beat and note value you want, Sonar will make that note chromatic.  There is a logic to this because that's what the 2-button mouse press is for: chromatic notes.  But because the cursor box shows only diatonic notes, it gets very confusing. 
 
These issues are not as bad as my OP, I hadn't investigated it deeply enough at the time as I was in the middle of composing.  The immediate bug fix is that the cursor should reflect the movement between say, e and e-flat, or f and f#.  That would made dragging much easier.  The other issue is that the snap feature should have the option to match the snap to the note length, albeit with the ability to easily override this.  Then Sonar's staff view will be much better midi editing and sequencing tool.
 
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com
 

Hey Jerry,  I know you are a big staff/Sonar guy so trying to give you ideas is something not easily done...you've probably tried every which way and do the things you do for a reason.
 
BUT...so I have much better luck opening up PRV and staff view at the same time.  I edit in PRV and look at the results in Staff View.  And with the new PRV updates it just works phenomenally for me.  On One Monitor i have the Staff View, on another right below it I have Multidock Console/Piano Roll View.  It just works so well for me.  Staff View by itself is just too frustrating for me. Being able to see big chunks of the score at once and bounce between tracks in PRV....I'm in heaven.  What would be really cool is if we could swap the Piano Keys on the left with staff lines....man that would make me happy,
 
ANYWAY...good luck, I hope it gets sorted for you.

Jimbo 88
... I have much better luck opening up PRV and staff view at the same time.  I edit in PRV and look at the results in Staff View. 

Thank you for sharing this tip; I'll try it.

I'm glad so many people offer work arounds for Staff View.  I am also a musician/composer that relies on actual musical notation for writing... of course, I don't do this in Sonar until I am in post production because it is very difficult to see the music correctly and to edit actual notes in a phrase to make sense.  We all know you can right click the notes and modify them or use the pencil tool with various weird settings to put new events into the staff.  I'm not going to get suckered into a discussion here.
 
I would just ask Sonar, as I do know some info feeds up the pipeline from the forum... COULD YOU AT LEAST DUPLICATE THE TOOL SELECTION IN THE STAFF VIEW?  COULD YOU SHOW THE CURRENT NOTE VALUE OF THE PENCIL TOOL IN THIS WINDOW?  I know all the work arounds so I don't need a lesson.  It just seems that if this information is already available, this could help us save a little time in our workflow.

Very Cool...thank you Alex.

+1 everything jsg said about copy/past and cut/paste.

Don't worry, it's more than just hearing. Keep your fingers crossed.