Weird, as I've been thinking about this very thing a lot lately.
This bugs me a lot, too. Irrationally so, as it's really simple enough to just adjust for it in my head. Though every time I come up with a melody on the piano or write down something as sheet music and move over to SONAR to program it in, I forget to adjust for it
without fail. And it doesn't just mess me up composing from piano, but other instruments as well. Don't know how I didn't know about the "Base Octave" setting in the years that I've been using SONAR. Upon a quick test that it doesn't screw up my existing works, it's set. Thanks for that @scook !
bitflipper
Conventional musical and scientific (not MIDI) notation calls Middle C "C4", which aligns with Cakewalk's designation.
Not exactly true. Well, the first part is, as it's based on the keys of a piano, being the fourth C. Blah, blah, blah. You know that...
but anyway. By default, Cakewalk instead denotes C5 as middle C. Which is likely just a product of the MIDI spec having no standardized octave numbering just as you said. Since it's simple enough to just call MIDI note 0, C0.
/overthoughtramble