Four Bugs in X2a that Cause Me to Continue Using Sonar 7.0.2

There are huge numbers of operational and ease of use enhancements in X1 then more in X2, however if Sonar 7 best fits your needs then so be it.

However, FYI a bug is something that should work, but does not...and something not working as Sonar 7 did is not a bug.

Mystic38


There are huge numbers of operational and ease of use enhancements in X1 then more in X2, however if Sonar 7 best fits your needs then so be it.

However, FYI a bug is something that should work, but does not...and something not working as Sonar 7 did is not a bug.

For the way I work, X2 and X1 has made most things more difficult, I wouldn't call that "ease of use".  By more difficult I mean a larger number of keystrokes and/or mouse clicks to do the exact same tasks.  It's not a question of me being too lazy to learn a new way of doing things.  I've learned the new ways and the old ways (Sonar 7) involve, factually speaking, fewer keystrokes.  And the color options?  
 
About 80% of the color options do not work at all, by your definition a bug is "something that should work but does not".  That to my mind certainly is true with having color options that do nothing.
 
JG
www.jerrygerber.com

Well, eventually Sonar 7 won't work with the current hardware and OS so you're just jeopardizing your future. That's your choice and good luck with it. Maybe you're smarter than everyone else, but I have my doubts. 

jsg

CakeAlexS


Yup these are enhancement requests not bugs. That doesn't mean to say it isn't important to you. I strongly suggest you paste your requests at the below link, cheers:
http://www.cakewalk.com/support/contact/featurerequest.aspx

Really, you think?  I bet these were not conscious decisions,  I bet these were artifacts resulting from the new skylight interface.   Having the staff view open up in a screenset with the proper staves but the track pane to the right of the screen not showing same staves-- there'd be absolutely no reason a programmer would make a conscious decision to do that. Anybody who uses the staff editor would say this is an oversight, not so much a bug like a crash is, but a bug in the sense that it's simply not logical.  I don't mean not logical to me, but not logical for anyone who works with the staff editor and screensets. 
 
Yes, of course I report everything I find to CW as well as in this forum. 

I would have to agree with JSG on this one.


The program is still Sonar.  Users are encouraged to "upgrade" to the next release.


Even if the the UI was changed and improved in X1, there is still an expectation that basic "views/editors" contained in the new UI will function the same or better than in previous releases - unless there is a new and easier way to accomplish the task at hand.


X2a updates the track pane in the SV and PRV.  IIRC these are attributes which were left behind starting in X1 and are making a return.  One would hope that other functionality of the SV will be addressed in future patches or releases.


Although with the departure of Brandon, Seth and others from Cakewalk, I'm a little concerned about the direction (if there is one) Sonar is taking.

jsg

pbognar

I would have to agree with JSG on this one.


The program is still Sonar.  Users are encouraged to "upgrade" to the next release.


Even if the the UI was changed and improved in X1, there is still an expectation that basic "views/editors" contained in the new UI will function the same or better than in previous releases - unless there is a new and easier way to accomplish the task at hand.


X2a updates the track pane in the SV and PRV.  IIRC these are attributes which were left behind starting in X1 and are making a return.  One would hope that other functionality of the SV will be addressed in future patches or releases.


Although with the departure of Brandon, Seth and others from Cakewalk, I'm a little concerned about the direction (if there is one) Sonar is taking.

 
I've got a feeling, which of course I could be wrong, but there's something going on with Cakewalk that doesn't seem right.  Sonar, up till X1, has always been one of the leading DAWS.  Sonar was the first to utilize 64-bit computing, and anyone who composes orchestral music knows how critically important it is to have access to far more memory than 32-bit OS's and software would allow.  My God, it's 2013 and Pro Tools STILL is not 64 bit!!!   The people who benefit the most from 64-bit systems are those that use large sample libraries and lots of soft synths, like myself. 
 
But since X1 things have gotten weird.  A stunning lack of attention to detail is how I described X1 when it first came out, some really good ideas implemented poorly. Even with X2a, there is so much that is just plain illogical--as I pointed out at the beginning of the post.  My guess is, in the rush to create a whole new interface but with the same functionality as before, many things got inadvertantly lost in translation, by translation I mean from the Sonar 1-8 interface to the new skylight interface. 
 
I am really rooting for Cakewalk.  It's a LOT easier for me if they would stay in business, listen to their user-base and fix things rather than adding more and more stuff.    Learning a new DAW will take me a very, very large chunk of time.  But I cannot use X2a, it's quirks, bugs and illogical aspects directly effect the way I work.  I realize loopers and audio engineers work differently, I am glad X2a is working for them.  When I work in Sonar I have 6 different windows open, one event list and 5 staff view windows filled with many staves.  It's the way I think, the way I hear and the way I compose.
 
When making anything, attention to detail is paramount.  In our insane world, where everyone is in rush, rush, rush mode, corners are cut and shortcuts taken that reduce attention to detail.  It's inevitable when people, companies and entire societies are in a big hurry.  Imagine if we all took our time in whatever we do (I am NOT referring to procrastination by the way)-- everything we do would be better. 
 
JG
www.jerrygerber.com

 

I sure can't argue with this post, Jerry. It's exactly the way I feel too. Let's face it, though Sonar may work for more people than it doesn't, if your particular work-flow is not making it easier for you to use X2, that says it all really. There's no reason for anyone to even doubt you, put up a fight or even try to teach you a new work-around.
 
Don't listen to Dave, someone pee's in his cheerios every day so he comes off like you are always the idiot no matter what. If 7 works, you stick with it. Even if you use that pc with that OS with that version of Sonar for the next 30 years....who wins here if it works, you get your music out and you aren't spending time messing with things? Right, you do. If I had Win 7 and Sonar 8.5 for the rest of my life until the pc died, I'm content with that. Innovation, evolution, new enhancements, all that stuff hasn't really shown me much to be honest because it takes a good 2 years or more before any of it works right to me.
 
When X1 came out, I hated it. It has forced me to work differently. This "differently" isn't really something I'm down with but I felt "I paid for this, I might as well use it." There ARE things in it that I like better, but there are far more things that I DON'T like that we're stuck with.
 
I've always said, one of the cool things with Windows was, they just about always gave you a choice with a new OS to where you could use "old style" if you prefered. I think we should have had those choices in X1 to begin with.
 
Also, and though this comment may seem petty to the majority of users who do not care for this feature, I think it was absolutely ludicrous to release a DAW with color functions visible that do not even work as well as the inability to change colors.
 
That's like buying something (no matter what it is) and seeing options for it that SHOULD work, they ARE there, yet they do not work. I'd be pretty upset if I was the owner of this company and saw that. Think about it for a second. You're the owner of the company or a "higher up". One day you evaluate your DAW and see options that are in it that don't work. It's wrong, period.
 
The whole "we'll fix it when we get to it" thing is just bad for business. I don't care what explanation there is, these colors should have been dealt with shortly after X1 was released and for sure by X2. If I wanted to really be a slave driver, they should have been fixed before X1 was released. How much patience do they expect people to have? Not only that, but there are still some old bugs floating around that just seem to get missed and really, that's not fair either. Especially to those who are religiously buying and updating every year.
 
I too am doing more steps to do the same things. I hate smart tool at times, I hate the whole grid system and how it never stays consistent, I can't double click on PRV at my time line and see what I'm supposed to see. It takes me somewhere else until I hit play, screen sets do not save my exact settings all the time...I can go on and on. There are issues with so many things I'm finding now.
 
Not show stoppers for me, but dumb things like K (mute) a clip after it's been v-vocaled and bounced and sometimes it still plays anyway. So you have to open take lanes and mute the lone clip. V-vocal bounce sometimes shows a muted clip, other times the muted original clip is behind the v-vocal bounce. These are all bugs that have been around since V vocal came out.
 
Part of this though, is my own fault. When a new release comes out, in a sense, we're all sort of beta testers if you look at it realistically. We shouldn't have to be of course, but that's just how it is for a new release. When X1 and X2 came out, due to running a business here, I'm always terrified to put them on my work boxes until I know they are pretty stable and won't mess with my well-oiled machine.
 
So, by the time I feel safe and start working with these on my real recording machines, by the time a major update comes out, we're 3-6 months or more after the initial release and I find stuff that I could have reported during the initial release that could have possibly been fixed. The problem there, some of this stuff is too buggy to take a chance with in a work environment.
 
Though it's not supposed to happen, one time I installed a new version of Sonar and it made stuff that was working perfectly in another version STOP working and it was a nightmare to remedy the problem. These are things we that are in business, can't take a chance on because time is money. I can't afford to be down for an hour let alone a few hours or even a day.
 
At the end of the day, when you've been here as long as some of us have, we have the right to voice our opinions. I've invested my time and money into this software since Cake 4. I say what I say because I want to see the company stay around and I don't want to change DAWs.
 
It would be all too easy for all of us to walk without saying a word on the forum and grab another piece of software. I don't think Cakewalk would want that. They welcome the feedback as long as it's not a rant for the sake of a rant, ya know? I think most of the things people post are credible. The bottom line is...something works in your realm and how you work, or it doesn't. If you think enough about that software to post about it, it shows you care. If you didn't, you'd not be here...you'd be getting work done on another DAW.
 
-Danny

One huge bug, FWIW:  In some plugins, if you double-click on a value (such as Mix% in Breverb) to enter it numerically and user the non-numeric pad number keys; instead of entering the value into the plug waiting-for-input field, Sonar switches screen sets and occasionally crashes during the process.   Very poor UI design, IMHO, to utilize the standard number keys and assign them 20 different functions.

Similar problems when editing MIDI via the event-editor.  This was THE primary annoyance that caused me to look for a greener pasture (not found BTW).

Best,

Danny Danzi

jsg

pbognar

I would have to agree with JSG on this one.


The program is still Sonar.  Users are encouraged to "upgrade" to the next release.


Even if the the UI was changed and improved in X1, there is still an expectation that basic "views/editors" contained in the new UI will function the same or better than in previous releases - unless there is a new and easier way to accomplish the task at hand.


X2a updates the track pane in the SV and PRV.  IIRC these are attributes which were left behind starting in X1 and are making a return.  One would hope that other functionality of the SV will be addressed in future patches or releases.


Although with the departure of Brandon, Seth and others from Cakewalk, I'm a little concerned about the direction (if there is one) Sonar is taking.

 
I've got a feeling, which of course I could be wrong, but there's something going on with Cakewalk that doesn't seem right.  Sonar, up till X1, has always been one of the leading DAWS.  Sonar was the first to utilize 64-bit computing, and anyone who composes orchestral music knows how critically important it is to have access to far more memory than 32-bit OS's and software would allow.  My God, it's 2013 and Pro Tools STILL is not 64 bit!!!   The people who benefit the most from 64-bit systems are those that use large sample libraries and lots of soft synths, like myself. 
 
But since X1 things have gotten weird.  A stunning lack of attention to detail is how I described X1 when it first came out, some really good ideas implemented poorly. Even with X2a, there is so much that is just plain illogical--as I pointed out at the beginning of the post.  My guess is, in the rush to create a whole new interface but with the same functionality as before, many things got inadvertantly lost in translation, by translation I mean from the Sonar 1-8 interface to the new skylight interface. 
 
I am really rooting for Cakewalk.  It's a LOT easier for me if they would stay in business, listen to their user-base and fix things rather than adding more and more stuff.    Learning a new DAW will take me a very, very large chunk of time.  But I cannot use X2a, it's quirks, bugs and illogical aspects directly effect the way I work.  I realize loopers and audio engineers work differently, I am glad X2a is working for them.  When I work in Sonar I have 6 different windows open, one event list and 5 staff view windows filled with many staves.  It's the way I think, the way I hear and the way I compose.
 
When making anything, attention to detail is paramount.  In our insane world, where everyone is in rush, rush, rush mode, corners are cut and shortcuts taken that reduce attention to detail.  It's inevitable when people, companies and entire societies are in a big hurry.  Imagine if we all took our time in whatever we do (I am NOT referring to procrastination by the way)-- everything we do would be better. 
 
JG
www.jerrygerber.com

 

I sure can't argue with this post, Jerry. It's exactly the way I feel too. Let's face it, though Sonar may work for more people than it doesn't, if your particular work-flow is not making it easier for you to use X2, that says it all really. There's no reason for anyone to even doubt you, put up a fight or even try to teach you a new work-around.
 
Don't listen to Dave, someone pee's in his cheerios every day so he comes off like you are always the idiot no matter what. If 7 works, you stick with it. Even if you use that pc with that OS with that version of Sonar for the next 30 years....who wins here if it works, you get your music out and you aren't spending time messing with things? Right, you do. If I had Win 7 and Sonar 8.5 for the rest of my life until the pc died, I'm content with that. Innovation, evolution, new enhancements, all that stuff hasn't really shown me much to be honest because it takes a good 2 years or more before any of it works right to me.
 
When X1 came out, I hated it. It has forced me to work differently. This "differently" isn't really something I'm down with but I felt "I paid for this, I might as well use it." There ARE things in it that I like better, but there are far more things that I DON'T like that we're stuck with.
 
I've always said, one of the cool things with Windows was, they just about always gave you a choice with a new OS to where you could use "old style" if you prefered. I think we should have had those choices in X1 to begin with.
 
Also, and though this comment may seem petty to the majority of users who do not care for this feature, I think it was absolutely ludicrous to release a DAW with color functions visible that do not even work as well as the inability to change colors.
 
That's like buying something (no matter what it is) and seeing options for it that SHOULD work, they ARE there, yet they do not work. I'd be pretty upset if I was the owner of this company and saw that. Think about it for a second. You're the owner of the company or a "higher up". One day you evaluate your DAW and see options that are in it that don't work. It's wrong, period.
 
The whole "we'll fix it when we get to it" thing is just bad for business. I don't care what explanation there is, these colors should have been dealt with shortly after X1 was released and for sure by X2. If I wanted to really be a slave driver, they should have been fixed before X1 was released. How much patience do they expect people to have? Not only that, but there are still some old bugs floating around that just seem to get missed and really, that's not fair either. Especially to those who are religiously buying and updating every year.
 
I too am doing more steps to do the same things. I hate smart tool at times, I hate the whole grid system and how it never stays consistent, I can't double click on PRV at my time line and see what I'm supposed to see. It takes me somewhere else until I hit play, screen sets do not save my exact settings all the time...I can go on and on. There are issues with so many things I'm finding now.
 
Not show stoppers for me, but dumb things like K (mute) a clip after it's been v-vocaled and bounced and sometimes it still plays anyway. So you have to open take lanes and mute the lone clip. V-vocal bounce sometimes shows a muted clip, other times the muted original clip is behind the v-vocal bounce. These are all bugs that have been around since V vocal came out.
 
Part of this though, is my own fault. When a new release comes out, in a sense, we're all sort of beta testers if you look at it realistically. We shouldn't have to be of course, but that's just how it is for a new release. When X1 and X2 came out, due to running a business here, I'm always terrified to put them on my work boxes until I know they are pretty stable and won't mess with my well-oiled machine.
 
So, by the time I feel safe and start working with these on my real recording machines, by the time a major update comes out, we're 3-6 months or more after the initial release and I find stuff that I could have reported during the initial release that could have possibly been fixed. The problem there, some of this stuff is too buggy to take a chance with in a work environment.
 
Though it's not supposed to happen, one time I installed a new version of Sonar and it made stuff that was working perfectly in another version STOP working and it was a nightmare to remedy the problem. These are things we that are in business, can't take a chance on because time is money. I can't afford to be down for an hour let alone a few hours or even a day.
 
At the end of the day, when you've been here as long as some of us have, we have the right to voice our opinions. I've invested my time and money into this software since Cake 4. I say what I say because I want to see the company stay around and I don't want to change DAWs.
 
It would be all too easy for all of us to walk without saying a word on the forum and grab another piece of software. I don't think Cakewalk would want that. They welcome the feedback as long as it's not a rant for the sake of a rant, ya know? I think most of the things people post are credible. The bottom line is...something works in your realm and how you work, or it doesn't. If you think enough about that software to post about it, it shows you care. If you didn't, you'd not be here...you'd be getting work done on another DAW.
 
-Danny

Danny - you have some of the most respectful, knowledgeable and articulate posts on the forum.  Well done.


@others - there's an old programmers joke that documented software bugs are called features.

Crazy....   X2 makes Sonar 7 look like a kindergarten toy.....  I don't get the complaints.  X2 to me is absolutely awesome.   The automations, editting, prochannel all work great and so easy!  Audiosnap works great and the collection of instruments are great!   I don't see how anyone would not upgrade to X2 assuming they have the resources.  I recently worked a mix on a protools 10 setup and Sonar is just so much more intuitive.  Busses are called busses and can be referenced by name and to me it  just makes sense!    In my opinion, if Sonar was around as long as protools, it could have become the standard.   I think it blows PT away and certainly makes Sonar 7 or even 8.5 seem like ancient history!  

stxx


Crazy....   X2 makes Sonar 7 look like a kindergarten toy.....  I don't get the complaints.  X2 to me is absolutely awesome.   The automations, editting, prochannel all work great and so easy!  Audiosnap works great and the collection of instruments are great!   I don't see how anyone would not upgrade to X2 assuming they have the resources.  I recently worked a mix on a protools 10 setup and Sonar is just so much more intuitive.  Busses are called busses and can be referenced by name and to me it  just makes sense!    In my opinion, if Sonar was around as long as protools, it could have become the standard.   I think it blows PT away and certainly makes Sonar 7 or even 8.5 seem like ancient history!  

Totaly agree.
i have beat the living day lights out of x2 and im very productive with it.
i put out 4 songs this week,one is the song forums and the other 3 on that same soundcloud page.
where i think the real concerns are,with the staff view.
the staff view i think needs some work.im going to be totaly honest here guys...
i dont use the staff view,but i have listen to the user base.
im taking your word for it that it needs improvements.
and it sounds like it needs some help.i can understand that.
the color customization.man i am one of those people that really want to see that done.
but x2 is not a show stopper because of colors,or needing to hold down the shift button for commands.

guitardood

John


Its not a bug its how X1/X2 work. To input numbers with the keyboard use the numpad.

It is a bug.  If it were designed it would behave the same no matter what plug.  But the behavior changes depending on which plugin you are working with.


If it is, as you say, "how it works", then it is rather an unfortunate design flaw that should be revisited in Cake's bake shop. (flaw in the DAW? Sounds like a song)

What if my computer does not have a numeric pad?  How then would I enter numbers?


How about when you have to enter multiple keystrokes to get into keypad mode such as on a laptop?   Am I supposed to constantly function in-and-out of keypad mode?  Talk about a drag on creativity.

If anything, the screen-set hotkeys should have been relegated to the numeric pad or F-Keys (with alt-shift-or-ctrl) and leave the standard keyboard numeric keys alone.   Just my opinion, but if this is the design direction it is no wonder why so many die-hard Sonar fans such as myself are feeling quite disenchanted with our old-friend as of late.


What if Cakewalk decided that the left mouse button should act as the right and vice-versa?  Or how about left-button =scroll-wheel-down, right button=scroll-wheel-up and the scroll-wheel-up=left-click and scroll-wheel-down=right-click?


Would you be just as content with the pat response of: "That's how it works!"?  I am not.


Best,

  I'm not sure I understand. The number keys are for screen sets only and shouldn't change with a VST or not. If in fact this is happening it could be due to an errant VST. It may be due to a fucus program of that VST. 

One thing is I'm not going to engage in a debate on the merits of screen sets and how to access them. It is how it works. If you want it to work differently submit a feature request.  

John
One thing is I'm not going to engage in a debate on the merits of screen sets and how to access them. It is how it works. If you want it to work differently submit a feature request.   

Then in all honesty and all due respect, you could have read my post, quietly said f-him to yourself and moved along but instead decided to be a smart aleck and post with your holier-than-thou attitude that it is not a bug when in fact it is a bug.  Try double-clicking on a track name and enter "Track 1",  what do you know....it works!  No VST there, and there goes your argument, which you started btw, that the numeric keys are only for screen-sets.  Different behavior than what is expected or in simpler terms: BUG!  (or undocumented feature if you're the coder who created that spaghetti).


You claim you do not want to enter a debate only after you have been called on your ridiculous "it's how it works" answer.

And still, no answer as to what someone without a keypad is supposed to do.

Clearly, thou doth protest too much.  Trust that I like Sonar too or I wouldn't be wasting my time here.

Best,

There is a typo in my last post the word program should read problem in the first paragraph. What that means is it may be a focus problem that that you are having. 

I tend to agree with Chuck here. But like him, I don't use staff view but I'm hoping for a nice upgrade for the people who do. 

I use X2 like a tapedeck and mixing console on steroids. I use midi for drums and keys, but the heart of my music is recorded in realtime. X2 is one of the best if not the best for what I do...

I opened up 8.5 last week to work through an older project. Made some changes to an audio track and clicked bounce to track. I had forgotten how long this used to take to render in the pre-X series. Painful...  There is no going back for me.

FWIW - I'm on the color band wagon with the OP.

It's been a long time since I posted, primarily because of how CW/SONAR has evolved since the early days. What started out as a more traditional midi composer's tool, which is what I and apparently the OP want,  has evolved into a very effective audio production tool, which is the more lucrative market.  This is why the traditional composer's tool set -- staff view, and somewhat less so the PRV -- has languished for several versions.

Take a look at the "Features" panel on the X2 product description page on the CW website: Perform, Record, Edit, Mix, Master, Deliver. Nothing about composing in the traditional sense.

As far as the OP's 4 points:
1 and 2 are design choices.
3 and 4 are better described as bugs in my opinion, but which I suspect are self-inflicted wounds relating to object architecture issues in the software and which persist.

jsg


1.  Loss of color options.
 
2.   In staff view, the right-click process menu now requires SHIFT and right-click, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of right-click mouse functionality.
 
3.  When setting up screensets involving multiple staves, the staves are remembered (as they are supposed to be) but the staff view's track pane does not remember the instrument list when switching back and forth between screensets.
 
4.  When setting up screensets, the tempo view and controllers view have a similar issue, the tempo view's tempo list pane is not remembered when switching screensets and the configuration of the controllers/piano view window is not remembered either. 
 
I can do all of the above in Sonar 7, except that Sonar 7 also does not remember the controller view configuration.  Will  Cakewalk ever fix this?  Maybe, maybe not.
 
The inability of the staff editor to properly display dotted and tied triplets and 64th notes will most likely never be fixed.  But these new bugs in X2 make it such that there is no logic or reason in calling a downgrade (for this particular composer) an upgrade...
 
JG
www.jerrygerber.com

You post the same stupid thread every 2 weeks.
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2769295
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2753187
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2749676
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=2746474&mpage=3#2749666
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=2714639&mpage=6#2717146
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=2630340&mpage=10#2644067