Anderton
 

So I will hold my thoughts on this feature until I actually have it in my hands.

 
I see you're new to this internet thing 

Actually no.  I had a computer in 1978 and I was on BBSes since then.  Yes I am old

icontakt

MarioD
I am being to think that the bakers should not announce what is coming in the next version.

 
I think the announcement of upcoming features in the Rolling Updates section is fine, because it doesn't provide much information (i.e. it's exciting, because we can use our imagination and expect a lot from the features). But I'm against the sneak preview and the thread announcing its release, because it's not beneficial to us at all. We'll be using the feature in a week or so anyway. We probably only wasted our time.

I guess it's lose-lose :)
 
If we don't people will say we don't tell people enough. And if we do it's a bad idea. Personally, I like do like the idea of giving people a sneak peak. But we'll take this into consideration.

It's amazing how people can have an opinion on something that isn't available yet...
Jeesh!

gustabo
It's amazing how people can have an opinion on something that isn't available yet...
Jeesh!

To be fair, if opinions weren't being sought there was no reason for the OP to begin with.
 
They could be playing games with us too.  Get everybody's expectations low, then zing us with whatever announcement Craig referred to.
 
What the heck, I'm gonna spoil it.  TTS has entered into an agreement to purchase Tesla Motor Co.  One step closer to the hover car!!

Funkybot
What is the problem this feature was designed to solve? Were people unaware of how to add a track? Was it to improve the speed/workflow of adding a track?
 
I'd love to see Sonar move in the direction of "FEWER menus, windows, and clicks" to truly speed up the workflow. For instance, 1) clicking the Add Track button should just automatically add an audio track routed to the master output. One click. Covers probably 90% of audio track use cases. 2) Clicking and dragging an instrument to the Project pane should automatically add a single instrument track routed to the master bus. Single click and drag operation, covers most use cases. No pop up windows, no extraneous options.
 
Now...for when I want to add multiple tracks or want to route tracks somewhere else, or create a folder, how about: 3) Ctrl+Add Track Button to open the pop-up menu. Do something similar for synths when I need a multi-timbral or multi-out setup. 
 
The goal in Sonar should be to reduce the menu-popup type behavior so more operations are done in a single click. It may involve figuring out how to do things on the back end (like setting up multiple outputs on an instrument from the plugin menu in Studio One) but there's definitely a way to be flexible and fast.

1000++++++!

Studio One 3 does what you suggest. It's a very efficient system.

Funkybot
I'd love to see Sonar move in the direction of "FEWER menus, windows, and clicks" to truly speed up the workflow. For instance, 1) clicking the Add Track button should just automatically add an audio track routed to the master output. One click. Covers probably 90% of audio track use cases.

Remember, settings persist...so that's pretty much what Add Track does. The only difference is after the click to add track, you can review the settings before you do a second click to create the track. At least for me, and I suspect other people who use interfaces with more than one input, automatically adding an audio track routed to the master bus does not cover 90% of all audio track insert needs at all. What's needed also depends on whether you're doing direct monitoring with zero latency, whether you want to choose a different source, or need input echo. If on the other hand you have an interface with only one input and that's the only one you use, then just let the Add Track settings persist and it will give you an audio track, going to the master bus, with the whatever input, echo, and record options you specified previously with two clicks total. The tradeoff for the extra click is not having to go into some extra ctrl+whatever menu to specify additional options.
 

 2) Clicking and dragging an instrument to the Project pane should automatically add a single instrument track routed to the master bus. Single click and drag operation, covers most use cases. No pop up windows, no extraneous options.
 
Now...for when I want to add multiple tracks or want to route tracks somewhere else, or create a folder, how about: 3) Ctrl+Add Track Button to open the pop-up menu. Do something similar for synths when I need a multi-timbral or multi-out setup.

 
In general that's more complicated than the way things are now because again, settings persist. If dragging from the browser, you don't have to do anything extra (like hit ctrl+add track to do more sophisticated options) because a window opens up with those options automatically. Because those settings persist, you can just click OK and be done with it. If you want to do a multi-out setup, you can do that as well before you click OK. You can also uncheck "ask me every time" if you don't want to see that window again. Total is one click+drag and one click to what you describe in the first part of 2).
 
As to the second part, Add Track already handles the folder aspect if that's what yow want. However, what the current scheme does not handle is creating additional MIDI tracks for a multi-timbral setup, nor does Add Track. But at that point it gets more complicated anyway...number of tracks, which channels they should go to, which input they should receive, etc. so that's going to require "click+extra stuff" regardless.

I feel like I'm on a merry go round.
 
Every time Cakewalk do something which they see as helpful, often in response to previous requests or complaints, half of the peanut gallery goes on about how bad it is and determines to lecture Cakewalk on how best to use their resources.
 
Sometimes I don't understand why Cakewalk chooses to even have a forum. I wonder if it is really of benefit to them. I'm not discounting the peer to peer support provided. It seems that many decisions get made contrary to what seems popular on the forum. Perhaps we're not the large voice we think we are.

I get very leery to hear the word "innovative" or its derivatives anymore. It is becoming as cliché as "new and improved" has been. I will leave it at that.

mettelus
I get very leery to hear the word "innovative" or its derivatives anymore. It is becoming as cliché as "new and improved" has been. I will leave it at that.

Sure, I'll try to come up with a new word that describes what innovation means :)

Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]

mettelus
I get very leery to hear the word "innovative" or its derivatives anymore. It is becoming as cliché as "new and improved" has been. I will leave it at that.

Sure, I'll try to come up with a new word that describes what innovation means :)

Vorsprung durch Technik 

ampfixer
This thread was a pretty good discussion over all

 
As Craig pointed out, the feature is already frozen. So, a good discussion doesn't help improve the feature during this preview period. Also, we would have been able to provide better (more accurate) opinions if the feature had been released first. Because of this preview thread, we will end up discussing about the feature twice (before release and after release), and that's why I said we probably only wasted our time.
 
 
 

Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]
I actually don't think that I've objected to any of the feedback that has shown up on this thread except the user that said SONAR had been neglected, which I didn't think was true at all.

 
Yes, I know. But I believe users perceive Craig as being on the CW side. At least I do. So, although what he said was absolutely correct, it gave me the impression that CW was saying, "What do you guys think? But please don't say anything negative."
 
 

Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]
I didn't think it was such a bad idea to give people a sneak preview of the features or the ezines ahead of time. I thought based on the past feedback it would be welcome. 

 
I think it depends on the feature and how helpful/completed it is. If you are very confident that the feature will be favored by the vast majority, then I guess it's worth creating and releasing the preview (although it will only excite viewers for a week or so). But if you think the feature is not fully implemented or missing something, you might want to reconsider it. As you can see, several posters in this thread are not happy with the feature, with a few questioning why it was prioritized and one posting a feature request in the F&I forum even before the feature is released(!). I actually wanted to post negative comments too, like "Why does the fly-out window has to be locked there?" "Why does it not allow us to create several MIDI tracks with different MIDI channels when we insert a multi-timbre synth like TTS-1 or Kontakt?" "Why can't we specifiy track colors?" etc. BUT, the opinions of these posters (including me) who are let down by the preview might actually change in the positive direction IF we try the feature ourselves. So, what does this one week mean for us? Updates come out on a monthly basis, which is good enough. I hope CW will let users concentrate on learning how to use the features and contents released in the previous month and making music without interrupting them with this preview thing and its associated thread.