ORIGINAL: pjl

ORIGINAL: ChristopherM

It isn't as easy as we'd like to think.

Nothing ever is ... and your point is what? That we have paid for premium professional grade software, but that we have to accept that the vendor finds it too difficult to get it right?

No, just that it's a shortcoming of the software but one of many, as with all other software. And, seriously, let's get the notion of paying for "premium professional grade software" into perspective. You paid a few hundred dollars, in the world of software that's chicken feed. I've seen software that clients have paid multi-million dollars for that had so many bugs it was abandoned (and, no, the software vendors didn't lose money on the deal). That's not a justification for not getting what you want but the realities are:
- no-one can expect bug free software at any price (there is no such thing), but certainly not for a few hundred dollars,
- no matter how many bugs are fixed there will always be more so we will never be satisified,
- there are so many bugs to be fixed in something as complex as a DAW (or an OS) that the particular bug that bothers you may or may not be fixed in a hurry,
- CW, compared to many other vendors, do a lot of free big fixes but they also have to devote time/resources to new features to keep up with/ahead of the pack and that necessarily introduces new bugs,
- past history has shown that they do take note of feedback from these forums but knowing something is wrong is not the same as fixing it so it can conceivably be years between a bug being reported and being fixed because they have to prioritise,

No matter what you may think, we simpy haven't paid them nearly enough money to be able to address all if the issues (bugs, feature requests...) raised in this forum because the work/resources required to do that would be enormous. We can't isolate one pet bug and say, "it wouldn't be so hard to fix that" because there will always be other users with different priorities complaining that the resources aren't going into fixing the right bugs. Add to that the users who just can't understand that the concept of bug-free software is a nonsensical fantasy.

I've been complaing about the MIDI port bug for nearly 2 years and,one day, I think it will be fixed. But seriously, it's an inconvenince, not a show stopper. And to anyone who thinks that for what they've paid they shouldn't have to put up with such an inconvenience - I'm afraid you're viewpoint is an economic nonsense.

I'm afraid you're viewpoint is an economic nonsense.

ORIGINAL: Alex Westner [Cakewalk]

We'll try to address this the next chance we get.

We'll try to address this the next chance we get.

ORIGINAL: ChristopherM

I'm afraid you're viewpoint is an economic nonsense.

Thank you for your kind words. Now go and take a little lie-down in a darkened room and I am sure that you will feel better in a trice.

ORIGINAL: pjl

ORIGINAL: SteveJL

I don't go far enough back with CW, but can anyone remember when this wasn't an issue? and what version of Windows changed it?

Neither do I but I suspect it's a consequence of an original design decision, to store port numbers rather than names, and so has always been there.

ORIGINAL: ChristopherM

PJL - I just don't get why you feel obliged to be an apologist for CW - it's decades since CW was a struggling, idealistic developer of something on the frontiers of experience. Now it is part of a global corporation. The sympathy would be better directed towards, say, Cockos (which appears to be trying to establish a new paradigm, at least). My sense is that CW (like many corporations at about this age) is starting to lack responsiveness, maybe in part because it is saddled with an ageing code-base that is therefore especially difficult to maintain. With your experience of software development, you will presumably recognise that all-too-common scenario too. Ageing software and organisations all seem to reach the sclerotic state eventually - luckily, individuals never do

He didn't give a guarantee but that's probably just because he has neither absolute control of the development team nor the authority to commit CW to any such promises

ORIGINAL: pjl

Danny,

There is nothing unreasonable in saying that CW have got there priorities wrong. You have every right to say that this bug is the most important issue with SONAR and it should be fixed before anything else. Anyone who disagrees with that point of view is just expressing an opinion. My only point was that they can't do everything that everyone wants so there will always be a large group of us saying they have their priorities wrong. I don't present the resources argument as an excuse, just as an explanation.

As for your comments on documentation, you are right on the money there. I too come from the era of logging everything and, yes I do have a log book and track sheets to help me sort out what's going on with projects long past. These days I use the notes page in SONAR more often than paper records but it would certainly be nice to have something that was substantially more automated as you suggest.

As for the MIDI bug, I think Alex's comment earlier in this thread is an indication that this one is on their radar. He didn't give a guarantee but that's probably just because he has neither absolute control of the development team nor the authority to commit CW to any such promises. I'm hopeful this one will have a happy ending at least by the time V8 is released.

ORIGINAL: ChristopherM

I'm just trying to tell you that I know what I'm talking about

and I still don't get why you are so eager to be unappointed spokesperson for CW's CEO in this thread ... whatever your knowledge of the generic case, I would venture that you have no particular inside knowledge about CW's circumstances and priorities. Based only on my own now very long experience of using CW products, I am certain that CW has relentlessly moved from being a company which was responsive to its users (tech support would respond to a message, for instance) to a company which is happy to churn out more and more "features" but never even gets close to getting them into a high state of assurance or operability. The MIDI port irritation is just one of these - think of the "motorboating" issue; the idiosyncrasies of Step Sequencer; the raft of automation-related issues; the unnecessary complexity of ACT; the primitive features and documentation of Publisher - none of these has been resolved AFAIK. And they are not bells and whistles - these are fundamental inhibitors of workflow and hence productivity. So despite the many great things in Sonar, working with it is becoming increasingly frustrating.

And I don't mean to be rude, but I really don't need any patronising lectures about "the realities of the software business". Until a few years ago, I worked in that very business and I think that I have a reasonable grasp of said realities. The most telling reality is the question of competitiveness, and I am somewhat concerned that CW is losing ground here by following its present strategy of trying to be at the bleeding edge in features and functions from a code base that must now be fifteen years old in parts. Bizarrely enough, Project 5 appears to have a much different code base to Sonar, and is beginning to overlap Sonar in many areas. Unfortunately, P5 doesn't have enough capability to replace Sonar for my purposes, any way. So to your comments about scarce resources and prioritisation, I can only wonder why CW deliberately set out to duplicate so much of Sonar's functionality in P5, unless it was meant to be "Sonar NT" or whatever and eventually replace Sonar.

The recent "benchmarking" issue around multi-cores was probably more of a side show than anything for the majority of users, but it seemed to me to illustrate the problem. CW's CTO (no disrespect to him) made a zillion posts here defending CW's position, but meanwhile the wider DAW community is left with the perception that Sonar is an under-performer. It only takes a relatively small number of such criticisms to gain common acceptance and to be extrapolated more widely than is actually justified and the product and company can be in serious trouble- there are still people who spurn VIA chipsets because of a similar set of circumstances in VIA's history. Meanwhile, hungrier or more agile competitors steal market share.

We users have a lot of learning invested in Sonar (in some cases to work around bugs, of course!) and I really do not want to see this squandered, so I sincerely hope that CW will pull through what looks to me like a crisis in its strategic course.

Now what was the original question ? Oh, yes ... some boring techy stuff about MIDI ports, whatever they are.

If the manufacturer provides a driver - use it, even though the generic Windows driver works. At least it will get a unique device name that way.

Some sort of correlation between friendly names and port number would be a good feature.