Here's my wishlist for future versions of BandLab's Cakewalk, as a long-time Cakewalk (SONAR) user. All of these consider the very latest version number at this time (2018.06, build 14). It's getting better all the time as for the stability and so forth, so I've been really happy.
So, here's my "Christmas wishlist" as an old Cakewalk geezer ...
If you want to make a real old-schooler-old-timer "next level happy", here's my "please-please-please-list":1. In larger multitrack projects,
the "General Error" problem upon saving the project still persists every now and then. Since times half-immemorial, the bypass for this error message has been to move the playback cursor to another point in the project, press play, press stop, and re-save. 99,9% of the times it solves the problem, but should you have a crash ... This would be a really great thing to be fixed.
2. I've requested this before, but it's not been made available:
the possibility to select both audio/midi tracks section AND mix buses at the same time to copy i.e. the automations and whatnot to another project/sub-project. I've requested this feature before (when Cakewalk was under Gibson Inc., and I think even bfore that) and one of the replies was that
"it's probably too close to the core of the source code, and therefor it's probably hard to accomplish." Now, it would be a great feature to have, since then you could copy and paste entire song sections and whatnot from a "master project file" to a separate file. As for now, the lack of this feature stops this.
3. One thing that has gone really awry since Cakewalk SONAR 8.5.3 Producer Edition, starting from X1, and the new workspace layout introduced back then, is the fact that
you cannot stretch channel/bus names to as wide as you basically want. This is not a feature request, this is a downright "BOOOOOOOOOOO!". Since you could still do it in 8.5.2 Producer, and later there's been this limitation on how wide the title-description of the track/bus/folder in question can be.
And that, simply put, SUCKS. You often have to write long descriptions onto a track name just to keep track on the project details.
4. I would REALLY like to have an option to
add track markers in DIFFERENT COLORS, even that would help out a lot. Also, if you could add the possibility to add a separate track marker that would be of a different color by default than just your basic marker; and preferably listed in the upper margin on a different height than your average marker. It'd help a lot in managing larger projects.
5. Speaking of markers -- you could
implement additional markers, i.e. "track markers" that'd be visible on the Big Time View (you could see i.e. the 'track marker' number or so), and that there would be a way to skip / jump back between these "main track markers" (or primary markers) -- I've worked as a beta tester for Sony Creative Software back in the day with their Vegas Pro Suite, and one of its best sides is the ability to use different kind of markers (different coloring, different heights in the margins) and whatnot. In a multi-song master project, this would be REALLY useful. You could still have your regular markers to mark out certain punch-in points and parts inside a composition, and the track markers would help you to navigate between songsin a master project that contains multiple songs in it.
6. THE POSSIBILITY TO FREEZE A FOLDER AT ONCE. Yes. This would be one of those "Dear Santa"-requests that would really ease the workflow. Of course, I might have a different workflow than other people do, as I do a lot of mixing via the audio buses (often for automation and balance control, sometimes with a slider surface), and I often have master projects that have multiple songs inside it. I also often group different instruments under the track folders. Sometimes, when the project gets large enough and far enough to be nearly complete, there's really a need for track freezing. Just the possibility of being able to freeze an entire track folder at once, would be a superb feature.
7. The possibility to FREEZE A BUS. Yep, hehe. Now, I don't know what's the thing with me and freezers, or freezing, perhaps it's the northern latitudes or something, but freezing a BUS, now that'd be interesting ... AND, resource-saving! That would of course be a bit of an engineering challenge to figure out as for the routing - i.e. considering fx I/O's, I sometimes have a bus that sends audio to multiple other side-buses, pre or post, but I'd say that'd be a nice way to save processing and hard drive resources.
8. Did I already mention my years-old request to read subchannel metadata from S/PDIF / digital input(s) [i.e. track change markers and so forth - very handy feature that's at least found from WaveLab ..] ? .. OK, I think all of these are quite enough.
You've already done a really good job so far with the bug squishing and making the software more stable than SONAR Platinum ever was, congratulations on that. But, there's still hill left to climb up! Keep up the good work!
Cheers!
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