I've been getting to grips with Chord Tracks and Chord Pads in Cubase over the past couple of weeks. It has a definite impact on my writing, and makes things a lot quicker to punch out. The simple ability to highlight a chord and see what it is saves me a load of time. I know that Chord Track was an option in the first survey, but I assume that it didn't get many votes since I've haven't heard mention of it since. An updated drum pane and drum maps would also serve me well. On the engineering front, I'd like to see a dedicated spectrum meter, and separate correlation meter.
 
I'm not saying any of this as a slag towards Sonar. It's come a log way over the past year and I've been using Cakewalk products since Pro Audio 5.

I am a bit more concerned about the "new" (hope for "innovation," perhaps?) comments myself... That comment (repeatedly) seems to undermine enhancements and/or fixes for things already in place and/or are already partially functional. In fact, embellishing existing functionality would "seem" a simpler route, a.k.a. "why re-invent the wheel?"
 
Unfortunately, many users have already invested their time to detail such things (specifically the Feature Request forum, where many languish), but the response to the above is essentially "tell me again, I was actually ignoring you the first time."
 
Something to bear in mind (i.e., seriously consider) is that a shrewd competitor not only monitors every little detail of a competitor's product, but also their forums/feedback loop; so threads like this are actually feeding those with more ambition. Once a company has finished playing catch-up (by doing the same things better/faster), then a firmer focus on "more" can be had so long as that monitoring is not forsaken. Right now, it seems Cakewalk has the majority of its focus in "new" (hence the comment long ago of "Cakewalk does things that no other DAW does"), and actually forsook itself in the process.

Resonant Serpent
The simple ability to highlight a chord and see what it is saves me a load of time.

 
Does SONAR's Chord Analyzer MFX help in that respect? If not, maybe it could be beefed up a bit. I can think of some new MIDI plug-ins that could be really helpful to songwriters.
 

On the engineering front, I'd like to see a dedicated spectrum meter, and separate correlation meter.

 
Voxengo's SPAN is an excellent and free spectrum meter. Also, there are several free Goniometers, I use the Gonio3 from UK Music. There's an excellent resource for free audio analysis tools. As long as these kinds of plug-ins exist, perform well, and are free, it probably doesn't make sense for Cakewalk to come up with their own.

It was my experience before that the Chord Analyzer MFX didn't work very well, but then maybe it improved and I haven't tried it since. The way I use it in the piano roll in Cubase is dead simple. I had put in a request in the features and ideas forum a while back about different meters. I wanted to see them incorporated into the Pro Channel. I know that I can put them on the master bus and mute/solo as need be, but it would work better for me if I could just keep them open in the mixer using the Pro Channel when I needed them. 

My biggest MIDI request would be for an intelligent humanize function to be built into the piano roll. I program a lot of drums, and it can be cumbersome to humanize. I know the CAL, MFX, and Frank's MIDI plugs all help, but it could be less convoluted. It would be amazing if I could humanize just the beats I wanted, such as 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 or whatever I wanted. There would also be different humanize settings for drums, orchestral work, and legato functions. It's actually easier for me to drag MIDI files out of Sonar, humanize them in another program, and then import them again. Would be cool if I could skip this step.

Resonant Serpent
I've been getting to grips with Chord Tracks and Chord Pads in Cubase over the past couple of weeks. It has a definite impact on my writing, and makes things a lot quicker to punch out. The simple ability to highlight a chord and see what it is saves me a load of time. I know that Chord Track was an option in the first survey, but I assume that it didn't get many votes since I've haven't heard mention of it since.
 
I put a feature request a long time ago for this:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Chord-Track-for-Sonar-Platinum-m3160700.aspx
This is one of the best songwriting tools in any DAW. 
 

Yep. I voted for that one.

Resonant Serpent
My biggest MIDI request would be for an intelligent humanize function to be built into the piano roll. I program a lot of drums, and it can be cumbersome to humanize. I know the CAL, MFX, and Frank's MIDI plugs all help, but it could be less convoluted. It would be amazing if I could humanize just the beats I wanted, such as 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 or whatever I wanted. There would also be different humanize settings for drums, orchestral work, and legato functions. It's actually easier for me to drag MIDI files out of Sonar, humanize them in another program, and then import them again. Would be cool if I could skip this step.

Have you tried SONAR's Find/Change dialog? It's described in Week 79 for Friday's Tip of the Week. It doesn't do timing, but I use it for velocity to change emphasis, for example, to bring velocity down slightly on a kick's 2 and 4, up a fair amount on 1, and  a little bit on 3. Then the MFX can do timing variations.
 
However my preferred approach to humanizing is to bite the bullet and play the part, then use quantize strength to tighten the part but not perfectly. I think that often, a player's instinct of when to "push" or "lag" is correct but unless you're a drummer, you don't have the motor skills to do it subtly. Quantizing to 85 or 90% strength may very well give the results you want, and be better than randomizing. (I always felt the "humanize" menu item in most DAWs would be more accurate if labeled "number of drinks consumed by drummer" )

I'll check out the tips. Thank you. The humanization I'm going for is very subtle. I can do it in all hosts, one way or another, but I'm aiming for ease of use at this point. It's easy to get the drunken drummer, but just randomizing a few ms at the beginning and end of notes makes a big difference when you're stacking several string parts together. I've been doing some slower parts where I record me tapping on the desk, convert it to midi, and align that to SSD4, but a lot of the parts I need can be north of 220 bpm, and that's something I can't play on drums. Guitar and bass, yes, but not even close to skilled enough to play that on drums.

Anderton

kson
 
Craig,
 
I think I had quite a list  offered up to the Cakewalk folks some time ago.  I answered every poll received and made my suggestions through the proper channels.  From this I believe I've seen perhaps one implementation from a while back.
 
Specifically, I didn't want to turn this in to a feature request  thread, as there are a few of those already.  Many folks feel the same way as I've read through the requests;  are they just ignoring the main theme of songwriting?  I've got to believe they've seen the direction of Cubase/Studio One and thought some of the features were worthy.

I'm not asking on behalf of Cakewalk, nor have I seen any list that was presented to them. I want to know for my own purposes because with more specificity, I could possibly a) come with alternative ways to accomplish the same goal, and/or b) review products for eZine that do what people want. But as long as all I have to go is that Cubase and Studio One have "worthy features," I'm flying blind. As I said, the only specifics I know about are a chord track and improved staff view and IIRC, Studio One doesn't even have a staff view.
 
For example, a company named 1manband makes an MFX Harmony Generator which they describe as follows: "MFX Harmony is a MIDI effect/plugin that can be used in any Cakewalk (Sonar, Music Creator) version that supports MIDI effects. It adds auto-harmony and extra voices to a single tone melody. The harmony follows chords that are placed in text events in the track."
 
That may answer the request for more songwriting tools, but I don't know if I don't know the exact nature of the request. Similarly, I've created a Chord Library for my own use that I use all the time for songwriting, including mapping chords to a MIDI keyboard so I can experiment with playing different chord progressions. Whenever I demo this at my "Recording on the Fast Track" seminars, the audience response is always very favorable. I could certainly describe how I did this in an eZine article, but I'm not going to if it's not of interest to anyone.
 
 

I appreciate your willingness to help Craig, but a list like that is too exhaustive to write at this time.  I've already made my feature requests known and will continue to hope for the best.  It just doesn't seem that there is an "all-in-one" for me at this time, although I will say that chord tracks, chord pads, arranger tracks are extremely nice to have.
Sonar is by far the best looking DAW with a fine feature set, IMHO.  It is also one of the easiest to use with a reasonable learning curve if you are coming from ground zero.
Cubase is by far the most "clicky" of the bunch.  Let's just say that key commands and macros quickly become your best friends.  There's no denying the depth of the program, however.
Studio One V3 is awesome as well, albeit for different reasons.  The mastering suite and its relation to your mixes is outstanding.  They finally got it working with RealGuitar in their joystick mode.  The arranger section is great and their attempt at "chorder" is worthy to build upon.
That said, I'd still rather use Sonar as my daily driver; I just wish they'd bring their focus back to the songwriter.