Mystic38
What we currently have with Sonar is a developmental philosophy which on a monthly basis introduces new features and hence ALSO clearly introduces the opportunity for new bugs...  This is just a poor process from a Q&A perspective as at no time is there a known gold release to fall back to, and is significantly inferior a methodology than the prior annual (plus 1-4 maintenance updates).

 
To be fair, there was never a bugless gold release to fall back on. X3 had bugs, and still had bugs after X3e. Ditto SONARs 1 through 8.5.
 
You can either introduce a few new bugs every month, or a whole bunch of bugs every year. No one HAS to update every month. You can do quarterly or yearly updates...or some variation thereof, like immediately downloading the update with patch points if that's something you really want, and waiting for the rest.
 

Correct me if I am wrong, please, but don't "bug fixes" in software often create new bugs almost as often as "new features" create bugs?

jb101
Correct me if I am wrong, please, but don't "bug fixes" in software often create new bugs almost as often as "new features" create bugs?

 
This happens a lot in organization models where responsibility for checking bugs is passed on to a bug fixing / QA department.
 
But if it is true that the developers are enthusiastic users of Sonar, then the devs themselves should notice the bug long before we users do.
 
However, some things described in the reference manual do not work since the feature was introduced. This mean the dev didn't try it, the QA didn't try it and the help writers didn't try it.

...and if a dev is under pressure to come up with the goods monthly, depending on how compensation/personnel assessment is evaluated, this can further diminish the motivation to check your own work properly before passing it on.

Mystic38
 
monthly updates ?.. it. makes. no. sense.
 

... and yet, people seem to like it. Myself included. 
 
And the program, despite obviously hosting countless bugs due to its massive complexity, quite possibly exacerbated (as well as ameliorated, due to a fair number of bugs squashed per month) by the release schedule, remains quite stable and usable for most of us, even if we're early adopters. I've got an extremely complex project open just now with numerous soft-synths, tons of automation, several thousand edits on a slew of audio tracks, plugins galore, the whole gamut. And it runs quite nicely on my 9-year-old Q6600 machine running 64-bit Win10. So I guess the bugs aren't really showstoppers - at least not for anything that I'm doing. 
 
I think this was the point of the original article. If Cakewalk suddenly decided to abandon all new features and focus exclusively on attaining as close to bug-free status as possible on the current feature set, they would be ruined as a company, unable to compete with other products that continue moving forward. The goal of the company is to stay in business, so they have to continue serving existing customers, attract new ones, understand the market and how a variety of users interact with the software. Their decision to use a monthly release schedule is likely not capricious, it's almost certainly a calculated risk that a continuing flow of new features *AND* bug fixes / performance improvements will keep enough existing users happy, and bring in enough new ones on an ongoing basis, to outweigh those the model's flaws end up driving away. 

I don't think discussing about software bugs in general will change CW's developmental plans or fix the issues you want fixed. If anyone here suffers from a bug or bugs that were officially confirmed but have been left unfixed for some time, it's better to start a thread about them explaining why you want them fixed now. That's what a Baker recommended, IIRC.
 
 

Anderton
Don't mean to hijack the thread about bugs, but just wanted to emphasize that those 10 million options are indeed optional. Live dangerously! Ignore most of them 

 
Likewise, posting on forums is also optional. Many people seem to spend more time on posting than necessary. 

icontakt
If anyone here suffers from a bug or bugs that were officially confirmed but have been left unfixed for some time, it's better to start a thread about them explaining why you want them fixed now. That's what a Baker recommended, IIRC.

Is this correct?
 
I recall a Baker saying something was being planned, but for now, AFAIK, the correct place is still the Problem Reports and Feature Requests forums, where folks can also vote.
 
I would gladly start threads motivating the fixing of individual bugs but I'm not sure it will be a popular move.

subtlearts
If Cakewalk suddenly decided to abandon all new features and focus exclusively on attaining as close to bug-free status as possible on the current feature set, they would be ruined as a company, unable to compete with other products that continue moving forward. The goal of the company is to stay in business, so they have to continue serving existing customers, attract new ones, understand the market and how a variety of users interact with the software.

I see your point, but I find is a bit depressing that in this vision 'we' the users are to blame.
Bugs exist because we prefer new features and bugs.

subtlearts
If Cakewalk suddenly decided to abandon all new features and focus exclusively on attaining as close to bug-free status as possible on the current feature set, they would be ruined as a company,

As a user of competing DAWs I find Sonar is well ahead in terms of features and in little danger of being overtaken any time soon. If only there were a way of communicating this and raising Sonar's profile in the marketplace.
 
But regular users are also happy to pay for versions where annoying bugs are fixed. I know I certainly am. I want to go deeper into Sonar and the deeper I go, the more I am discouraged by bugs.

It's not only software.  Everything humans make is imperfect in some way or another.  Why?  Because we humans are imperfect in some way or another; how can imperfect beings created perfect products? 
 
Does anybody around here create perfect music?  I doubt it...
 
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com/virtualharmonicspreview.htm