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 :)

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.

I hate it when I see "New & Improved" on products I've used forever.  That usually means I'll have to find a replacement.

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 

MarioD

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

If you were on BBSes in 1978, you had a jump start on a certain Mr. Anderton who at that time was "still" disseminating information by the medium of bound paper.
 
I just this moment found my old music magazines in the cellar, was idly paging through "Home Studio Recording" and found an ad for the book "Home Recording for Musicians" by said gentleman, published by Guitar Player Books. in 1978, no less...
 
Coincidence :)

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.
 
 
 

I'm not blaming Andrew or Craig here (because I'm pretty sure they are not the ones who decided to create and release the preview), but the thread has been like this, inevitably:
 
CW: Here's a preview of our new feature! What do you think?
User: Well, I'm afraid... (CW presses its hand over B's mouth and...)
CW: Don't jump to conclusions, you haven't tried it yet.
 
This doesn't make sense to me. :-(

icontakt
I'm not blaming Andrew or Craig here (because I'm pretty sure they are not the ones who decided to create and release the preview), but the thread has been like this, inevitably:
 
CW: Here's a preview of our new feature! What do you think?
User: Well, I'm afraid... (CW presses its hand over B's mouth and...)
CW: Don't jump to conclusions, you haven't tried it yet.
 
This doesn't make sense to me. :-(

I think the idea was to be more interactive with the community and reveal more in advance. I think that's the idea with feedback portal in also having a more constructive dialog. And we've tossed around the idea of a developer's blog to get more "behind the scenes" at 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. But you know we try something, and maybe it doesn't work. And we learn from it. 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. 

At the risk of creating chaos, I did notice recently that some forums have access areas restricted to actual owners of their product. With SSO accounts it would be easy to do similar and allow users to give feedback on a feature a month (or even slightly more) prior to its release, when reasonable changes could be made. It would require a bit more regimen to achieve effectively but would get actual users (i.e., active members) of the software involved prior to the release point.
 
Edit: Basically an "Up and coming SONAR release" sub-forum that was restricted for both reading and writing, unless a person was an active SONAR member. This could also potentially mitigate the necessity for hot fixes going forward, and is also a marketing point for members to stay active.

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.

jpetersen
 
If you were on BBSes in 1978, you had a jump start on a certain Mr. Anderton who at that time was "still" disseminating information by the medium of bound paper.

MarioD was definitely an early adopter! Aside from Community Memory, the first "real" BBS was started in February 1978 by a couple guys in Chicago using an S-100 bus computer. At the time, I too was using S-100 bus computers because I did marketing/advertising for Godbout Electronics, which later became CompuPro. This was after the Altair came out in IIRC 1974. I still have some 8" floppy disks sitting around for nostalgia's sake...
 
CompuPro is also how I came to know Roger Nichols...he used an S-100 computer for his Wendel drum machine. No one at CompuPro could figure out who this guy was who was buying all the 8K Static RAM boards :)  CompuPro also had a machine with an opto-isolated serial interface, just like MIDI, but wasn't developed as a musical protocol. Good times...