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

So, to coin a phrase, his guarantee wasn't worth the paper it wasn't written on.

A old guy like myself would have to suspend common sense in order to accept such basic oversights as mere software bugs. Sorry, that ain't going to happen. I expect far better from such a fine company as Cakewalk. I will gladly continue to support them if they show some efforts in correcting these types of problems that many users in the community have continually brought to the table as major issues . But I will not continue under the existing UPGRADE scheme which forever allows serious defects to be considered as insignificant and ESPECIALLY when predictable post such as the software programmer here espouses which in effect tells us what a bunch of idiots we are for expecting the product to work. He seems to have all the same old excuses down pat

... and a mere slip of a girl like me thinks that you have summed up the situation so well that I cannot resist repeating it again.

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.

Thank you very much for the tone of your reply. I find it so refreshing this Sunday morning. Please do not assume or think for a moment that it was my intent to attack your post in any way. I will hope that Cakewalk really will look into problems such as these.

Regards,

Danny

ORIGINAL: ChristopherM

A old guy like myself would have to suspend common sense in order to accept such basic oversights as mere software bugs. Sorry, that ain't going to happen. I expect far better from such a fine company as Cakewalk. I will gladly continue to support them if they show some efforts in correcting these types of problems that many users in the community have continually brought to the table as major issues . But I will not continue under the existing UPGRADE scheme which forever allows serious defects to be considered as insignificant and ESPECIALLY when predictable post such as the software programmer here espouses which in effect tells us what a bunch of idiots we are for expecting the product to work. He seems to have all the same old excuses down pat

... and a mere slip of a girl like me thinks that you have summed up the situation so well that I cannot resist repeating it again.

Opps. I started to say guys and "gals". Don't know why I didn't. Probably because I mentioned that I was old and I must have felt at the time that it would be inappropriate to include the ladies in that sentence.

Danny

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.

Christopher,

The intended tone of words that aren't spoken face to face can often be misinterpreted. My comments were not intended to be patronising so I apologise that they appeared that way to you. I think the irony in all of this is that, reading your post quoted above, I think we are actually saying much the same thing. They can't do everything so they have to choose what's important. Your point, if I'm not mistaken, is that they have chosen to put their resources into the wrong (less important) things. While I'm not so sure I entirely agree with that I could certainly be wrong.

I don't consider myself an apologist for Cakewalk but I suspect our difference of opinion really just boils down to the fact that I still have more faith in them than you do. Time will tell whether or not my faith is misplaced.

Here's hoping there is a fix for this sooner than later. I thought I was losing my mind until I found this thread.

I'm using Sonar Producer 8, and have gone through numerous midi controllers over the years since the Pro Audio days and every version of Sonar since v1.0

It is exasperating to open a project from a year ago and have all of your midi ports pointing to the wrong synths because a piece of hardware dropped out of your setup or an additional one was added.

I've set up my templates repeatedly with Midi Omni in-- all devices all channels. This works for awhile, but sometimes a device has a problem and doesn't show up --BOOM, the inputs revert to something random. I had them set to Omni all devices on every single instrument track so I could utilize any keyboard or controller on any highlighted track. Today I added an additional midi USB device, and Sonar decided to switch every single track from OMNI to just the first device--I have to reset the midi in port manually to use any other device. This impacts every single project, new and old. My template is now screwed up as well. It gets worse, because often after this happens and I've reset ports, I'm finding that Midi input is coming in fine (according to the keyboard in the system tray), but the midi track refuses to acknowledge any data coming in from that or any port (OMNI or otherwise). I've easily had this happen a dozen times since Sonar 8. Reassigning the port back to omni or even to the specific midi in port has no effect. I have to reboot Sonar to get it back. Maddening!!!

The synth assignments are very easy to throw out of whack with the new "instrument track." Midi tracks get re-pointed randomly from one soft synth track to another. I have zero faith that I can simply open a recent project and render it without going over everything with a fine toothed comb. The comments about notebooks and binders and writing down settings are spot on--having to manually tweak and re-tweak these sorts of settings in a project is unacceptible.

Please keep this on the very front burner. Thank you. I really do love Sonar, but these kind of issues seem to go on and on, based on this thread.

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.

Unless it's the driver for the E-MU 2x2 which totally screws up Sonar's ability to 'remember' the port and won't enable it when you start Sonar, regardless of whether it was enabled on last shut down or not. The fix for the problem is to remove the E-MU driver and install the Windows generic instead.

I can't say I've had Sonar re-assign MIDI ports without some provocation, i.e. I forget to wait until Windows has booted before turning on my BCF, but when it does happen I agree it is a real pain. Synths being played by the drum track is interesting to say the least. Some sort of correlation between friendly names and port number would be a good feature.

Hi All-

I haven't (re-)read every post in this thread since April, but a definite +1 for better handling of MIDI ports.

One of my main gripes is that I often have my Frontier Tranzport assigned as the input and/or output for MIDI tracks when I open a project. It's a fine and very useful device, but not as either input or output for a MIDI track. I have to select all the MIDI tracks and change the I/O.

SONAR needs to add a way to distinguish b/w MIDI Controllers/Surfaces and what we actually use for MIDI I/O on tracks. And yes, I always have my "real" MIDI interface (MOTU Ultralite) turned on first!

-Susan (PE 8.02)

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

User "friendly" names were added in Sonar 6. I have renamed mine which makes it somewhat easier to keep track of ports, but the midi port reordering problem still exists.

Fwiw, I was certain that the expanded fix and feature list that was published for Sonar 8 on this forum mentioned in the fine print that this problem was finally addressed. Guess not huh ?

For anyone with a whole lot of ports, it is exasperating.


Susan,

My Tranzport also gets ressigned with all the rest of my ports and it sometimes becomes a track input device. When it does, pressing play on the tranzport results in a "BLIP" sound here.



Danny

ORIGINAL: pianodano

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

User "friendly" names were added in Sonar 6. I have renamed mine which makes it somewhat easier to keep track of ports, but the midi port reordering problem still exists.


Danny

I'm aware that the friendly names feature exists but it doesn't correlate to port numbers. i.e. I have one of my MIDI ports called "Drum Machine" which normally corresponds to MIDI port 2 on my system. When they do get mixed up the "Drum Machine" name still exists but may now be assigned to port 8 while my drum machine is still on port 2. It only happens occasionally but when it does it's a royal pain.

If I've moved my drum machine to a different physical MIDI port I can accept that but when I haven't touched anything it's annoying to say the least.