With Sonar now a part of the Gibson family do you think they will bring us some type of controller/mixer (or combo) that fully integrates w/ Sonar kinda like the Roland V Studio stuff, but a controller only?  Either working with another Midi keyboard company or in house.  I mean out-of-the-box compatibility.  Mixer(faders and knobs), Transport, Tap Tempo, Menu & Track Selection, ect,...... and for god sakes PRO CHANNEL...some motorized fader action would be nice.  I mean everything.  Touchscreen is cool and all but personally I would like to have a choice of either.  I just hate seeing all these new controllers coming out that's either partially compatible or specifically meant for a different DAW.  I currently have an Impulse 49 Keyboard that works ok, but Automap is very unstable and unpredictable. Took me forever to finally get it working correctly and it still only lets me control some features, but not all. 
 
I was looking @ the Nektar Panorama P4/P6 keyboard (love the 1 motorized fader idea) only to find out of course they don't support Sonar.  I'm sure you could painstakingly set up the general control surface but would love something already setup for us before I go out and spend $500 bucks.  And yes I've seen the Nektar LX series which does have support for Sonar but still not full compatibility and it looks kinda cheesy.  Sonar itself has been very stable for me for the most part and is a great program just wish I had something to make the workflow even better sitting on my desk.
 
Sorry if this sounded like a rant, but just wondering if you guys think they will ever bring us something like this....

I have a P6, and love it. I just moved from Studio One 2 Pro to SPlat, rather than upgrade to S1 v3.
 
Nektar provides what looks like reasonable integration with S1, but it really sucks. I find it hard to understand when their S1 support package is in v1.4. It's still a mess. All of the encoders (all 16 of them) are defined incorrectly being the most egregious problem. I thought.
 
Now that I'm starting to use it with SPlat, I did a full factory reset on the P6...and it's like an entirely new surface. Now that I'm playing on it, I'm noticing that the S1 SysEx must have also screwed up the velocity curve for the keyboard the same way the encoders were screwed up. I've now got full range (7-bit; woot!) velocity coming in to my VIs.
 
You're right, it'll take some time to map the P6 to SPlat the way I want it, but...when I'm done...it'll be the way I want it, not the way some inexperienced technodweeb wanted it.
 
So, I'm willing to spend the time to do it my way (sorry, Frank).

TheMaartian
I have a P6, and love it. I just moved from Studio One 2 Pro to SPlat, rather than upgrade to S1 v3.
 
Nektar provides what looks like reasonable integration with S1, but it really sucks. I find it hard to understand when their S1 support package is in v1.4. It's still a mess. All of the encoders (all 16 of them) are defined incorrectly being the most egregious problem. I thought.
 
Now that I'm starting to use it with SPlat, I did a full factory reset on the P6...and it's like an entirely new surface. Now that I'm playing on it, I'm noticing that the S1 SysEx must have also screwed up the velocity curve for the keyboard the same way the encoders were screwed up. I've now got full range (7-bit; woot!) velocity coming in to my VIs.
 
You're right, it'll take some time to map the P6 to SPlat the way I want it, but...when I'm done...it'll be the way I want it, not the way some inexperienced technodweeb wanted it.
 
So, I'm willing to spend the time to do it my way (sorry, Frank).

 
@TheMaartian
I thought I read somewhere that the motorized fader on the P4/P6 doesn't work w/ Sonar.... is this true?  If it's not then this keyboard might just be my next stop gap until they come w/ something specifically for Sonar.

Considering how poorly supported the VS-700 was, I hope not. Especially now that TASCAM is their main supplier for things like mixers. I sold my DM-4800 because of how terrible that company was at something as simple as coding a proper driver for their hardware and their support was arrogant and obnoxious. Rather not deal with that again.

The motorized fader requires a special protocol (not MIDI), although it can be used as a standard fader, just with reduced MIDI resolution. Studio One doesn't support it, either.
 
What I am most concerned about at the moment, being new to SONAR, is whether or not it supports soft pickup (doesn't start acting on MIDI controls until the controller reaches the same value as the current state of the device parameter being controlled). That's my next thing to learn, challenge to overcome.
 
Re Tascam drivers...
 
They, like many (most?) others, outsourced their driver development. With the new line of audio interfaces, they've brought their driver development back in-house. I can't speak for other product lines, but my v1.00 US-16x08 driver works very well (significantly better than my PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL driver, which, on v1.3, still completed sucked). My iLok works. Finally. After wasting a year on a bad driver (of course, it took most of the year to identify the culprit). There are minor little issues with the v1.00 Tascam driver, but no showstoppers.
 
So, I'm thinking Tascam are going in the right direction, as is SONAR. And, yep, there's my Gibson SG bass, on its stand to my right. When spec'd or acquired, I had no idea all three where from the same big family.
 
How copacetic!

I would suggest as many as willing contact Nektar and bug them about Sonar integration... The listen, it is supposedly on their list, they are adding DAWs slowly and the squeaky wheel....

TheMaartian
The motorized fader requires a special protocol (not MIDI), although it can be used as a standard fader, just with reduced MIDI resolution. Studio One doesn't support it, either.

Why you think so? MCU, Alphatrack, Faderport, A&H Qu, etc have motorized faders and use MIDI.

azslow3
 
Why you think so? MCU, Alphatrack, Faderport, A&H Qu, etc have motorized faders and use MIDI.

Not what I meant. Sorry for the confusion. There is MIDI. And then there are stacks like the Mackie HUI MIDI Mapping Protocol. It is my understanding that the control commands for motorized faders (like ON and OFF) use a specific protocol that is outside of MIDI. That doesn't mean  that the device can't pass MIDI data. That's the whole point of most of them.
 
More, rather than less, confusing? Hope not.

Fact. Since Gibson have acquired Tascam. Tascam have been able to bring driver development in house. Their recent efforts on new hardware has proven that they do excellent work. They've also picked up some of the slack for their older products. They seem to be benefiting just like Cakewalk have in the last 1.5 years.

VS700 support is down to Roland and while it was bundled with Sonar it was never a cakewalk product. All drivers and associated software was provided and developed by Roland.

I can't see any control surface development with Sonar as the focus. Cakewalk are focussing on touch screen support. I conclude from that that they are not looking to advance control surface technology. The fact that they have released their various SDKs for their development into the public domain speaks volumes. If you want to see the SDKs they are on Git Hub.

TheMaartian

azslow3
Why you think so? MCU, Alphatrack, Faderport, A&H Qu, etc have motorized faders and use MIDI.

Not what I meant. Sorry for the confusion. There is MIDI. And then there are stacks like the Mackie HUI MIDI Mapping Protocol. It is my understanding that the control commands for motorized faders (like ON and OFF) use a specific protocol that is outside of MIDI. That doesn't mean  that the device can't pass MIDI data. That's the whole point of most of them.
 
More, rather than less, confusing? Hope not.

From what I have found in the Internet, Mackie HUI use "normal" CC 14bit to set faders. MCU use PitchBend. StudioMix use NRPNs (http://www.azslow.com/index.php/topic,120.0.html). Old devices had MIDI connectors only, so that was unavoidable.
 
Modern devices connect with USB. So they have a choice:
1) "pack" the data into "class complaint" MIDI, so they can save on driver development, automatically support any OS (Windows, Apple and Linux) and work with virtually any music software. These advantages can turn out to be commercial disadvantage, the device can work "forever" and the list of supported software is not under control from the device producer side.
2) introduce "proprietary" protocol and write own (USB device) driver. It is quite some work, but the producer can dictate which version of OS is supported and which software is supported. So, they can "force obsolete" the device so customers have to pay for the "new hardware" (which can be essentially the same).
 
Unfortunately, the trend is to take the way (2). For many reasons, they still "send MIDI" in addition. But the possibilities in MIDI mode are normally artificially limited (touch sensitive endless encoders are "magically" no longer touch sensitive and no longer endless, display indicate just MIDI number instead of controlled parameter, etc). All that has nothing to do with music and technical difficulties, it is "commerce pure".