My take on the OP is more to the focus of what has been released and the desire by many users to see existing workflows streamlined. For most it is all about getting from point A->point B as quickly and effortlessly as possible.
 
Features exist in most cases, but the typical user has to either know intricacies or invest time in finding them (with the ultimate downer being a couple hours investment only to find "Oh, you can't do that yet.").
 
Just for fun, I tried a "see how quick" test with "idea->project" for something a new user might do. Grabbed a mic, hummed 16 bars with enough transient/bass/chord content to work with - less than 2 minutes. Now I have audio in a 120 bpm project. Where to go from there?

1. Need to find bpm, no biggie, use shift-M to get rough bpm. But I do not want a tempo map set, I want the audio to conform to a straight bpm.
2. Open Tempo map, destroy all tempo changes. Set project to rough bpm (98bpm in this case).
3. Now need to stretch audio. Can do this a few ways, but chose AudioSnap. I can see my transients, but need to actually set view to "Transients," then check the menu for the keyboard shortcut to AudioSnap Palette (Alt-A), since that shortcut has changed.
4. Fiddle with AudioSnap a while, get something manageable. A simple quantize feature where I selected transients of my choice and snapped them to closest 1/8th settings would have taken less than a minute.
5. Insert kick/snare only. This could have been done with Step Sequencer, but I chose live MIDI input to an AD2 track. Quantize this, but need to go to Process->Quantize (Q). Right clicking a MIDI track doesn't have this, even under "Process Effect."

   Didn't really go much beyond this (the above was roughly 30 minutes) as I ended up grabbing a guitar and just tracking it straight up. But looked back at the past 30 minutes and thought, "What if I were a totally new user with a cool idea I wanted to capture and build on? How many would find the steps intuitive, and how many would get tripped up and lose their idea along the way?"
 
   Bottom line, point A->point B is all that matters to anyone who buys any DAW. It seems the mentality at times is because someone knows how (the hard way), that the "hard way" is how it must stay. It seems there is a disjunction at times with people being unable to put themselves in the shoes of a new user (i.e. "the future").

John
Posters are saying the releases are buggy. That is untrue.

That's only because you must not use software features that were impacted in the updates.
 
One example (there are more, but I don't want to waste time searching my problem reports):
 
I was looking forward to combining the virtual keyboard added in the Cambridge release with step recording.  Unfortunately, Cambridge contained a bug that disabled keyboard shortcuts in step recording.  Yes, a change in base functionality is considered a bug.  Without keyboard shortcuts for note duration, step recording was broken for my purposes.  I had to uninstall the update to recover the keyboard shortcut function, but that meant that the virtual keyboard was no longer available.  I logged a problem report and the keyboard shortcuts were fixed in Dorchester, but I lost a month of use of the virtual keyboard.
 
The bottom line is that all software contains bugs and the more frequently you touch it, the more chance you have of exposing the bugs.  I know because I was a software developer for over 20 years.  That's also why I never took it personally when someone pointed out bugs in my code.  I may have been embarrassed, but did not resent the problems being pointed out in the interest of producing a better product.
 
With that said, I think that Cakewalk's move to monthly releases was a good move and the expectation of bug-free software is a fantasy.  I also believe that denying that bugs exist  in Sonar 2015 and that no bugs have been introduced in the separate releases is disingenuous.
 
-- Ron
 
 
 

I agree 100 (millionty)%, mettelus.
 
It's a great program... if you can figure it out. It is, IMO, much harder to figure out than other programs. It's worth it in the long run but over the past three or four years I've done nothing but study it and I'm still getting tripped up over dumb crap that could (and should) be simpler.
 
I recorded and mixed an entire album in my old DAW without ever opening a manual. It kind of sucked but my band/friends/fans liked it. I never would have been able to do that with Sonar right out of the gate. I could barely figure out how to actually record something with Sonar the first day and spent a good couple hours just to learn that I needed to turn on the track Echo button (lulz).
 
I am currently in a situation where again the program is making me feel like I just started yesterday due to some automation crap that I am now realizing is kind of sort of possible if you do some freaky magical dance and find all of the EXACT sequences and bindings and click patterns... but even then it's not worth doing thus making it impractical.
 
I am the first one to say that anyone expecting to use any audio software (or video, or photography or... well any professional software) that you HAVE to be ready to put your head down and learn it.
 
It's true and I don't expect things to be easy. However I WOULD like things to not be unnecessarily difficult which unfortunately Sonar, in many cases, is.
 
Not a rag and the effort does seem to be worth it but definitely a few well thought out features that link up this MASSIVE program in a logical way, a bit of menu cleanup/bloat reduction/efficiency intiatives/etc could go a long way.
 
Like a government it comes across as a bit of a camel (a horse built by committee). We need a benevolent dictator to come in and link up all these awesome features in a logical manner by whatever means necessary without cutting anything (useful) out, reducing the feature set or shutting down old methods that people have become accustomed to/rely on.
 
A tall order for sure but doable over time and likely worth it. What we don't need is completely embedded complexities introduced or new features that go completely against the grain of existing Sonar logic/methodology. It seems brand new stuff doesn't even attempt to stay even a little close to how other stuff works so it's like learning a whole new mini program every time. Add that up over many features over many years and you've got hundreds of totally unrelated mini programs to learn just to work in the one main program.
 
I have (kind of sort of) had the luxury of time to plow through all this stuff. It's interesting to me and tweaks my problem solving centers as well as forces me to look at audio issues from many different angles (which is great for learning the craft). If however I was still working 60 hours a week at a job I hated, playing in three or four different gigging bands at a time, running side businesses, trying to keep girlfriends happy, keep an active social life, etc (which was all a reality 5+ years ago) I don't think I'd ever have the time to figure this program out, let alone use it... even for simple tasks like tracking my bands or even jamming/writing into the computer on my own.
 
That said... and I already said this... for what I am doing now it is worth the effort. I actually like it (almost BECAUSE it is complicated) and I don't think any of the other programs could provide what I need at this point in time (and especially not for this price). It does everything out of the box and then some. The only barrier is the user and the time needed to learn its nuances.
 
So what can ya do? Use a less capable program and/or spend five times as much money or put your head down, learn it and get used to it's little quirks.
 
Ideally though workflow is king and now that Cake has gotten their house in order and seem to be re-energized I am hoping for some more pragmatic changes and additions to the program. We've already seen a few by way of the PRV stuff, comping and I can only assume the new drum maps (which I have not tried yet) as well as other things I can't recall at the moment.
 
So yeah... I agree. Some effort needs to go into simplification and/or consolidation.
 
Ya? Ya.
 
Cheers, dude.
 
Edit: I can't be arsed today to go through and fix typos. Sorry.

SquireBum

John
Posters are saying the releases are buggy. That is untrue.

That's only because you must not use software features that were impacted in the updates.
 
One example (there are more, but I don't want to waste time searching my problem reports):
 
I was looking forward to combining the virtual keyboard added in the Cambridge release with step recording.  Unfortunately, Cambridge contained a bug that disabled keyboard shortcuts in step recording.  Yes, a change in base functionality is considered a bug.  Without keyboard shortcuts for note duration, step recording was broken for my purposes.  I had to uninstall the update to recover the keyboard shortcut function, but that meant that the virtual keyboard was no longer available.  I logged a problem report and the keyboard shortcuts were fixed in Dorchester, but I lost a month of use of the virtual keyboard.
 
The bottom line is that all software contains bugs and the more frequently you touch it, the more chance you have of exposing the bugs.  I know because I was a software developer for over 20 years.  That's also why I never took it personally when someone pointed out bugs in my code.  I may have been embarrassed, but did not resent the problems being pointed out in the interest of producing a better product.
 
With that said, I think that Cakewalk's move to monthly releases was a good move and the expectation of bug-free software is a fantasy.  I also believe that denying that bugs exist  in Sonar 2015 and that no bugs have been introduced in the separate releases is disingenuous.
 
-- Ron
 
 
 

Actually I do agree with all your points. What I objected to was the notion that CW is releasing buggy software. Buggy can mean a lot of things but it often means unusable or unstable. Its a matter of degree.
 
I believe that this forum has seen a noted reduction of bug reports. Major bugs are rare. I can't think of any since Platinum came out.
 
 
BTW was your issue fixed? 

jatoth
I think the monthly push for "new" is starting to wear a little thin.
Seriously? Who requested a new start screen? Also, the list of "fixes" was a bit lacking in this release.
Maybe too many bakers were off on vacation the last month or two to get any meaningful work done.
Lets hope the next couple of months are better.

Look at what's under development. No wonder August was "thin" given what's being done under the hood. There are also less bug fixes when more effort is being spent on development, which has always been the case (this is why bug fixes on previous versions stopped after a few months, and is one of the big advantages of the current model where bug fixes happen every month). 
 
Virtual patch points, track-to-track recording, real-time upsampling, and split clip export that allows SONAR to export split audio clips across a single track individually in one task are not trivial undertakings. To imply the Bakers were just sitting around doing no "meaningful work" for the past couple months is absurd. The functions that are under development take a lot of work. And if those functions aren't perfect out of the box in September, then people will complain the Bakers should have spent more time perfecting them...which will probably be the same people who complain the Bakers didn't spend enough time coming up with new things for August.

There aren't any REAL new bugs in Sonar. There are quirks and minor oddities but they get addressed quickly. The startscreen should not be holding up anybody's work and I'm sure the major concerns people have been posting about will be addressed. It's only been what... a week or so?
 
I think back to X2 when I was ready to launch my system through a wall and compare it to now...
 
yeah, there are no showstopping bugs and we have a much better mechanism in place to report them AND a much more responsive manufacturer sorting these things out.
 
It's time to just make the program more useable. All that other crap is in the past. If we get seriously intrusive bug creep I'll be the first to howl about it but Cake have not been lagging on keeping the X3 standard of stability consistent and moving forward.

There is still a bug backlog. Progress for sure but I was hoping the squishing would be a lot faster. I'll do a proper review at the end of the 12 month period if I have the time.

 Well Windows 10 is suppose to be a constant developing OS. There will be no service packs and updates are causing some problems.
 
 I think the days are done with DAW developers creating a patch or two and moving on to the next version.  There's more competition in the last decade.  While you try to gain new users you have to also keep the upgraders happy.  I think Live 8 only had 3 updates and now they have a new beta every week.  It would be pie in the sky if developers could release something and not have to maintain it but someone will come out with that must have plugin and not work in a user's DAW and then you have to work on compatibility.  There are some new players in the market in 10 years. You have Studio One, Bitwig, Tracktion resurrection, DP now for PC. 

kitekrazy1
 Well Windows 10 is suppose to be a constant developing OS. There will be no service packs and updates are causing some problems.
 
 I think the days are done with DAW developers creating a patch or two and moving on to the next version.

Nobody is denying it is the way forward (well if they are they are wrong).

MS are doing it different to Cakewalk though. Windows update has a slow ring, and a fast ring and an insider ring (for people who just love trouble).

With Sonar there is one ring to rule them all...

Doktor Avalanche

kitekrazy1
 Well Windows 10 is suppose to be a constant developing OS. There will be no service packs and updates are causing some problems.
 
 I think the days are done with DAW developers creating a patch or two and moving on to the next version.

Nobody is denying it is the way forward (well if they are they are wrong).

MS are doing it different to Cakewalk though. Windows update has a slow ring, and a fast ring and an insider ring (for people who just love trouble).

With Sonar there is one ring to rule them all...

For most users, there is no way off Microsoft's fast ring, and already many people have run into problems.  And actually, in Sonar, you can be slow ring if you want - just don't upgrade (unlike MS, who forces you).  On top of that, you can roll back in a few seconds with Sonar - much easier than recovering from a bad MS update.
 
So, your statement doesn't actually stack up at all.  You are far more in control of the ring than Frodo ever was.