Doktor Avalanche
In fact with recent new functionality over the last 4 months I haven't seen anybody ask for what is being delivered.

There were requests in this forum for a Drum Replacer, Plug-In Upsampling, MIDI engine improvements, and Windows 10 compatibility. These all happened in the last four months. The Virtual Keyboard was five months ago, but people asked for that too. Also, several of the enhancements to Mix Recall, Drum Replacer, and VocalSync were in response to requests.

Anderton

icontakt
 I've heard that the demo version doesn't even allow the user to save projects. At that point many will probably just forget Sonar and try some other daw.

That's quite common behavior for demo versions (e.g., Ableton Live and Studio One Pro won't save projects; Reason won't let you open projects or export to audio). The other usual limitations are full feature but time-limited, or something annoying (random white noise bursts or silence, having to restart every 30 minutes, or whatever).

 
I've been trying out Studio One 3 demo for the last couple of days and have been saving projects with no problem. I don't think it has any limitations, either.

Doktor Avalanche
There were better things to do in my view. Drum maps UI doesn't work very well, clean audio folder does not work at all, obvious improvements and bug fixes needed with takelanes and other areas of major functionality.

To develop Start Screen is easy and fun :) To develop Drum Maps and Take Lanes is terribly difficult and boring. This is the reason.

Adq
To develop Start Screen is easy and fun :) To develop Drum Maps and Take Lanes is terribly difficult and boring. This is the reason.

Cakewalk has been delivering some heavy features the past few months, whether we think they should have been priorities or not.  It isn't reasonable to expect big changes to the core functionality every month.
 
Chances are they have hired some new programmers in recent months, and a project like this is a good way for a newcomer to get acclimated.

Adq
To develop Start Screen is easy and fun :) To develop Drum Maps and Take Lanes is terribly difficult and boring. This is the reason.

Actually as a developer myself I don't see these enhancements being terribly difficult at all. Drum maps esp. Actually a new drum maps UI would be perfect for newbie developer.
 
I think you are probably right about it being boring. Developers have a tendency to do what excites them at the end of the day, developing a data entry form is hardly cutting edge development. It's really extraordinary if you think about it that these areas have not been sorted out as a matter of priority and I'll take that on board as a pretty good reason.

imo, a new start screen is a waste of development time and ressources.
 
The Feature & Ideas area is full on good user requests but it seems to me, that only little is taken account on it.
Never seen a request for a better designed start page.
 
The old start screen don't look nice as the new one, but hey, it's only for creating a new project or loading an existing. This new start screen is pure beauty imo.
 
Meanwhile, more than half of my first Platinum membership year has passed and I am a little disappointed.
 
_Markus

icontakt

Anderton

icontakt
 I've heard that the demo version doesn't even allow the user to save projects. At that point many will probably just forget Sonar and try some other daw.

That's quite common behavior for demo versions (e.g., Ableton Live and Studio One Pro won't save projects; Reason won't let you open projects or export to audio). The other usual limitations are full feature but time-limited, or something annoying (random white noise bursts or silence, having to restart every 30 minutes, or whatever).

 
I've been trying out Studio One 3 demo for the last couple of days and have been saving projects with no problem. I don't think it has any limitations, either.

Interesting, they must have changed their policy. I based what I said on this from Rekkerd.org: "The Studio One 30-day demo version is available for Windows and Mac upon request (email address required). The demo is fully functional with the exception of saving of documents or exporting audio." 
 
That was my experience when I tried the demo, but that was quite a while ago.

I agree that revising the Start screen is somewhat underwhelming, although there are new companion elements (like the new templates that come with it). Being able to pin projects and templates is helpful, as is having notifications so you know when, for example, an update is available. 
 
However, the background is that track-to-track recording, which some people have been quite vocal about wanting and is scheduled for the next update, is a very complex undertaking. It's understandable that August would be a "light" update to allow the developers the time needed to do track-to-track recording right.
 

Anderton
I agree that revising the Start screen is somewhat underwhelming, although there are new companion elements (like the new templates that come with it). Being able to pin projects and templates is helpful, as is having notifications so you know when, for example, an update is available. 
 
However, the background is that track-to-track recording, which some people have been quite vocal about wanting and is scheduled for the next update, is a very complex undertaking. It's understandable that August would be a "light" update to allow the developers the time needed to do track-to-track recording right.
 

Exactly.  If the whole of the year's updates is enumerated in a single list, it's really obvious that there is a lot of value in total.  That's my opinion anyway.  In the past I was never able to get even a single annual update to be all about me 
 

BobF
Exactly.  If the whole of the year's updates is enumerated in a single list, it's really obvious that there is a lot of value in total.  That's my opinion anyway.  In the past I was never able to get even a single annual update to be all about me 

 
It also seems people have forgotten that what they're getting this year is in addition (and at no extra cost) to the updates that occurred from X3e to SONAR 2015. When you include those features and what's happened since then as listed on the rolling updates page (which doesn't even include everything), it's pretty clear you're getting a lot for the price of the upgrade.