As I said, there's not much you can do about an internet situation. I was addressing your concern about not having physical media available 24/7. If someone who does have decent internet is reading this, they need to know it is possible to have physical media available 24/7 if they go the download route.
 
A lot of the issue about physical media isn't just about convenience for Cakewalk or users with internet connections. Retailers hate it when they have boxes sitting on the shelves with media that's six months old and already out of date because there have been updates. So there was a certain amount of pressure for Cakewalk to include download cards instead of physical media, not just so customers would get the latest software but so a box would take up less shelf space. And under the former sales model, there was waste if there were unsold boxes of older software when the new software came out. It meant shipping back the box and the DVD, which was pretty much worthless at that point. The cost of returns had to be factored into the initial pricing.
 
I don't know when physical media will be available, maybe Andrew knows a target date.

Anderton
As I said, there's not much you can do about an internet situation. I was addressing your concern about not having physical media available 24/7. 

 
I thought i made it clear that my preference for "physical media made available 24/7" is precluded by virtue of my previous explanation in relation to Cakewalk taking another route away from the more usual boxed version, which is why i blame Cakewalk for this problem if they intend not to oblige me or other potential Sonar users who might share the same feelings as i do. Notwithstanding that i fully acknowledge the rest of your explanation and see your point-of-view; however, those explanations don't seem to ring-true for music store retailers in Australia, i've never heard them mention such things, and i still see boxes of every other DAW widely available in the cabinets of every music store retailer, so evidently, here in Australia, it's not that much of an issue to the point of rejecting boxed versions, furthermore, the other DAW manufacturers aren't presumptuous enough to agree with Cakewalk on this issue.
 
 
It's a bit like the recent "Photoshop in the cloud only" issue; Adobe lost a hell of a lot of customers over that, but clearly they were already so mega-rich that they were prepared to take the hit in revenue.
 
I will also state that IMO it is still too early for 'download only' of nearly anything, and especially of 'big-sized' download products like Sonar. Please Cakewalk, can you give me an update on this? I really wish to know where i stand in relation to this query.

So Noel, all DSD gets converted to PCM at the project rate?  Hm.  I'm still thinking straight DSD recording and playback would be sweet, using it like a analog reel to reel w/ external analog hardware.  I know that would cut most of what SONAR does, but from what you're saying it is a matter of CPU.  In a few years maybe CPUs can handle it.
 
But just mixing and punch ins would be really cool.  A DSD mixer.  A couple of channels of good analog and you could serially mix through them.  Even the TASCAM hand DSD unit would work, esp. as you can sync them.  Or maybe TASCAM just needs to put out a multi-track unit. 
 

@ 

As Craig explained above, it is a cost situation.  You may think a DVD costs a dollar, so what is the big deal?  But there is packaging (I'd never thought about the stores demanding slimmer boxing so they can fit more on the shelf - wild) shipping and returns.  Plus all that printing/shipping costs needs to be financed.  Same reason we lost manuals. It isn't a dollar or two for each item, but much more.
 
I think at one point Cake was talking about the ability to order a hard version; hope they get that organized soon.  I'm sure you're not the only one, drone.

AT
As Craig explained above, it is a cost situation.  You may think a DVD costs a dollar, so what is the big deal?  But there is packaging (I'd never thought about the stores demanding slimmer boxing so they can fit more on the shelf - wild) shipping and returns.  Plus all that printing/shipping costs needs to be financed.  Same reason we lost manuals. It isn't a dollar or two for each item, but much more.
 
I think at one point Cake was talking about the ability to order a hard version; hope they get that organized soon.  I'm sure you're not the only one, drone.

Well i don't think Cakewalk can claim that the extra $10 (my guestimation) cost for producing a boxed version justifies their stance, since Studio One is even cheaper than Sonar and yet Presonus still sell boxed versions, same case with Bitwig and Fruity loops. So, let's look at the obvious and do some speculative calculations. Money is 'a' root of every type of evil, right? Any company might claim it is their business prerogative to take risks even to the detriment of their own customers, but why don't we just be honest and call this what it is? A revenue-raising tactic! For example, $10 saved on ten thousand sales equals one hundred thousand dollars, capiche? Have I got stupid written on my forehead?

Drone7 
Is this to the exclusion of normal floating-point mixing, meaning, would it have to be one or the other entirely, or could floating-point processing and DSD processing co-exist in Sonar for when a project requests entirely one or the other?
 
Please elaborate. Are you saying that DSD processing would require too much CPU and therefore is unfeasible, or that implementing the DSD format for processing inside Sonar would be very difficult and not easy to implement? Or when you say "processing" are you referring specifically to effect plugins? Your previous answer seemed a bit paradoxical because you said "updating the VST spec is relatively trivial" but then you said "the main work is actually doing processing in the DSD domain" < and if by that you are referring to effect plugins that can accommodate DSD processing, then what's the problem inasmuch as you said "updating the VST spec is relatively trivial"?
 
 

 
Mixing DSD data natively is completely different from doing floating point so if you had a bus with both DSD and float data, DSD would have to be be first converted to float. That's a computationally intensive process so it definitely wouldn't be suitable for realtime mixing. So DSD and floating point buses would have to be independent of each other and mutually exclusive within the project. If hardware supports both native DSD and float inputs simultaneously then you could mix both streams within the project conceptually. Of course this is all hypothetical since there are no apps that do exactly this today.
 
Regarding VST by trivial I mean the plumbing to send dsd to the VST pipeline is trivial. All the VST protocol does is provide a language to move audio data from the host to the plugin. Actually implementing DSD in plugins would be a large for task vendors since pretty much all existing plugin DSP is either integer or float. This would all have to be ported to work in the DSD domain.
 
BTW attached is the Japanese Platinum box where you can see DSD highlighted on the front. Its obviously very important to that audience!

Drone7

Psychobillybob
It's not simply codec you are dealing with here, it is also bandwidth married to a codec, for instance an optical spdif cable maxes out at 24/96 it's not the cable itself its the conversion in the digital domain at the front end of the interface, since no one is really making the equipment.

 
 
Are you telling me USB has got greater bandwidth than SPDIF? I'm not aware of such technical things, but i will say that my portable mini Amp/DAC can happily accept a DSD signal via a USB cable from the computer, all i need to enable this is a mere 'driver' from the manufacturer of my portable mini Amp/DAC which they do supply from their website to facilitate the signal flow from the computer to the DAC on my portable unit.

Its a codec limitation set by the legacy standards. Heck a twisted pair of wires can dump a ton of data it's not the physical medium that sets the limitation (in most cases) it's the way it is implemented. Yes USB 2 can handle a lot of data per second but latency/bandwidth create different issues...in a usb port you do not get to tell it what happens downstream, so your port might be handling midi data/audio data/handshakes and all kinds of packets from hubs, etc...
 
I've always been puzzled by the idea that toslink which is essentially sp/dif over light is limited tot he degree it is...it was a design undersight in the original codec.

Drone7 "Money is 'a' root of every type of evil, right?"
 
Clarification: it is actually the "love" of money. See I Timothy 6:10 of the good book.  Probably reflecting Stoic thoughts/views of the 4 emotions: desire, pleasure, grief, and fear - which must be mastered.
 
DSD: thanks for the very interesting conversation.  I don't mind admitting this is the first I've heard of it.  Thanks!

$10 seems about right to order a DVD, plus shipping.  And of course you are right, it is all about money.  Like anything, people will say they don't mind paying more, until they have to.  I'm perfectly happy not to have DVDs, and I imagine most people feel the same way if they have to reach into their wallet.  Something about right pocket charity. 
 
I esp. liked it when the computer companies started making you back up your OS on DVD.  That blew my mind the first time.
 
@

For years I've been exporting my mixes as 24 bit 44.1.
 
If I export a mix to DSD vs import a mixed track at 24 bit 44.1 and then export to DSD, would you expect a noticeable difference?
 
I don't currently have a DSD player and I'm wondering if I should export to DSD for archiving instead of Wave.