Hmmm really... Whatever it is it's whatever I see in release notes and comparing them month to month..

bapu

Doktor Avalanche
It will all work brilliantly once the backlog has been cleared I'm sure. I think CCC and other stuff has taken up too much time until now. I'm not complaining though it was necessary.

According to Noel the CCC development is NOT done by the SONAR development team. CCC is a release management tool, not to be confused with core SONAR functionality.

Doktor Avalanche
Hmmm really... Whatever it is it's whatever I see in release notes and comparing them month to month..

You will only see the world through your own agenda.  Facts will not interfere with this.  
 
You will bend reality around your own view of the world - Have you ever considered a career in politics or advertising?

Oh look it's JB following me around attempting to criticise and engage with me once again.. What a surprise. Clearly no agenda here.. Maybe you and I should get married JB?

Anyway funny how peoples quotes get chopped up into little pieces until eventually you are made to look like Hitler (Godwin's again?).

"I'm not complaining though it was necessary."

Yep in other words I agree with it.

Or full quote..

"It will all work brilliantly once the backlog has been cleared I'm sure. I think CCC and OTHER STUFF has taken up too much time until now. I'm not complaining though it was necessary."

The facts are in the PDF's people can make their own judgements they don't need to read my opinion.

Clearly though it's all part of my secret conspiracy and agenda sorry.

Just a FYI Bapu's quote (who was only trying to be informative I'm sure) saying it wasn't the Sonar development team is perhaps based on this?
 

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
All the C3 and web side stuff is Willy, Ryan and the QA team. I had nothing to do with it :)

I wasn't aware that these people and dept's are not involved in the Sonar team. Regardless speculation into what happens internally at Cakewalk is a topic I'd prefer to stay out of. So please don't get me involved in a speculation game I withdraw.
 
Again I said I agree with what has happened so far, I'd even go as far to say I like it. I don't think anybody can disagree CCC enhancements were necessary for instance.
 
If people want to interpret what I write as a dig or complaint, or assume A+B must equal C, then I suggest they go and roll up a fat one.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
 And to clarify we have an internal beta team of typically about a 100 users, in addition to official Cakewalk QA engineers who are always looking at anything new as well as regression testing older features.
 
Its well accepted in the software industry that this approach yields better quality software. The fact like a giant like Microsoft is doing this should be evidence that a lot of thought has been given to this methodology.

Dear Noel,
WRT my statement about beta testers, of course I was referring to post-release beta testing, not pre-release.  (I never did understand why the term gamma testing never caught on, but that may be before your time.)  Of course, I have the utmost respect for both Cakewalk and Microsoft although keep in mind that Sonar is a bit different from Windows.  But I do wonder if optimising the time between release of Sonar may eventually lead to the conclusion that every 2 or 3 months may be better than every month.  As I said in my post, I am hoping CW revisit this question after a year or so of experience, not demanding it be changed immediately.  My argument (logical, not emotional) is as follows;
 
The issue comes down to how long it takes after release to get the software reasonably reliable.  For example, if we look toward the shorter end of the release time spectrum (sort of a reductio ad absurdum, but not really), e.g. once a week, we can see that CW would not have enough time to hear back from post-release beta testing and to correct the issues.  Once a month may be acceptable, however, if significant bug fixes for new features are still being included in the next month's release (or worse yet, in the subsequent release) then this is strong evidence the system is not really being allowed to become reasonably stable.  If you can get the software tidied up within 10-15 days after release that gives the users time to upgrade over the remaining two weeks or so, then the monthly release cycle is fine.    
 
It is clear, however, that longer times between release would not be as desirable for CW's marketing approach so if you stick with once a month the pre-release beta testing is critical as you have alluded to in your response.
 
Anyway, good luck and thanks for considering our ideas.
R
 
 

As Cakewalk have stated they will only harvest what is finished for release when the release time comes around. At the moment there is enough continued development including fixes and new features that this cycle is monthly.
As development is a continuing process this model seems to be very practical. The last 6 months bear witness to that.
Everything is improving at a steady incremental pace. That not only includes the Sonar program and its features and fixes but the program delivery, presentation and release of information about planned features. This whole process is becoming streamlined and perfected through monthly application and testing of the hypothesis that a monthly release would be beneficial all round to Cakewalk and its customers.
Even a monthly eZine is becoming a thing to which we look forward. It's a whole lot better than an included read me file. It's actually a concise quality brochure on each release with a growing presence and is expanding in its scope even including brief product reviews. What next?
After all this time Cakewalk has come out of the stall created when Greg H left. Growing out of a one man show, expansion, partnership with a large corporation, the founder leaving Cakewalk and moving on, ownership by that corporation and finally finding a home more in tune with the ethos that Greg H had in the early days of Twelve Tone Systems. Cakewalk is no giant company and certainly is no one man show but it sure has a more family feel to the connection between company and consumer than its had for a long long time.
If Greg were to come back now for a visit I'm sure he'd be happier with what he sees today than what he left behind on his departure and Cakewalk's complete handover to Roland.

I don't think that Microsoft is copying Cakewalk, rather it's time for a paradigm shift in the way software is developed and released. There is enormous competition in all software markets but the DAW market segment is barely a blip on the radar of markets connected to ours, such as music and video entertainment and consumer and professional electronics, to name only a few.
I think Cakewalk is not far away from the best it can be in a small cramped market place. It will continues to benefit from audacious flashes of brilliance such as this new way to create and sell software while others in the same camp will fall back to the pack if they don't make the necessary changes. As Craig A mentioned a few weeks ago, there is hardly a DAW company not supported by a hardware arm so it's not hard to see the stability that being part of Gibson has brought to Cakewalk. It must be a much more enjoyable place to be creative when there is a big arm of support there to assure you. The last year and a half + has been a great time for Cakewalk and the evidence is in the products we get to use. First X3 and now Sonar 2015 (alias X4) along with all the whiz bang stuff they've had to do to make it all happen. The online store is the best it's ever been, so has the software delivery system, so has support, so has the forum.
Must be the lack of sleep. I don't usually do a Beepster or Dannt Danzi. Lol. Only hope my words have done those guys credit.

RD9
Thanks Noel,
One thing underlying my preference for the quarterly update that I didn't mention was that it would be my hope that the quarterly update cycle would give CW more time to debug the new code, which would allow the users to move from one clean, stable version to the next.  I do appreciate the new features and content but I think most users would put reliability at the top of their list (no, I haven't taken a survey so it is only conjecture).  
 
I do understand that CW relies to some extent on a keen band of committed users that act as "beta testers" so CW does need to get the updates out to them to find out how the work on a the myriad of hardware and software environments.  Lately a portion of the month (~10 days) has been required for this task.  On a quarterly cycle this would not seem so large.
 
I will leave the topic here and hope that it might be something for CW might look at later on, maybe after Sonar users have had a year's experience with the new license arrangement.  Thanks again for your consideration.
 
Cheers,
R

With a bit of tracking effort, you can choose the creamiest, most stable points to update to.  Manually download every release, but only install them after they've been publicly shaken out.  IIRC, there have been a couple of releases that were followed pretty quickly by a hotfix.  So just download everything and watch the forum for the best points to update.
 
I say download them all because it would be easier to just install the specific release you want rather than installing the latest and rolling back to where you want to be ... IMO, of course.
 
 

The only improvement I would like to see is have the follow up stabity releases (like we've had for the last few months) become a regular thing (whether there are serious regression issues that need to be fixed or not).