YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson
My take: As soon as THE CRAIG's bits were submitted and confirmed they should have been released. I cannot fathom how any of these items had any relationship to samples and loops provided by another contributor, nor the AD updates, nor the Sonar updates.
I see no need to have everything released at the same time. Anything can be included in the monthly ezine summary whenever that gets updated and released. But to not get THE CRAIGs stuff immediately just seems arbitrary.
It's not quite that simple, because there are also issues are at my end. As Leonardo Da Vinci said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned." When I work on content, it's good to have it "sit on the shelf" awhile so that I use it in the context of various projects. I often make little tweaks for weeks (or even months) after I
think it's finished, or I add on to the content.
For example, I made a loop library of Korg Z1 arpeggiator patterns, all with the REX format and in the key of C. But then I thought people might not want to have to convert into groove clips to have the loops follow pitches changes, so I generated additional versions for the keys of E and A. Now I'm thinking that maybe I should generate Acidized versions as well...but that would take a lot of time, and I'm not sure how many people want me to spend time on loops compared to other content. So, the library is sitting on the shelf while I sort this out. I could release the REX format files today, but that might not be the best option.
Also, I relate this to writing articles or doing mixes...I can always do one more edit, tweak one more element. But having a deadline is what gets me to say "it's ready."
Remember the KickMaster FX chain from the last release? It was part of a pair, with the other half being a dedicated Rapture-based kick drum instrument called KickStart. However at the last minute I decided to make some additions to KickStart with two additional kick samples, and create presets for those. But KickMaster was ready, so it was released even though it was supposed to be part of a pair.
The other thing is that some content has to be included in an installer. It's more efficient to write one installer a month that encompasses everything than write an installer every week or even more frequently, for taking content as soon as it's finished.
The monthly concept may seem arbitrary, but development is always happening. Bugs are always been worked on, so you can just pick a date and include all the bugs that happened since the last release. I think people might get impatient with having to download a new version of SONAR every time there's a bug fix.
Also, part of the monthly pace is to give people a reasonable amount of stuff to absorb each month. Others might disagree but I feel the amount included in each release is just about right - enough to add value, not so much as to be overwhelming.
So there are tradeoffs regardless of whether things are released when felt to be ready, rolled up in a monthly release, or sat on for a year and included in a big yearly update. The monthly cadence seems to be the best "sweet spot" between more frequent and less frequent updates.
However, I am very glad you like the content enough that you want to get it immediately!