Simple and easy, but all in all, Sonar needs more MIDI effects (MFX). They are long overdue!
The current MIDI FX suite includes:
Arpeggiator - Basically obsolete with the in-track Arp.
Chord Analyzer - This was possibly useful back in the day when analyzing your collection of MIDI files.
Echo Delay - Useful but dated; but hey, it's what you did back in the day!
MIDI Event Filter - Limited use. My guess is 1 out of 1000 people use this.
Quantize - Basically obsolete with the in-track Input [Rec] Quantize, or preserving "human" characteristics of your track and quantize in a non-destructive manner.
Transpose - Slightly useful, I suppose, if your controller doesn't have a transpose button, or for non-destructive transposing of a MIDI track.
Velocity - Moderately useful.
I would absolutely love to see a
chord generator/combo-transposer like what Ableton has. Their chord generator takes a little musical knowledge (i.e. knowing chords and/or looking them up and building them using transposition knobs), but it is superbly good! And while we're talking Ableton, I really enjoy its
Note Length effect. This is insanely sweet for forcing your keystrokes to be as short as the most staccato note imaginable, thereby forcing hardware synths to sonically change, based on their amp or filter envelope characteristics.
This shouldn't be too difficult, but I'm no programmer. I would imagine that MIDI FX (MFX) are some of the oldest recipes in the book and therefore easy to make. There is no DSP involved, just straight-up manipulation of digital data. But the code is DirectX, and maybe nobody in the Bakery knows how to do this anymore?
Forgive me if this is a repeat of something that's been said and/or asked for since sliced-bread, but I'll say it--and request it--
again! (And no referrals to third-party options). They're all terrible, seriously dated, too difficult to implement, or too expensive for something that could be implemented for free and push Sonar up notch in terms of assisting creativity.
Thanks in advance.