Drone7
Anderton
Other than that I agree with much of the sentiment here - that SONAR is a host program. You can customize it pretty much any way you want with third-party accessories, like VSL if you want to do orchestral scoring to ReWiring Reason or using Geist as a plug-in.
Same goes for Reaper or any other DAW. How does this make Sonar special or give it an advantage when almost every DAW is based on the same basic concept?
The workflow, interface, and unique features that other DAWs don't have.
Are you forgetting that we buy DAWs in view of provided plugins that come with it, or for any plugins that might cater more closely to our specific preference of tools and sounds, and that DAWs are subject to 'value added' perceptions of potential customers.
You really can't generalize that much.
Some people buy software for the provided plug-ins, some already have Waves plugs and Komplete and couldn't care less what a DAW includes. They may find ProChannel to be really useful, but already have most of what they want. They use SONAR for the workflow, interface, and unique features.
1: An update of the Pentagon and PSYN synth-engines with an overhaul of the preset menus.
Pentagon is no longer included with SONAR. Just as you say you don't use loops, I don't use presets; I can see where others would find them useful points of departure if they don't know how to create their own sounds. But I think programmers are going to drift toward creating new sounds for something like z3ta 2 because it's more relevant.
I'm pretty sure PSYNE is DirectX so there's little point in doing new development for it. When you program sounds for z3ta, you cover Windows, Mac, and iOS. I think that's more appealing to sound designers.
2: A dedicated drum-machine with unprocessed 'RAW' 24bit drum samples, but with slice/edit features similar to 'Groove Agent 4" in Cubase.
3: Four individual dedicated drum-sound modules each designed specifically for one purpose, in this case one for making Kicks, one for making all manner of phat Claps, one for open hi-hats (ala TR 909 esque) and one for all manner of snares. But these would have to be of the caliber of the ones found in Native Instruments "Maschine"
5: A plugin dedicated to making fill-sweeps and risers.
I think you're missing a very important point. Groove Agent sells for $180. Presumably, that's because it takes time and effort to develop. Similarly, creating new plug-ins requires time and effort. You're not going to get these for free, so if the price of SONAR went up by $200 to pay for creating these new plug-ins for a very specific audience, then anyone who doesn't do EDM is going to say "Screw paying $700 for SONAR, I don't need effing Groove Agent, I'm getting something else." This is why plug-ins exist. You want something like Groove Agent? Get Groove Agent if you want it...or don't, and save $180.
Something like VocalSync also takes time and effort to develop, and that represents a significant part of the update cost. However, it applies to anyone doing vocals, narration, ADR, and audio for video. So it hits a pretty broad range of users. It also costs much less than commercial equivalents because Cakewalk could build on an existing foundation. That would not be the case with building Groove Agent from scratch.
6: A dedicated ARP on-par with the one in Logic Pro X, 'integrated' into each channel.
What do the Logic ARPs have SONAR's dedicated arps (that are integrated in each channel) don't have?
4: A sound-module/rompler consisting of purely 'hardware synth' samples, and many presets in the form of Synth hooks, synth stabs, hoovers, synth plucks, evolving Trance pads, huge detuned unison leads, and gated pulsating drone [7]s LOL
Again, consider how much it costs to develop a new instrument, create a new core library, hire sound designers and programmers to create presets...that's going to add a lot to the cost of SONAR. It's better for Cakewalk and uses alike to develop a separate instrument and make it available for sale to those who want it, but not charge people a lot of money for something they may not want.