The more things change....
I remember this was an issue in 2006 when I first bought Sonar, now ten years later...lol - I wonder if Sonar Platinum is at a point where they are satisfied enough with it to work on notation.
From what I have seen on this forum all the people (myself included) that have left have convinced Cakewalk to finally work on their core product.

Now with upgrades for life, the question is more will SV get the overhaul while you are still alive (enough) to use it?

ChristoperS
I wonder if Sonar Platinum is at a point where they are satisfied enough with it to work on notation.

I don't think this point exists.  Maybe I'm being cynical, but my opinion is that if Sonar ever reaches a "fully baked" state on the audio/DAW side, they'll call it done and shift to creating new products or plugins.  If the SV hasn't had enough users to justify being fixed or overhauled up to this point, then it probably still won't when "done" is declared and Cake's best move financially would be to develop something else.
 
I know that the bakers are looking into ways to improve the staff view, but from what I understand they're mostly focused on 3rd party integration.  This tells me that the current staff view, with its 15+ year old code, would be more work to fix or even rewrite than the money it would bring in.  I do happen to be of the opinion that "if you build it, they will come" and Sonar could be unstoppable with a stronger staff view plus its amazing DAW features.  So far, though, it's a safer bet for the bakers to work on other things, evidently.
 
I hope I'm wrong and Sonar will eventually reach a more or less finished state on the DAW side and they'll dedicate a few months of dev time to overhaul SV. It kills me though because Sonar is SO GOOD in so many ways, and for me the SV is the only thing keeping it from being perfect.  Maybe I should experiment more, but I haven't used a single new feature they've implemented in the past year.  My workflow and feature set is pretty set at this point.

cparmerlee
 
 
Personally I find it easiest when working with Finale to evolve the score with "clean notation" as I am going on.  And I most certainly include all the expressions and articulations as I am composing.  The dynamics are just as important as the notes and I want to hear the most realistic playback as the composition takes shape.  So if Dorico allows me to easily do the MIDI level tweaks for playback, then I will probably do those as the score is evolving.  I want to use both my ears and eyes in the process.  I often revise my orchestration when the sound comes out different from what I expected.  It makes absolutely no sense to me to separate it if the technology doesn't require separation.
 
If others find it easier to work with the "walls of separation" such as you described, that's perfectly OK with me.  But I categorically reject the idea that there is anything inherent in the process of composition that requires it to be done that way.
 

There's no "wall of separation", it's more like a fluid process of moving from composition, sequencing and orchestration to production and mastering and then to final score preparation.   

cparmerlee

jsg
When I finish I piece I export it to Sibelius and create a finished score.  It's a very effective process, partly because I know the difference between MIDI editing and sequencing and score-creation.  

No.  It is an an extremely inefficient workflow.  it is only an effective process because is the best you can do with today's technology. 
 
Am I to believe that in the process of composing those 9 symphonies, there was never a time that you wanted to go back and adjust the MIDI after you started working in Sibelius?  Sousa claimed he never changed a note in Starts & Stripes after he first wrote it down, but there are a couple of notes I would have recommended he change.  :)  We do what the current technology makes it easy to do.

You know nothing about my workflow, so to call it inefficient is presumptuous.  How many large-scale works have you produced with Sonar?  How many finished albums have you released?  You keep arguing over nothing, you're writing a lot about "vaporware"; discussing a piece of software called Dorico that hasn't even been released yet.  That's a sign you've got too much time on your hands.   Secondly, I never said that I finish a score and everything is all done.  Nothing is completely finished until the CDs are replicated, up until that time anything can be changed at any time. You keep twisting my words into something I didn't say or mean. 
 
 

cparmerlee
 I am not saying that everybody should work the way I am describing.  What I am saying is that the state of the technology FORCES us to work in the way YOU describe.  That very well may change with Dorico.  I hope it does.  I will be a lot more productive if the technology allows me to work on these various planes simultaneously.
 

The technology does not "force" me to work the way I do.  I could just as easily compose in Sibelius, export the .mid file and sequence in Sonar.   Or, I could write out the score in pencil, scan it in Sibelius, turn it into a .mid file and then work in Sonar.  I finished a job last week for another composer who works the opposite from the way I do, he writes in Sibelius and then hires me to produce it in Sonar.  The only lack of flexibility I am sensing is the one that seems to be how your mind is perceiving things.
 
I use Sonar's notation for composing because it works well enough.  There's another factor you probably haven't considered:  my works are not "MIDI mockups".  They are conceived and produced as electronic works, not works that are intended to be played by ensembles or orchestras.  For me, sequencing all of the detail in regards to how the piece sounds is the most important thing.  I don't put phrasing and dynamic markings in my scores because there are no players. That information is contained in abundance in the MIDI sequence.  If I publish a piece for acoustic musicians then I do add the playing instructions. Yes, using one's eyes and ears for composition is important, that's why I notate my works.  But in the end, how music sounds is infinitely more important than how it looks on the page, that is if you're not depending upon musicians to interpret that score.  Aaron Copland once wrote about the fetishization of the score, he called it "paper music", music that looks really impressive on the page, but sounds like crap when realized. 
 
JG
www.jerrygerber.com
 
 

pbognar
 
If the idiosyncrasies / limitations of the SV (for me, handling of triplet ties and rests) is a deal breaker,
 

 
That bugs me too, but it doesn't stop me from writing tied or dotted triplets because I know:
1.  They will sound correct when played back in Sonar
2.  When I export a .mid file from Sonar to Sibelius, the rhythms will be correctly notated in the score.
 
I have no idea why they can't fix that long-standing issue, but I can tell you from direct experience that none of the DAWS are much better when it comes to notation.  Cubase's notation is more comprehensive but very clunky to use and I don't like the interface at all.  Digital Performer's notation is good, but I have noticed issues where either tied or dotted triplets (forgot which) don't look right either in some situations.  Also, DP's designed the notation editor to simulate an 8.5x11 piece of manuscript paper. This is fine for piano music and short pieces with few instruments, but Sonar's infinitely scrolling staff view is far better for orchestrating large pieces with lots of instruments and hundreds of measures as you don't have to keep going back and forth between pages, it's much easier to navigate. Sonar's staff view uses screen real estate much more efficiently than DP.   This is why I went back to Sonar after trying DP for several months. 
 
Working with this technology does take a kind of flexibility and a willingness to work with software that is not perfect.  But what's new with that?  No human being is perfect and mature artists know that perfection is not possible to achieve in their work.  I'm a practical musician and I focus on what I have now and can do now rather than always be hoping for software that will make music creation so easy that I won't have to get out of bed.  Eech!  Who wants that? 
 
Jerry
JG

jsg
The technology does not "force" me to work the way I do.  I could just as easily compose in Sibelius, export the .mid file and sequence in Sonar.   Or, I could write out the score in pencil, scan it in Sibelius, turn it into a .mid file and then work in Sonar.

The technology does not allow one to work iteratively without a lot of wasted effort.  It is clear that you prefer to compartmentalize the steps so you don't consider this a limitation.  That's fine.  I have no criticism of that approach at all.
 
But I would rather work iteratively, so I do consider it a limitation.

cp, could you tell us what you mean by "iteratively?" I tried looking it up, but I can't quite grasp how you're using it here.

michael diemer
cp, could you tell us what you mean by "iteratively?" I tried looking it up, but I can't quite grasp how you're using it here.

Sure.  Rather than approach a composing or arranging project as a bunch of disconnected phases, I EVOLVE the project on several fronts simultaneously -- as much as the technology will allow.  As I orchestrate a section, if I have some doubts that the voicing will really achieve the effect I'm looking for, then I may depart from the  notation and work on the playback a bit.  By doing that, I may find I want to notate or orchestrate part of it differently. 
 
As I get sections that seem mostly sounding final, I might spend a bit more effort getting all the articulations and expressions entered at the score level so that the parts will take minimal effort later.  This in turn may refine the playback -- but not for the entire piece at the same time.  I evolve sections at a time. All of the above may happen within Finale, except that I may begin a draft in Band-in-a-box, depending on the nature of a project.  To me, it is all about getting the right framework in place, and then adding meat on the bones as I go along.  I don't write linearly.
 
This is not that much different from "the old days" when we might show up at a rehearsal with a draft arrangement and leave the rehearsal with dozens of notes about things that need some additional work.  It is the same process of iteration except now I can catch 95% of the issues before any musician plays it.
 
There is only so far you can go in Finale or Sibelius before playback becomes a dead end.  When that happens, I have to freeze the project and move everything over to SONAR for the next level of playback realism..  And likewise, if one is composing in SONAR, there is only so far you can go before the notation becomes a dead end.  When that happens, you must freeze your MIDI-based composition and move all of that into a dedicated notation program to end up with a score worthy of publication.
 
I am hopeful that Dorico will eliminate those dead ends such that a MIDI-based composer can go all the way to publishable score while still being able to work on the MIDI.  And likewise, the notation-based writer can go all the way to the most advanced playback without ever having to freeze the notation.  This has been something of a Holy Grail, but it actually appears to be on the Horizon with Dorico.  And I believe that was mostly an accident.  The Dorico people were all about the notation, but Steinberg was paying the bills.  Steinberg insisted on the playback elements being a big subset of Cubase.  Clearly this would not have happened if Dorico were under some other ownership.
 
And even with all these advantages, in most cases, when I think I have the score just right, I find that when musicians finally play the music, there are almost always a few things that would hit the groove better if done differently.  So there we go, back into the middle of the work flow with more iteration.  If I have already taken a stem from Finale into SONAR, I will often make the final revisions twice (once in Finale and then the equivalent changes in SONAR) so that I have a representative final product.  Seems like such a duplication of effort.
 
I hope Dorico is successful as this will be an evolutionary stop as significant as combining MIDI sequencing with audio editing to launch the DAW generation.  Other companies like Presonus and Avid are in a very good position to do something quite similar.  I think in 5-8 years we may look back upon this and wonder why nobody did it before now.
 
If that happens, where does that leave SONAR (Reaper, Logic and a dozen other DAWs?)  Well, they will still have their place.  Not every project involves notation, and many projects that involve notation are adequate with the capabilities already in SONAR, DP or whatever.  I do expect, however, there there will be a small class of products that will be the obvious choices for people who need both strong notation and strong DAW capability.  It is pretty clear that Cakewalk is not planning to make this kind of investment, and that's OK.  There is a big market for what SONAR can do, especially if you add the Mac users to that market.