As far

michael diemer
Thought I'd drop by for a quick timeout from Reaper. From the time of my last post in this thread, Reaper's notation has continued to improve. It is far, far beyond Sonar's. Remember, it is still less than a year old. Every new version of Reaper has more improvements.

 
Last time I looked, every month SONAR has more improvements.
 

Cakewalk, you have no excuses anymore. It is not too hard to improve your staff view. Reaper did it from scratch in a few months.

 
I never knew Cockos invented the Lua scripting language "from scratch in a few months." I also didn't realize you knew when work started on adding notation.
 
Back in 2012, Justin Frankel estimated Cockos had already put 28,000 hours of development into Reaper. Don't discount the hard work that programmers like Frankel and his team do. Unless you actually know how much effort they put into adding a staff view, and that it was in fact minimal, I think it's presumptuous to minimize their efforts as being "not too hard."
 

Do they have better developers than Cakewalk? Or do they just listen to ALL of their users, and respond effectively?

 
Rhetorical question (noun): a question asked in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer.
 
You said it is "not too hard to improve your staff view." Perhaps you meant to say it is "not too hard" to incorporate a scripting language that has been around for over a decade from scratch rather than try to integrate it into ancient code, or "not too hard" to try and excise that ancient code - which also interacts with MIDI all over the place - and replace it with something new without causing a tremendous disturbance to the core software. Or maybe it's "not too hard" to be bankrolled by selling WinAmp for $500 million. Note that Cockos even says that its stated goal is "to develop software sustainably while preventing profit rationale from forcing engineering compromises." Well, when you don't have to worry about making a profit to take care of messy details - like paying salaries, and paying for the servers, bandwidth, and maintenance that allow people to complain freely about the host's products while promoting another company's product - yes, that makes life easier. (Not having a profit motive about software is what also allows Apple to price Logic Pro X for $199, thus pulling the rug out from under Mac developers like MOTU that supported Apple through thick and thin. Hey, nothing personal...it's just business.)
 
This isn't to take anything away from Cockos - quite the contrary. Justin Frankel didn't need to buy politicians or hire sleazeball lobbyists to get where he was, he made his money honestly by being smart. More power to him...and additional props for investing some of his money in a company to make music software instead of bombs, as well as taking that software seriously and committing to its ongoing development. He could have just lived on a beach somewhere and drank margaritas all day. I applaud him for making a contribution to the music industry.
 
If it was "not too hard" to do a wonderful staff view, I'm sure Cakewalk would have done it if for no other reason than to put this hoary thread out of its misery once and for all, as well as not to hear me talk any more about how it might help SONAR in the educational market (although that's now highly debatable, given the current trend for schools to jettison both Mac and Windows in favor of Chromebooks). It wouldn't have been to gain market share, as anyone who's studied this market already knows.
 

I hope for the sake of staff view users that Cakewalk finally decides to do something about this. I just couldn't wait any longer. It's so refreshing to use a DAW where the devs care about all of their users.

 
Well, clearly the Cockos devs don't care about all their users if they don't have Mix Recall, which is a crucial, time-saving feature for those who work in a professional capacity and have to produce multiple mixes and remixes for clients. And clearly, they don't care about all their users if they don't care about the improved, tangible sound quality that comes from upsampling particular virtual instruments and processors. And don't you still have to bridge Melodyne? Frankel was asked about ARA integration in 2012 and his answer about whether he would do it was "yes, if possible." As of late last year I still hadn't seen ARA integration, so AFAIK it can't do the cool Melodyne things SONAR and Studio One can do, like tempo extraction (if you record live music this is a godsend).
 
Yet oddly enough, I don't see Studio One and SONAR people going to the Cockos forums and saying "It's been over four years since you talked about adding ARA. Do Cakewalk and PreSonus just have better developers? Or maybe it's just that they CARE about their users? It's not too hard to add ARA integration. Cakewalk even uses it for their Drum Replacer. Cockos, you have no excuses any more."  
 
If Cakewalk decides to prioritize staff view, well, that would be great for those who want staff view prioritized...and not great for those to whom staff view is not a priority. It's really that simple. Hopefully someday there will be the resources and time to take care of both. Meanwhile, people for whom staff view is a priority should choose a DAW whose developers and user base believe staff view should be a priority. People for whom EDM is a priority should choose a DAW whose developers and user base believe EDM should be a priority. People who need to do a wide variety of projects in multiple genres should choose a DAW whose developers and user base believe versatility should be a priority.
 
 

michael diemer
Cakewalk, you have no excuses anymore. It is not too hard to improve your staff view. Reaper did it from scratch in a few months.

 
Working from scratch, perhaps CW could create a new staff view in a few months. However it would not be backwards compatible with the existing staff view.

michael diemer
Thought I'd drop by for a quick timeout from Reaper. From the time of my last post in this thread, Reaper's notation has continued to improve. It is far, far beyond Sonar's. 

Uhhm...OK. Maybe I should drop by the reaper forum to talk about all of the cool things Sonar can do that reaper can't? No wait - that would make me look like a bumptious blow-hard:)
 

Kev999

michael diemer
Cakewalk, you have no excuses anymore. It is not too hard to improve your staff view. Reaper did it from scratch in a few months.

 
Working from scratch, perhaps CW could create a new staff view in a few months. However it would not be backwards compatible with the existing staff view.

Exactly the point I was going to make Kev
 
Working from scratch when there are no predetermined dependencies should be a piece of cake.
The problem grows exponentially when you have an existing feature which has hooks & claws into all other aspects of the program.

why not just run reaper as a rewire client in sonar? then you have a $50 solution for staff view  (and whatever else reaper does that sonar doesn't)

Carrying forward legacy code for decades can become a liability on several levels. My hunch was the OSX alpha was also an effort to review this code in detail, but turned out to be more than anticipated. It is also common to find architecture that is assembled on the fly more often than not these days. The "from scratch" can sometimes be most effective, but is oftentimes not the cheapest (by a long shot).

mettelus
Carrying forward legacy code for decades can become a liability on several levels. My hunch was the OSX alpha was also an effort to review this code in detail, but turned out to be more than anticipated. It is also common to find architecture that is assembled on the fly more often than not these days. The "from scratch" can sometimes be most effective, but is oftentimes not the cheapest (by a long shot).

agree, except with the last comment about not being cheapest, that's just a non-technical management decision... it's almost impossible to declare a rebuild in today's commercial software dev (thanks agile!)
 

As I was the OP of this 'vampiresh' file, I felt obligated to check out what is going on in here. I would like to go on record by saying we all should understand that it has already been stated by the bakers that it will be almost an impossibility to update the staff view feature. It is ancient code written by a developer that is long gone. The code is so deeply integrated in to Sonar that they would risk implosion of a by now pretty stable and viable DAW.
If it is that important to have notation on a professional level, just bite the bullet and invest in a pro level notation program. I have said all along how wonderful it would be for Staff View to be improved but at some point all evidence says otherwise. This will not stop me from believing in and continuing to use what has been my favorite DAW since Pro Audio 9. I hate to see my old thread get the wooden stake thru the heart but it has outgrown it's usefulness. It has become just a place to slam and backbite the bakers or someone elses product. Face it, if you need notation that badly, look elsewhere. No one ever said we couldn't use Sonar in combination with other products. That's not such a bad thing. IMO!

Wouldnt hurt to place the note duration icons back... as requested and stated before in numerous threads.

Folks, I'm doing you a favor here. Reaper is fast becoming the most versatile DAW on the planet. Now they are working on a Linux Native Edition. I don't know whether they can pull that off, as getting VST's to work in Linux is notoriously difficult, but I wouldn't bet against them. Cakewalk should at least be trying to keep up. I get it that Mr. Frankl is filthy rich and can do what he wants without worrying about profit. And yet, that philosophy has rocketed Reaper to being one of the leading DAWs out there (I recently saw somewhere that they were number two).
 
I still use Sonar (used it last night), so I have every right to compare Sonar and Reaper, and if that makes me a bumptious blowhard, so be it (by the way, nice alliteration). 
 
I won't even try to answer The Craig's points, he will annihilate me with his grasp of market forces, the history of music software, etc. His points are all well taken and completely valid. And yes, I was using rhetorical language, because I wanted to make a point. I used and loved Sonar since the late 90's. Tried other DAWS, but kept coming back. Finally, the streamlined efficiency of Reaper, and their willingness to always break new ground, sold me. They are getting close to the Holy Grail of music creation software, namely the seamless integration of notation and DAW. I still use Notion for dedicated score work, but I have a feeling that it won't be long before I can do it all in Reaper. I know that Cakewalk at this point is not going to match what Cockos has done with notation, but it would still be a good idea to upgrade their staff view, if only to prevent further defections. So guys, you can be defensive, call me names, whatever. But as I said, I'm really doing you a favor by giving my honest opinion, based on using both programs. Dismiss it if you want, but why not use it as learning experience?