rabeach
It is difficult at best not to be cynical when we have been waiting for almost two decades. SV worked better in pro audio 9 than it does now.
How so? There have been minor improvements such as adding and eventually darkening the color of the staff view track pane, but everything else is pretty much the same. The disappearance of note icons actually sped things up for me, using keybinding for note values turns out to be faster, although I still think they should return the icons because they're very useful too, and they offer visual cues. That's the only real change I know of.
I think there are two camps here wanting changes to the staff view, the 1st camp, which I am in, sees the notation aspect of a DAW solely as a MIDI input and editing tool, one that satisfies a composer's need to visualize music in an evolutionarily successful symbolic language that has evolved over a millennium and that today is still highly relevant to music composition whether it be scores for film, TV or games, or Broadway, opera, orchestral and chamber music, religious and secular rituals, music education. It doesn't have to be too sophisticated, just display notes (including dotted and tied triplets of course) correctly, have a functional and flexible snap function and allow for easy access to note properties. Maybe a display that could turn off and on patch/controller info on same screen would be nice, but not necessary. In this sense the function of the notation view and the PRV is quite similar: to manipulate and add/remove midi data, controllers, patch changes, etc. They display that data in very different ways.
The other camp sees the notation editor also as a way to print out scores and parts to give to musicians. Whether they read music or not, having a printed version of what you sequenced or recorded helps communicate ideas to others. This is essentially asking software designers to combine the complexity, depth and ergonomics of Sonar with a powerful and comprehensive notation program like Sibelius. I wish more musicians wanted something like that, but I think the ones that do don't constitute a large, global market. We've never had that in the history of DAWS, and if some brave souls want to do that they sure win my respect. But in reality, if you're writing for live players, do the score and parts in a notation program instead of a DAW, you'll be a lot happier.
I hope the second camp understands that a dedicated notation program is not, at least up to now, a DAW, it is not a production tool, it is not designed for producing master CDs and/or wave files, nor to handle VST instruments and signal processors or to create a finished recording. Only a finished, publish-quality score and parts.
No matter how useful the PRV may be to some, music notation allows for deeper contemplation and clarity of harmonies, harmonic progression, voice-leading and contrapuntal movement and orchestration. Is that just my opinion or is it objectively true? It is true for me, but verify for yourself, try to manage a simple four-part harmony exercise or a Bach choral in the PRV and then try it in the staff view.
I realize that today's hip-hop, dance, rock, and numerous other styles and genres of pop music do not depend upon or need a written score. That speaks to the power and flexibility of music itself--a piece does not need to be born in notated form to be a highly meaningful, expressive artistic experience. My own bias tells me though that when a great musical composition is born as a notated score, it can contain qualities, subtleties, complexities and variations that would be difficult to give expression to without the written language of music.
Sooner or later, perhaps we'll see a DAW with the score capacities of a great notation program. But in the meanwhile, I wish Cakewalk would re-do the snap function to make sense.
JG
http://www.jerrygerber.com/symphony8.htmhttp://www.jerrygerber.com