vintagevibe
cparmerlee
vintagevibe
If you think anyone wants or needs Sibelius level notation in a DAW you don't understand the issue. DAWs need usable notation. That has nothing to do with stand alone notation programs. They serve a different need.
I think you may be the one who does not understand. All of Cakewalk's major competitors have made an investment in high-end notation. There is a reason for that.
Many people may be perfectly happy using their DAWs for laying down tracks of their own creations. That's terrific. All DAWs are pretty good at that. But increasingly, professional musicians, composers, and educators are integrating the DAW with the performance, either as live use of the DAW or through publication of the music created in the DAW. Many universities have formal curricula on "Music Technology". Some universities even offer majors in that field, and it includes synthesis, recording, and notation.
There is a convergence ahead, not unlike when recording hardware merged with sequencing software to become what we now know as the DAW. It is a question whether Cakewalk will be a player or not. I would suggest the companies that excel in this convergence will attract the professional musicians and producers and the other products will find themselves more in the garage band tier. Nothing wrong with that, but it seems to me the Platinum is well above "garage band" level today and Cakewalk ought to be thinking about a strategy that will allow them to thrive as this next convergence takes place.
In simple terms, the convergence is composers who orchestrate in the notation world will seamlessly render their music using the most powerful DAW technology. And people who compose interactively within the DAW will have a seamless pathway to publish their work as a high-quality manuscript. That convergence opens the door to a whole new market of customers.
I did misunderstand you point. So to your point…any convergence is not right around the corner. Going back and forth between a DAW and Notation app is currently a horrible solution. No one has taken advantage of rewire in a way that facilitates workflow. If Yamaha comes out with their product with the Cubase audio engine, as reported by Daniel, we might have something that one could work in from start to finish. That is years away and will be a 1.0 product when released. Currently if you are working on a large orchestral score you can compose in Sibelius and use MIDI or MusicXLM to transfer into a DAW. If you need to tweak harmonies etc… (as is usually the case) you need usable notation inside the DAW. If you are working on a pop tune with horns or strings you shouldn’t have to leave the DAW. All of this requires usable notation inside the DAW. That’s why, if you need notation Cubase, Logic, Performer and Protools are far superior solutions to Sonar. My guess is that Cakewalk is really designed for and marketed to semi-pros and hobbyists and they (Cakewalk) have concluded that that market doesn't need notation which is why they not only won’t enhance notation but will not even fix the bugs.
Before composers had DAWs or computers, a composition would be written, often in sketchbooks or large writing pads, and in pencil with lots of erasers. When a piece was finished, it would then go to the publisher to be edited, engraved and proofed before sending the corrected manuscript to the printer (I'm not referring to film scoring, that's a different process). My point is that composition and the creation of a finalized score have generally been two separate processes, with of course some overlap for corrections, omissions, etc.
The idea of using a DAW's notation editor for composing and a notation program such as Sibelius for actual final score preparation makes perfect sense. When I am in the thralls of composition, the last thing I am thinking about is whether what I am writing conforms to professional graphic and notation standards. That comes later, as it always has. Exporting a SMF into Sibelius is easy, that's where the focus becomes how does the score LOOK, up till that point I am only concerned with ideas and sound, as well it should be.
You keep trumpeting Cubase's notation, but most people disagree with you, professionals generally know that Sibelius, Sonar, Cubase, Logic and Pro Tools notation cannot hold a candle to Sibelius. My own experience with Cubase left me indifferent. Yes, Cubase has more dynamic symbols and some other features that are unnecessary when actually composing and producing a recording (dynamics are programmed into the MIDI sequence so of course they are present). And Digital Performer also has issues with nested triplets and dotted triplets.
In other arts, such as photography, most professionals use one program to make nondestructive edits to RAW image files, and then the remainder of the editing, touch-up work and post-processing is done in a program such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro; once again, using two programs for different tasks.
I wish you'd get off your horse about how much better Cubase's notation is than Sonar's because it is not. Yes, it is a little better, but the difference is small compared to the difference between what Sibelius or Finale can do and what any DAW is capable of, notation-wise. I don't know if you hang-out in Cubase forums (it seems like you would considering how often you bring it up in notation discussions on the Sonar forum) but there are lots of complaints, bugs, and issues as well.
I am living proof that complex orchestral music can be written and produced in in Sonar using the staff view, and it is not any more complicated than doing it in DP or Cubase, I think even less so.
I want CW to fix the bugs as much as anyone, but when I used Cubase and Digital Performer I also found bugs, awkward implementation and other issues. If Cubase is the program for you, great, but why spend so much time bashing Sonar? Why not use Cubase and be happy?
JG
www.jerrygerber.com/symphony9.htm