Brando
To add/clarify re: touch - using the little "+" symbol in the FX bin's header to add an effect to the effects bin via touch is not practical (almost not possible) and almost constitutes a "nonsensical" aspect of touch implementation.
For this feature only (adding an effect to an effects bin) - splitting the header in half - with the left half devoted to the "Bypass Rack" button, and the right half devoted to "+" (show rack menu) might work - but even there the header itself is so thin to make inadvertent contact with the topmost effect in the bin inevitable. (There is an option to widen all strips, but no equivalent to scale up all elements.
I am curious - Noel - as a SONAR Platinum user - do you use Touch?

 
Its dead simple to add an effect. Open the plugin browser and drag an effect from there to the console or track to add the plugin.

FZ1
Hi Noel,
Thanks for chiming in. Prehaps you could clarify the direction of Sonars touch features.
I recall when X2 came out. James Oliver demonstrated the touch features on a Sonicstate video.
He said something along the lines of "To do any editing in Sonar you will always need to use a mouse and keyboard"
Is that how you see the development of Sonar touch?
 
That would be the nub of why I feel the development of touch as being a bit odd. Wouldn't the logical goal of a touch interface be the full use of the program, rather than relying on a external item of hardware to edit anything?
 
However there is something you said that I dont fully understand, but might be at the root of my frustration.
"To handle multitouch we cannot rely on the base windows fallback since that doesn't support multitouch"
 
Does this mean that implementation of multitouch is mutually exclusive with windows touch right click emulation?
So you can add multitouch features like the on screen keyboard, but at the expense of having a right click touch menu in the arrangement window?
 
That means that the things that I had assumed to have been crippled deliberately, are actually just the result of implementing multitouch. And I'm just woefully underestimating how long it will take to make Sonar a complete multitouch program. Many many years.
Sonar Unobtainium edition?
Is this the case?
 
Back on topic. If Sonars step sequencer allowed automation of vst parameters rather than being limited to midi spec messages only, or the matrix allowed for direct editing of cell contents, it really would be an improvement on P5. These are still superior in P5, especially if you are using a touchscreen.
 
Cheers J

 
By windows fallback I mean the default windows implementation of touch which you get without implementing anything. That only applies to common controls and mouse messages which get translated. You don't get multitouch support like dragging multiple faders in the console etc.
Click and hold to get context menus isnt implemented presently but I imagine it could be done. I think that might interfere with swipe gestures so it would take some design.
 
Editing is planned at some point but we dont have a time line. There still aren't enough users requesting touch enhancements since many don't have touchscreens.

Ah, I love revenant threads.  What was great about P5 was the simplicity of the thing and how tuned it was for doing loop-based music.  It is harder to do the same things in SONAR, tho not impossible.  But I realize the impossibility of integrating the code into modern SONAR.  It ain't going to happen.
 
But what about the Scratchpad idea - I realize it is OS but it is exactly that kinda function SONAR needs and would open up the live (pun intended) functionality.  A separate synth or function where you can drag and drop and open clips and acid file s and waves on an expandable (both timeline and vertical) matrix where those clips etc. are represented by pads (or blobs, whatever).  You can use the matrix this way but it is a lot harder than I would like, and the matrix boxes aren't really expandable in size w/o resizing the whole matrix (backwards in my opinion - the boxes should themselves should be expandable and the rest of the matrix swells to meet that size).
 
I need to post the template I have for it, where the matrix runs along the bottom of the timeline and is useable and (available) yet you can still see the timeline itself to kinda keep track where you are in the linear song.  Most of my attempts have played lead guitar running through it and singing rather than being simply loops and repeats.  So any tempo and key changes in the timeline work on the loops I make from the matrix, but it is a pain to go back and change the key of the original files and then integrate that new clip back into the matrix (so much so I haven't done it, which is why being able to edit the audio [and midi!] within the box would not just be cool but essential).  which means I now have to perform live shows w/o any keys changes.
 
I think something like that, well implemented of course, would change the way users think about using sonar.  I know more than a few guitarists etc. that would love to singer/songwrite their stuff live but don't have the chops to be a one man band at one time and have to much integrity to like to play to backing tracks.  Give them something to touch and feel on the computer and sing and play once the rhythm is established.  Something as simple as P5, but more touchy like Scratchpad they could step through w/ a pedal or their nose or whatever.
 
Love to see what you could come up w/ that idea, Noel et al.
 
@

Project5 had much cooler T-shirts.
And packaging.  Remember packaging?

Mr Rock, I just put my well-used P5 T-shirt into the do not wear drawer.  It seems to have shrunk in the last ... 10 years.  I'll save it and bequeath it to the Cake Museum.  Much cooler than any SONAR shirts or any other DAW.  I dont' remember much about packaging, but I still have the manual and it is very ... thin yet complete.
 
@

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

Brando
To add/clarify re: touch - using the little "+" symbol in the FX bin's header to add an effect to the effects bin via touch is not practical (almost not possible) and almost constitutes a "nonsensical" aspect of touch implementation.
For this feature only (adding an effect to an effects bin) - splitting the header in half - with the left half devoted to the "Bypass Rack" button, and the right half devoted to "+" (show rack menu) might work - but even there the header itself is so thin to make inadvertent contact with the topmost effect in the bin inevitable. (There is an option to widen all strips, but no equivalent to scale up all elements.
I am curious - Noel - as a SONAR Platinum user - do you use Touch?

 
Its dead simple to add an effect. Open the plugin browser and drag an effect from there to the console or track to add the plugin.

It's even easier with right click. Right click, choose. Bang. But then you'd need a right click option. other than a mouse.

Thanks Noel for setting it straight from the top.
 
 

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
 
Editing is planned at some point but we dont have a time line. There still aren't enough users requesting touch enhancements since many don't have touchscreens.

No disrespect intended, but I think this strategy blows. Features get rolled out and then are left in a state of partial implementation. Exactly how bugs have been left untouched in staff view for years. This is why (IMO) some of these issues become sources of such user frustration, Cakewalk rolled out touch, I bit and bought a big touchscreen monitor (as did others), believing that touch implementation would develop into something useful. You may think it is acceptable to use a mouse to augment touch or (as you point out above) to drag from another view. It is not, for me. I prefer to simply not use touch than to change a workflow to accommodate a half baked implementation. As I have mentioned previously, touch works perfectly outside of SONAR.

The unreplaced utility of P5 for me is the core workflow: 1) having a pattern window in which you create what is essentially a MIDI loop, which you then place in the timeline where you want it to manipulate as needed, and 2) the way MIDI is handled in the aforementioned pattern window. My entire creative output from that period was made possible by that workflow, and Sonar allows it only through more circuitous steps. I couldn't care less about its laughably bad (even compared to contemporaneous Sonar) 'painted' automation or its outdated audio engine or touchscreen. I simply can't work in Sonar like I work in P5*.
 
*I own but haven't installed the latest Sonar, which supposedly has MIDI improvements, but I've been hearing that for several Sonar versions now and having looked at the promo videos I'm still not hopeful that they've gotten close.
 
Anyway, that's my $0.02. And as others have said, thanks to Noel for chiming in. I want to start a new album soon and my plan is to use P5 rewired into Sonar Platinum, running on Win10. Wish me luck!

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
[...] Upgrading it would essentially mean transplanting SONAR's engine into it. [...]

So might look like this when done?