On a more general topic...let's zoom out for a bit.
 
I've been in this industry for a long time, before home recording was even possible for anyone other than Les Paul and ultra-rich stars. A traditional recording studio was hellishly complicated, so much so that no artist stood a chance without a professional producer, engineer, and often a tape op to make things work.
 
To me, technology is a necessary evil (albeit an often enjoyable one) that allows translating abstract artistic concepts into something tangible. Although I am facile with technology, I want any tool to be as simple as possible to use. Complication gets in the way of the creative process, and those who have seen my "Recording on the Fast Track" seminar know the physiological basis of why this is so.
 
Being "professional" is no excuse for a tool to be convoluted. There's an old saying that "a professional makes it look easy." I couldn't agree more.
 
Long before Style Dials existed, I created about 30 single-knob effects using FX Chains that I could drop into a track during the creative process. I didn't want to have to tweak effects (or even call up presets until I found the right one), I wanted to make music. Those one-knob effects have been tremendously helpful for having a more "finished" sound even when songwriting. (Often during the more analytical mixing phase I'll replace them, but not always.)
 
As to people who look disparagingly on a new generation of musicians as button-pushers, boot up Traktor with NI's S4 and see how far you get...music is evolving, and I think for the better because new directions in music become additive. Yes, I played Carnegie Hall and produced/engineered many classical albums, and yes, I started doing "button pushing" DJing in 2000. But both of those have helped tremendously in giving me perspective in rock music production and songwriting. 
 
I'm still either stupid enough or smart enough to believe music can change the world, and artistic expression is something that everyone should have the option to enjoy. In my ideal world, we would have world-class professional tools that would be so intuitive you wouldn't need a manual. We're far from that goal, and maybe it's unattainable. But, I certainly won't fault Cakewalk - or the majority of other software manufacturers who strive for the same goal - for trying.
 
 

@sharke: And yet I get young bands playing self-written material on analog guitars, drums and - OK, digital keys. That's why I have been getting away with using Sonar as just a digital tape recorder for far too long.

gbowling
This is awesome! I'm already working on some scripts to do the things I want improved over and over when I'm not working on a project.

Oh. I thought I was the only one thinking in that direction :)

Serious post now.
 
First. If Cakewalk want to do this then I am not arguing with them, there are no doubt benefits and they know what they are doing with it.
 
I question though the priority and resources put into this. The idea that Cakewalk doesn't know what to do with it's product is perplexing when you read the forums, there are clearly large gaping holes that need to be plugged within it's existing day to day use, the shortcomings are more than clear and have been stated in these forums again and again.
 
The profile of the user, amateur/professional/whatever, is irrelevant. Most people need to record/edit/mix, some will use midi and some will use just audio and most will use both.That's what a DAW does.  It really can't be any more obvious. So why is this monitoring a priority, when they must have pretty clear customer feedback here and in support about what to do. When I read the forums it seems pretty clear to me, maybe they should spend more time reading the forums? But I suspect they already do.
 
Before people think I am jumping on board some sort of anti-cakewalk bandwagon, please read again what I wrote right at the beginning of this post. I am NOT questioning why they did this and I am NOT against this functionality, so this does not need to be explained to me, Cakewalk has explained this more than adequately. My real point is written bold.
 
It's done now, I'm just pointing out how I feel about it.

sharke
I think there are a lot of misconceptions and assumptions being bandied about with regards to "amateurs versus pros" on this thread and on others in this forum. A lot of the older members like to make references to the "push button crowd" and I think there is this perception of young kids making EDM by dragging a couple of loops around and calling it a day. Really, this could not be further from the truth.

 
You are so very correct. 
 

sharke
I think there are a lot of misconceptions and assumptions being bandied about with regards to "amateurs versus pros" on this thread and on others in this forum. A lot of the older members like to make references to the "push button crowd" and I think there is this perception of young kids making EDM by dragging a couple of loops around and calling it a day. Really, this could not be further from the truth. There are young bedroom producers out there who would run rings around many of the old timers among us in terms of audio production, sound design, MIDI programming, use of controllers and automation etc. If you actually follow the scene there are some incredibly intricate productions out there which have utilized very advanced techniques and sound absolutely stunning, even if you don't like the genre. It must be hard, if you're a pro who's spent 30 years tuning his ears in the fields of EQ and compression, to hear 20 year old kids come along and create smooth sounding productions with perfect instrument separation after just 2 or 3 years at it. Part of the reason for this is that with the advent of plugins and DAW's, you have kids who have been able to put in 1000's of hours practice in their bedroom with unlimited "gear" at their disposal as opposed to the older engineers who were limited to whatever time they could get in their studio and whatever limited range of gear they could practice on. 
 
Now granted some of these kids are clamoring for production tools which old farts scoff at. But isn't that just how it's always been? New technology, new production techniques, new genres, the older generation making fun of it. These kids are taking on board all of the audio engineering techniques that you've spent 30 years learning, plus innovating some of their own. Believe me, they want the "pro" features just as much as you....but they want new features as well. 

Those kids you reference, would never embrace the one-button approach you describe. The 1000's of hours practice you mention, along with the enormous skill and knowledge acquired as a result, is the very thing the "one-button" approach is trying to portray as useless. Those young people you mention are into "advanced techniques" as you rightfully note. They are the exact type of user the "one-button" approach will alienate.

irvin

sharke
I think there are a lot of misconceptions and assumptions being bandied about with regards to "amateurs versus pros" on this thread and on others in this forum. A lot of the older members like to make references to the "push button crowd" and I think there is this perception of young kids making EDM by dragging a couple of loops around and calling it a day. Really, this could not be further from the truth. There are young bedroom producers out there who would run rings around many of the old timers among us in terms of audio production, sound design, MIDI programming, use of controllers and automation etc. If you actually follow the scene there are some incredibly intricate productions out there which have utilized very advanced techniques and sound absolutely stunning, even if you don't like the genre. It must be hard, if you're a pro who's spent 30 years tuning his ears in the fields of EQ and compression, to hear 20 year old kids come along and create smooth sounding productions with perfect instrument separation after just 2 or 3 years at it. Part of the reason for this is that with the advent of plugins and DAW's, you have kids who have been able to put in 1000's of hours practice in their bedroom with unlimited "gear" at their disposal as opposed to the older engineers who were limited to whatever time they could get in their studio and whatever limited range of gear they could practice on. 
 
Now granted some of these kids are clamoring for production tools which old farts scoff at. But isn't that just how it's always been? New technology, new production techniques, new genres, the older generation making fun of it. These kids are taking on board all of the audio engineering techniques that you've spent 30 years learning, plus innovating some of their own. Believe me, they want the "pro" features just as much as you....but they want new features as well. 

Those kids you reference, would never embrace the one-button approach you describe. The 1000's of hours practice you mention, along with the enormous skill and knowledge acquired as a result, is the very thing the "one-button" approach is trying to portray as useless. Those young people you mention are into "advanced techniques" as you rightfully note. They are the exact type of user the "one-button" approach will alienate.

You have completely missed his point. You have sprinted past his point with a blindfold on in fact.

FanCake
 So why is this monitoring a priority, when they must have pretty clear customer feedback here and in support about what to do.

Someone from Cakewalk, I think it might have been Noel has already explained this. They want to get data from the huge number of users who don't post in the forums too.

FanCake
Serious post now.
 
First. If Cakewalk want to do this then I am not arguing with them, there are no doubt benefits and they know what they are doing with it.
 
I question though the priority and resources put into this. The idea that Cakewalk doesn't know what to do with it's product is perplexing when you read the forums, there are clearly large gaping holes that need to be plugged within it's existing day to day use, the shortcomings are more than clear and have been stated in these forums again and again.
 
The profile of the user, amateur/professional/whatever, is irrelevant. Most people need to record/edit/mix, some will use midi and some will use just audio and most will use both.That's what a DAW does.  It really can't be any more obvious. So why is this monitoring a priority, when they must have pretty clear customer feedback here and in support about what to do. When I read the forums it seems pretty clear to me, maybe they should spend more time reading the forums? But I suspect they already do.
 
Before people think I am jumping on board some sort of anti-cakewalk bandwagon, please read again what I wrote right at the beginning of this post. I am NOT questioning why they did this and I am NOT against this functionality, so this does not need to be explained to me, Cakewalk has explained this more than adequately. My real point is written bold.
 
It's done now, I'm just pointing out how I feel about it.

This post is more of a statement for others reading the forums, not an explanation directed at FanCake.
 
I don't think its an accurate statement to say the Bakers don't know what they want to do with the product.  This is another method of obtaining customer feedback and usage information and probably in ways that customers can't easily explain through forum posts, survey responses or tech support calls.
 
Also, even though this forum is active, it is a very small representation of the population of Sonar users.  Limiting feedback collection to just the feature request and problem reports portion of the forums excludes a significant portion of the Sonar population and does the entire Sonar user base a disservice.

FanCake
Serious post now. So why is this monitoring a priority, when they must have pretty clear customer feedback here and in support about what to do. When I read the forums it seems pretty clear to me, maybe they should spend more time reading the forums? But I suspect they already do.

 
You raise a valid point, and a serious post deserves a serious answer (although I hope you won't abandon doing the non-serious ones...).
 
First, analytics are not infallible, which your post proves: Akismet again flagged your post as spam, and auto-deleted it (maybe because of your ISP having an entry in a blocklist? I don't know). So again, I had to restore it manually. However, this also shows an advantage of analytics because after I've restored a certain number of posts from the same user that have been auto-deleted, Akismet figures it's legit and leaves you alone - while still deleting the "Babaji Magic Woman Attraction Potion" spam posts.
 
Now, to your point. Noel can correct me if I'm wrong, but if you look at the feature requests, it is an overwhelming amount with varying degrees of importance and feasibility (although some are clear favorites, and hopefully CW is working on those), from a small minority of the user base (i.e., those who frequent the forums). Add that to the multiple random posts in the forum making suggestions, which someone from Cakewalk may or may not see, and you end up with an uncurated mess. Although I don't know what shape the "feedback portal" will take, I assume it's intended to work in conjunction with the analytics to provide the kind of info that analytics can't.
 
I think the main problem for Cakewalk isn't gathering ideas on what to do with the program, but prioritizing what will benefit the greatest number of users, and they believe analytics will help with that prioritization - although it's not a complete solution, which is presumably why Cakewalk will continue to use other methods to gauge user sentiment.