IMO: I think it's worth recognizing that all the arguments, concerns, frustration and wishes expressed, means that your customers care about the product. I hope Cakewalk recognizes the power and loyalty of the user-base and don't dismiss our concerns even if they are different than expected (or you disagree).
 
I believe that more open communication is better (always) as it allows me to make better decisions, even if that decision is to skip a particular feature.
 
I'm glad to see CW staff actively engaged!
 

FanCake
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.

 
Hi fancake, others already replied to your other points so I won't repeat the explanation.
 
Regarding priority, analytics has been on our do list for several years. We actually had an old school non web enabled variant of this called "Usage logger" which was in the help menu from at least SONAR 8 all the way upto X3. Look in your help menu. Usage logger essentially logged some similar data that analytics, albeit it was completely offline and required the user to manually submit the data - so pretty useless for doing any analysis. As far back as 2000 I think, I had implemented the "Cakewalk problem reporter" which logged some metrics about the project and system state as well. So we've been doing stuff like this for about 15 years! Whats new is this is a more modern and realtime way of accessing similar information. 
Our analytics SDK was developed early last year and used and tested in another product. We've had it sitting on our todo list for about 10 months now to wire it into SONAR. It makes a lot of sense to do it now since we have just started up on a new year of updates and we want to make sure that we are prioritizing the right things and find out which of the new features users are actually making use of. In terms of actual resources it was very easy to inject into SONAR since we had already done this earlier. The first cut of this is super simple and lightweight.

ampfixer
They seem to delight in bringing the heat upon themselves by advertising new features that really should be non-issues. Analytics, a new export option, a new menu. These are relatively minor changes that Cakewalk turns into major issues. They must like getting kicked every morning. 

I am also curious what it the goal to announce such "features".
 
I have started with Sonar X1. And it had offline authorization. I know "other DAWs" use online/iLock, but that was THE REASON I went Sonar way! And now Sonar is "yet another DAW with online authorization".
 
Cakewalk Analytics target "users which rarely visit the forum". Many such users think "Windows 10 is evil because it spy me, I will stay with Windows 7!". And the fact MS provides all switches to turn info collecting off does not change that position.
 
So the question is either CW will profit from collected information more then loose customers. They will not come here and ask questions, the will read on other forum/magazine that starting from Sonar 2016.X Cakewalk is watching you and they will disappear. Silently.
 
Also in our scientific world, when someone has no idea what to do or just has no experience to do something useful, he/she start introducing new "Monitoring"/"Analytic"/"Statistic of use cases"/etc... Just yesterday during our meeting: "I remember some years ago (name) has made a package to find "dark data" based on site information dumps...  I think today's proposal from (another name) is somehow related... can we profit from that?" following "forget it, we currently do not have people for that..." 
 

FanCake
It is possible to design features that are simple to use everyday, which have hidden layers of complexity for others who need to tweak, and still have great workflow that suits everybody (simple but not dumbed down either!). It should not be about X customer profile vs Y customer profile think, that mindset worries me to be honest as it is straight out of a marketing handbook, marketing tends to show distorted realities.
 
Again still saying metrics has it's place, not against it, it is useful. I'm just surprised it became such a priority for a small development team. Bit of a waste of time post, thanks for listening anyway.

The italicized text is EXACTLY what we intend to do. Not sure what was said that made you infer otherwise, but if so you can assume the above is our intent.

Hi komposer,
 
With all due respect I don't think you have done enough research on this subject to make a judgement that it is "dumb". You are of course entitled to your opinion and I guess this would also make the thousands of highly successful companies some of which are giants like apple, google and microsoft also dumb in your opinion.
Analytics is not something new - it is widely established to be one of the single most important techniques to improve a product. If anything we are dumb to be so late to be doing this.
 
And regarding your analogy, its not accurate. Our option to turn off analytics is permanent - installing a new update will not lose your preference. There is a very clear toast notification that lets people know whenever analytics is on and every user has the ability to turn it off. I don't see why you would want to not use the product if you can turn it off unless you somehow mistrust Cakewalk. We would never do anything like that since we value our users too much. 
 





Hi all,


The notion that the major leading tech corporations only make smart decisions is simply wrong.


I get WHY you guys are doing this. I'm just not going to participate in any way going ahead with Cakewalk product support.


I know that I lose and that's unfortunate to me.

ampfixer
Most, if not all, the major software packages I have include a check box during the install. It says "would you like to help xxx improve the quality of the product". If you check it then it turns on analytics. I think Cakewalk would be better off if they did this rather than make a huge announcement to say it's coming. The same goes for the LANDR export. Had they just said "hey, now you can directly export to LANDR if you want to use their service", I believe it would have floated by as a non-issue.
 
They seem to delight in bringing the heat upon themselves by advertising new features that really should be non-issues. Analytics, a new export option, a new menu. These are relatively minor changes that Cakewalk turns into major issues. They must like getting kicked every morning. 

You might just be right :) Analytics may be a minor change but unlike many other companies in our space, at Cakewalk we try and engage our users and be upfront about what we do. That is the spirit of the rolling updates program. 

Thanks for telling us, Noel. I have no issues and will gladly volunteer my mouse clicks.

I appreciate the advance notice and will be glad to test all three options. If "Cakewalk Account Connected" is more useful I have no problem with that setting. It might even help to eliminate my odd SONAR use from messing with your analysis.

Haha scook, judging from your knowledge of the product, your profile would probably indicate that every feature was important :)

Paul P
On a legal note, say I kill my wife and then lie that I was at a local bar when it happened.  After a bit of research, the autorities take me in and say they have proof I was at home at the time because Cakewalk analytics recorded that I clicked the Insert Track button shortly before the neighbours called 911.

 
Just participate anonymously. There's no way CW can tie data back to you if you do that. To know who you are, you have to opt in to connect your user account to your activity.