I'll surely be opting in.

I see this as an effort on Cakewalk's side to make sonar a better music making machine.

I'm off line (I disable the NIC) when I'm using Sonar.  It won't do any good to have tracking on in my case.

Snehankur

Anderton
Someone suggested this in the forums a while back, and I thought it was a good idea.
 

There are lot many people have suggested other ideas as well - since long time back - and you think those ideas were bad?
 
Regards
Snehankur

Of course not. Just because I think some ideas are good doesn't mean I think other ideas were bad. I'm very glad other popular forum-based requests like synth recording, upsampling, the functionality of patch points, more optimizations, and additions to Mix Recall were implemented.

Thanks for the heads up. I will give it a try however my internet is sometimes a bit spotty. As long as I do not find it slowing me down I don't mind leaving the analytics turned on. 
 
The main reason I do not use the start screen is that it slows me down when starting.

With all due respect, those people who think analytics will dominate all decisions about the program, and cause less-used features to be removed, really need to review the opening post of this thread. According to Cakewalk, analytics are about expanding on the existing ways of taking the pulse of the community: 
 
"Feedback has always been important to us. We already use information from forums, surveys, press, dealers, and social media to gain perspectives on how new updates to SONAR are doing, and what needs more work. Unfortunately this doesn’t always tell us how the experience is for the larger population of customers outside of these channels. Analytics are the best way to gauge the in-app customer experience. Your feedback in all these places is very important to us, and we’d like to continue to expand our understanding of how you use our software." 
 
I think that's quite unambiguous. Also those who think analytics means less-used features will be removed need to be reminded of this:
 
We’ll be able to find out what features are popular, ways to improve features, roadblocks that users encounter, and how well new features integrate with your workflow. However, this doesn’t mean that we won’t pay attention to features that are less used. We see this as an opportunity to look at less used features and improve them. 
 
For example, those who say they don't use notation because it doesn't meet what they want (even though some people do very sophisticated work in staff view) think that means Cakewalk would assume people don't want improvements in notation. Based on the two statements above, that concern makes no sense. Furthermore if new users start to use notation and bail, that info will bolster those who want to see changes. It seems many of the concerns here are based on making assumptions that contradict Cakewalk's stated intentions. 

fireberd
I'm off line (I disable the NIC) when I'm using Sonar.  It won't do any good to have tracking on in my case.

Hi fireberd,
Yes Cakewalk analytics can be used even if you turn off your network while using SONAR. Its designed to handle offline use as well. I answered this question here.

Tom Riggs
Thanks for the heads up. I will give it a try however my internet is sometimes a bit spotty. As long as I do not find it slowing me down I don't mind leaving the analytics turned on. 
The main reason I do not use the start screen is that it slows me down when starting.

The analytics is unnoticeable when working. All its doing is capturing some really lightweight data about the operations performed and some high level summary information about the project and SONAR's configuration settings. It probably takes microseconds to log that info. You are also free to turn analytics on and off at will anytime. When its off its completely dead and will never even execute. If there is no internet detected it will write the data to disk and only send it at a future date.

Personally, I think it's a fine idea if there is a way while tracking workflow where we can stop what we are doing, click a button and tell you guys "right here, it would be great if Sonar would let me do X by doing Y...". That would be really awesome.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

For me,  I have opted in and out on different applications.  At first I would turn everything off.  Then I learned more about what it does and how it's not user data but usage data and why wouldn't I want to have something that better fits how I want to work?
 
Now with applications that I use a lot that from vendors I trust, I'll turn on the usage data as I'd like to see improvements.  Some I've seen update and address frustration points I had without me even having to report an issue.  That's cool.
 
So imagine an app that fits what you want to do, like picking up a perfectly setup guitar or playing on a well regulated piano where the touch is just how you like it.  When you can be in the zone and flowing, amazing things happen.  In no way do we want to break creative flow. On the contrary, we want to improve it by reducing friction and obstacles to help our current and new users.  As Lance said, we look at feedback from many sources, so to suddenly stop looking at everything else would be foolish.
 
We're passionate SONAR users too.  Rest assured we don't want to wreck our experience or yours either!  We are excited about the future and want to thank you for your past, current and future part in that.  Let's create/record/edit/mix/<insert verb> some great music!
 
Keith
 
 

Anderton
We’ll be able to find out what features are popular, ways to improve features, roadblocks that users encounter, and how well new features integrate with your workflow. However, this doesn’t mean that we won’t pay attention to features that are less used. We see this as an opportunity to look at less used features and improve them. 
 
For example, those who say they don't use notation because it doesn't meet what they want (even though some people do very sophisticated work in staff view) think that means Cakewalk would assume people don't want improvements in notation. Based on the two statements above, that concern makes no sense. Furthermore if new users start to use notation and bail, that info will bolster those who want to see changes. It seems many of the concerns here are based on making assumptions that contradict Cakewalk's stated intentions. 

Well stated. The analytics data itself will be used very carefully as supplemental info to other more traditional sources of data that we have today such as surveys and user feedback. Also in case you missed it we have already announced that we are starting up a brand new feedback portal. Why would we be doing that if we intended to exclusively use analytics data? Cakewalk is a small company and its critical for us to to be efficient and prioritize our resources well so that we benefit the maximum number of users. These are all important steps in that direction.