IMO, a cool little panel that can have an arbitrary number of independent LFOs with the ability to drive any automatable parameters would be ideal.  Sorry, Craig - I'm thinking in the abstract.
 
Drawing and fiddling with pencil tools is fiddly.  Fiddly enables frustration.  The quickest route from thought to done is what these computer things are meant to do.
 
 

BobF
IMO, a cool little panel that can have an arbitrary number of independent LFOs with the ability to drive any automatable parameters would be ideal. Sorry, Craig - I'm thinking in the abstract.

Yeah, that makes sense; you're talking about a conceptual change of a console view being less of a container for automation, and more like a matrix modulation section on a synth, with sources/destinations/smoothing/polarity etc. As mentioned in a previous post I do find the absence of a lag generator for the drawn waveforms a limitation, and a matrix mod-based approach would solve that as soon as an appropriate module was made.
 
However I still question how important it really is for people. It's easy to trot out the "modern music making requires modulation" argument but I just don't see where musically speaking, existing capabilities in SONAR, Cubase, etc. are so limiting as to require a philosophical overhaul of the console and automation. If anything, I would find something that extracted envelopes as control signals to be vastly more useful than the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of an LFO. I don't like it in guitar effects and I don't like it in mixes...but when it's appropriate, there are plenty of ways to do it. Maybe I just don't care because when needed, I can draw automation waveforms quickly and easily. If I too found it frustrating, I might care more.
 
 

Anderton

sharke
 
The automation shape drawing tools are horrible, let's face it. If you're looking to create a very definite sine wave, for example, it's very hard to get exactly what you want. I find it hard to get the curve started the way I intend. It's one of those things you have to fiddle around with for ages to get it just right (even with the shift key held - you almost always end up with a "botched" start to the curve), and even if you do get it right, implementing it across an entire track is troublesome as the screen scrolls. I've been using Sonar for about 5 years and have never gotten the hang of it - just imagine a kid firing up Sonar for the first time and wanting to apply some cool LFO effects. He's going to give up pretty easily. 
 
Here's a screencast of my typical botched efforts to draw an LFO effect with the shape drawing tools. I'm sure lots of you have the same frustration. 
 

 
Look...I know you're a bright guy, but the things you seem to find difficult are easy to do. Cubase and SONAR offer the same way of doing this because it works and is flexible. I can draw a perfect waveform of any phase or amplitude I want, offset by any amount I want, with dynamically varying depth that doesn't require creating another envelope, any time I want...and tweak it afterward, create any waveform, etc. etc. 
 
I think explaining this would make a great column for Sound on Sound, although I question how important it is musically to be able to do these things. The main place I want modulation changes is with virtual instruments, and since the invention of matrix modulation, they all pretty much have it anyway. If not, the Z3TA makes a great multi-purpose processor/panner/synchronized filter.
 
But if I do need to use LFO modulation for volume and panning, there are plenty of simple ways to do it, and they offer a great deal of flexibility. I really don't see the problem. I do agree that a kid firing up the program for the first time will not find it easy, but the kid is probably using virtual instruments that do what's needed so the idea of modulating volume faders or panning would seem redundant. And if it needs to be applied to audio tracks...SONAR has several variations on the tools needed to do it. I just don't any of this as a roadblock to making music.
 
How about this. Instead if rhetorical questions, give an example of some musical modulation effect you're tried to create in SONAR but found too difficult, post a short musical example so I can get the context, and I'll do a quick video on the easiest/fastest way I know of to make it happen using SONAR's toolset.

I think in general, Craig, you seem very focused on the idea that Sonar can do anything you want it to regardless of the effort, learning curve or convenience involved. And while that's true, I think it's losing sight of the argument that the easier something is, the less it interferes with your workflow. As a crazy example, consider the fact that I could take a piece of paper, a pencil and a ruler and draw myself a spreadsheet. I could then manually add columns, apply formulas to rows, and edit cells with an eraser. All very simple right? Anyone can do it! However, it's not a very convenient workflow, and so I fire up Excel instead, which has all of that functionality available with a few clicks of a mouse. 
 
Drawing precise modulation shapes in automation lanes is problematic and fiddly to most people, and I don't see the point in denying that. As a challenge, perhaps you'd like to record a screencast of yourself doing the following in succession: 
 
1) Draw a panning sine wave with a period of 3 measures and an amplitude of 50% which starts right at 1:01:001 with the first node bang on center. 
 
2) Now, without dropping a beat, erase that envelope and draw one with a period of 3 quarter notes and an amplitude of 75% and a phase of 45 degrees. 
 
3) Do the same, but this time start with an amplitude of 0% and ramp it up slowly and evenly (i.e. a perfectly straight line) so that it reaches 100% by measure 9. 
 
Bear in mind that in the course of being creative with, say, a filter plugin like The Drop, I will experiment with different modulation values like this almost at the speed of thought. I don't have to stop to draw one set of values and then keep erasing them and draw another set, each time having to think slowly and carefully about where exactly I'm going to position the mouse and which modifier key I'm going to press and perhaps have to do it a few times before I get it right. I'm in a creative groove, and I'm twiddling controls in real time. I might go so far as to draw an envelope in order to ramp up the amplitude of an LFO over time, but that's incredibly easy and I can manipulate its angle and position 100x easier than I can manipulate the changing amplitude of a sine wave drawn with the shape tool. And being able to be exact with values is important, because oftentimes the modulation has a very definite, quantized rhythmic aspect to it. Similarly, being able to change things like phase in real time is important too, because sometimes you want a filter LFO to "reveal" particular notes in a groove whilst hiding others. So you might slowly change the phase whilst listening to a section on loop until it sounds just right. You cannot get creative like this by drawing modulation with the shape tool, you just can't. It has nothing to do with intelligence. 
 
And I think you're also too focused on the idea that synths generally have LFO's built in. Firstly, it's not always the case that a synth allows free modulation of everything. And secondly, synths aren't the whole story. There are also effects. I have The Drop which is a pretty outstanding (and pricey) filter plugin which has full modulation options, but what if you're using some other filter plugin which doesn't? How do you get creative with modulation in the ways I've described above? It's not just filter plugins. What if I want to modulate the gain of a distortion plugin with a sawtooth wave? Again, unless you know exactly what you want in terms of amplitude, phase and period, drawing it with the shape tool is horribly restrictive and fiddly. 

I would welcome this kind of modulation matrix approach and if done well, Sonar could differentiate itself from its direct competitors. Adding physics based controllers would be cool too (like Lemur has). Perhaps this could simply be done in an "automation plugin" that generates automation and which could be assigned to any track's automation.

The "simple" LFO is not as interesting to me for the reasons Craig stated. At the same time, I don't agree with his idea that just because there doesn't seem to be an overpowering need to redesign/reinvent existing possibilities it's not worth it. To me it is a pretty inspiring idea and any way to intuitively or easily manipulate sound will find its way into the tracks of tomorrow.

Sanderxpander
I would welcome this kind of modulation matrix approach and if done well, Sonar could differentiate itself from its direct competitors. Adding physics based controllers would be cool too (like Lemur has). Perhaps this could simply be done in an "automation plugin" that generates automation and which could be assigned to any track's automation.

The "simple" LFO is not as interesting to me for the reasons Craig stated. At the same time, I don't agree with his idea that just because there doesn't seem to be an overpowering need to redesign/reinvent existing possibilities it's not worth it. To me it is a pretty inspiring idea and any way to intuitively or easily manipulate sound will find its way into the tracks of tomorrow.

Exactly, there is a ton of stuff that's widely used in music production these days that was not possible 10 or 15 years ago. Give people better tools and they will use them. At one point mixing desks only had LCR panning, and fader automation was but a dream. At that time, I bet there were people saying "pffft...I don't see the need" if presented with these ideas. I bet there were some people who thought that stereo would never catch on too. 

Ideally, and not unimportantly, you would be able to "mix" an LFO with a regular envelope so you could for instance creating an oscillating slow rise.

Sanderxpander
At the same time, I don't agree with his idea that just because there doesn't seem to be an overpowering need to redesign/reinvent existing possibilities it's not worth it.

Well I don't agree with that idea either, because that's not what I said. I indicated a situation where it would be very useful, i.e., a lag processor. Then I said "However I still question how important it really is for people." I always question importance because any time spent working on "A" precludes working on "B." Think of all the people complaining the PRV needed an overhaul and that SONAR needed ripple editing. They both couldn't happen at once.
 
I don't know if turning a mixer into a synth engine is more important to the average user compared to, say, mastering analytics or parallel processing within an FX Rack of FX Chain. Given the plug-ins that have been mentioned as giving people what they want, I'd rather have SONAR add things that aren't available through other means.

sharke
I think in general, Craig, you seem very focused on the idea that Sonar can do anything you want it to regardless of the effort, learning curve or convenience involved. And while that's true, I think it's losing sight of the argument that the easier something is, the less it interferes with your workflow.

 
I think you may have lost sight of what this thread was about, and my answer. The OP wanted to be able to do a panning envelope within SONAR, without using a plug-in and as mentioned later on, be able to do draw a straight line without having to do it freehand. I provided a way that's simple, supported, obvious, and can be done in seconds if you know to hold Ctrl while using the draw tool. I thought that would be the end of it.
 

Drawing precise modulation shapes in automation lanes is problematic and fiddly to most people, and I don't see the point in denying that.

 
Because it isn't "problematic and fiddly" if you simply want periodic waveforms, like the OP requested. If the OP had requested something as arcane as your "challenge," I would not have responded because I wouldn't have been able to provide an answer that would have allowed him to do what he requested. He thought what he wanted to do required having an LFO, which SONAR doesn't have, so I solved his problem within the existing toolset.
 

As a challenge, perhaps you'd like to record a screencast of yourself doing the following in succession:
 
1) Draw a panning sine wave with a period of 3 measures and an amplitude of 50% which starts right at 1:01:001 with the first node bang on center. 
 
2) Now, without dropping a beat, erase that envelope and draw one with a period of 3 quarter notes and an amplitude of 75% and a phase of 45 degrees. 
 
3) Do the same, but this time start with an amplitude of 0% and ramp it up slowly and evenly (i.e. a perfectly straight line) so that it reaches 100% by measure 9. 

 
You did not include a short audio example, as requested, so I could have a musical context of what you were trying to accomplish - which was the whole point of my offering a way to come up with a way to do something equivalent with SONAR's toolset. Anyway, I'll take it on faith it these kind of operations are essential to your music, and I will take your word for it that there are easier ways to do those things than with SONAR. However, I was curious how difficult it would be to do those in SONAR (I never know what I'll find out when doing research anyway, so it's always worth learning), and found the following (if you really want me to waste my time taking a screen capture movie, uploading, etc. I will if you don't believe me):
 
(1) in 25 seconds. 
(2) in 29 seconds, however this left a space at the beginning of where the 45 degree out of phase waveform started. If it's necessary to delete that space, it took another 10 seconds (thank you, ripple editing).
(3) If you want a perfectly straight line, it's not possible in SONAR. If you're willing to settle for a line so straight no human being on the face of the earth could tell the difference between it and a straight line...3 seconds, 5 seconds to redo if it wasn't straight enough.
 
But I find this type of "challenge" meaningless. All programs can do things other programs can't do. Try to duplicate the following using anything but SONAR's waveform drawing tools...particularly the real-time instant phase changes, the hard limiting of the peaks and valleys, and the offset to optimize the excursion to a chorus unit's modulation rate: 
 

 
This has a valid musical application, and you can hear this technique used on my Neo- album and on my next project, Simplicity. As mentioned, I don't particularly want the regular whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of an LFO all over the place. By limiting excursions and changing offsets, I can create constantly varying changes that aren't predictable, but are loosely under my control so they aren't totally random. Furthermore, I can overwrite sections easily (come to think of it, I should have demoed that...it's pretty dramatic), change amplitudes of particular sections while leaving other undisturbed, and so on. 
 
I'm not going to try to show how wonderful this is by issuing a "challenge" to duplicate what I did with an LFO...that's not the way I'm wired. The only point I want to make is to call the drawing tools "horrible" strikes me as incomplete at the very least. To say the drawing tools are "horrible" to achieve the effects you want to achieve with completely different tools (obviously, a manual drawing tool is different from an automatic generation tool) seems like a more accurate statement.
 
For me, the drawing tools allow creating unique effects that I find desirable (e.g., more randomized modulation effects over which I have a great degree of control). So for me, the drawing tools are "wonderful to achieve the effects I want to achieve," which includes not only the "corner case" stuff like in the video, but also more traditional functions like the OP wanted to achieve. There may be others who want to achieve these kinds of effects, and now they will know to investigate further rather than simply assume the description of them being "horrible" is accurate, and therefore the drawing tools have no use.
 
My goal is to help people get the most out of the tools they have in the hopes they will make great music, because I'd like to hear more great music. Yes, I'm selfish that way 
 

Anderton
Because it isn't "problematic and fiddly" if you simply want periodic waveforms, like the OP requested. If the OP had requested something as arcane as your "challenge," I would not have responded because I wouldn't have been able to provide an answer that would have allowed him to do what he requested. He thought what he wanted to do required having an LFO, which SONAR doesn't have, so I solved his problem within the existing toolset.

 
You gave him a solution which does not lend itself to convenient tweaking and experimentation, which most people will do in order to get a modulation effect to sound "just right." 
 
 

Anderton
You did not include a short audio example, as requested, so I could have a musical context of what you were trying to accomplish - which was the whole point of my offering a way to come up with a way to do something equivalent with SONAR's toolset. Anyway, I'll take it on faith it these kind of operations are essential to your music, and I will take your word for it that there are easier ways to do those things than with SONAR. However, I was curious how difficult it would be to do those in SONAR (I never know what I'll find out when doing research anyway, so it's always worth learning), and found the following (if you really want me to waste my time taking a screen capture movie, uploading, etc. I will if you don't believe me):
 
(1) in 25 seconds. 
(2) in 29 seconds, however this left a space at the beginning of where the 45 degree out of phase waveform started. If it's necessary to delete that space, it took another 10 seconds (thank you, ripple editing).
(3) If you want a perfectly straight line, it's not possible in SONAR. If you're willing to settle for a line so straight no human being on the face of the earth could tell the difference between it and a straight line...3 seconds, 5 seconds to redo if it wasn't straight enough.

 
A short audio example is irrelevant. I'm just giving examples of the kind of thing people do with modulation, and which are time consuming and fiddly to do by drawing static automation curves. I mean having to start a curve a little ways forward and then delete the space behind it in order to get a curve with the right phase starting where you want it - these are all time consuming workarounds which a proper set of flexible LFO tools would make 100x easier and more convenient. We're not saying that these things "aren't possible" in Sonar, just that there are far better ways to do it. For example, imagine if there was no automation in Sonar, and if you wanted to automate faders you had to do it in real time during mixdown. So someone on the forum suggested being able to draw automation envelopes, and I came along and said "why would you want to do that? It's so easy to just ride the faders yourself. And if you want to change it later, just do it again!" You'd probably wonder what on earth I could possibly have against making this stuff easier for people. 
 
With regards the straight line, you made my point for me: it's not possible in Sonar. The extent to which people are capable of drawing a straight line with a mouse varies person to person. If I try to do it, invariably I jerk the mouse at some point and thus create a "spike" in the rate of change which is not really the effect I'm going for when I intended a smooth ramp-up. Imagine if you couldn't draw straight automation lines to do things like fade outs. People would absolutely notice a poorly drawn fade-out, because the volume would seem to jump in parts instead of fading out smoothly. 
 

AndertonBut I find this type of "challenge" meaningless. All programs can do things other programs can't do. Try to duplicate the following using anything but SONAR's waveform drawing tools...particularly the real-time instant phase changes, the hard limiting of the peaks and valleys, and the offset to optimize the excursion to a chorus unit's modulation rate: 
 

 
This has a valid musical application, and you can hear this technique used on my Neo- album and on my next project, Simplicity. As mentioned, I don't particularly want the regular whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of an LFO all over the place. By limiting excursions and changing offsets, I can create constantly varying changes that aren't predictable, but are loosely under my control so they aren't totally random. Furthermore, I can overwrite sections easily (come to think of it, I should have demoed that...it's pretty dramatic), change amplitudes of particular sections while leaving other undisturbed, and so on. 
 

 
I didn't see any "real time instant phase changes" in that video - I did, however, see amplitude changes. However, these "constantly varying changes" that are loosely under your control can also be achieved with the manipulation of a good set of LFO controls in real time, as the music plays. Furthermore, I would suggest that if you're looking to create this much variation and semi-randomness in your modulation, it would be more easily achieved by using a controller to write the automation in real time so that you have full control over where the modulation goes. LFO modulation is more about implementing rhythmic modulation, and it lends itself far better to the manipulation and tweaking of controls than it does to drawing. I'm not saying that the drawing tools don't have their place, or that there aren't edge cases in which the drawing tools are better - just that for a lot of core modulation tasks, they're woefully inadequate and don't lend themselves to real time musical experimentation. 
 
It's also worth pointing out that with the sine drawing tool, you're not getting a proper sine wave like you would from an LFO. You're getting a low resolution approximation of one - a limited series of points with straight lines drawn between them. 
 
I get where you're coming from in that the drawing tools aren't completely useless. My point is that musical LFO modulation lends itself far better to the manipulation of controls than it does to the drawing of low resolution curves. 
 

First, let me say I agree with folks here, and say I would like to see such an LFO tool added to Sonar.  I use XFER's LFO tool to do most of my LFO-based automation for now, though.
 

Anderton
Given the plug-ins that have been mentioned as giving people what they want, I'd rather have SONAR add things that aren't available through other means.

I would generally agree with that, but IIRC, you've been a big cheerleader for tools like the new EQs and Vocal Align features, both of which were available through other means.  It's pure conjecture on my part, but maybe if time had NOT been spent on those features, we would have gotten PRV changes and/or Ripple edit faster.  See how that works?
 
Look, I know Cakewalk has limited resources, and has to carefully choose what features they implement.  However, as customers of Sonar, we're looking at what the competition offers as well, and just giving input on what we would like to see OUR DAW make it easier for us to do, just as it seems easier to do in a competing product.
 
And, just because I am curious to hear the answer from Craig:  Now that we've got PRV updates, New EQs, and Ripple Edit, what do YOU think the #1 feature/enhancement like to see done NEXT in Sonar?  If you would like to name the top five you would like to see, that would be great as well.  No animus intended, just curious.  Maybe we need another thread, too...