Kamikaze

BobF
If you want the Baker's attention, submit feature requests and/or problem reports as required.
 
 

Really, you think they given feature requests any attention in the past 3 years.

They've fixed a few that I've reported.

abacab
I am not planning to leave Sonar, but am planning to look into Cubase Elements 9 for $99 for doing MIDI editing. 
 
I downloaded and reviewed the manuals and it has most of the MIDI features of Cubase Artist and Pro.
 
The MIDI features look inspiring for sure!
 
To start with, it has the Arranger Track and the Chord Track.
 
The chord functions and other chord features sound very nice.  There is the Chord Track, Chord Events, Chord Editor, Chord Assistant – Circle of Fifths visualization, Scale Events, Voicings, Follow Chord Track, Map to Chord Track, Extract Chord Events, Convert Chord Events, Follow Chord Events, etc.
 
Then the Chord Pads, for an interactive approach to working with chord progressions, integrated with the Chord Assistant.  OK, demo coming soon

One of my feature requests from my old log in was a chord MFX. the idea has been stewing in my head, and I keep meaning to make a mock up of the idea, to convey the potential better. But to do so would require a lot of a work on my behalf, and even though it received a good number of votes, it's never had a comment from the bakers nor have any of the other top voted items. By developing the chord MFX, they wouldn't have to mess with any of the internal chord of the Sonar, and it would provide a midi composition tool, when we haven't had anything for two years, and it would show they do implement from the feature requests.
 
The gist of the tool, would be;
Create a mean to play one key/note from the keyboard only and create a different assignable chords from each key/note.
Provide a circle of fifths tool to help create the chords.
Chord extension, for adding 9ths, 11th, 13ths
An inversion function to allow chords to sit in keyboard ranges and for better voice leading
Chord opener, to open chord voicings
Dropped root option, for music with a strong bass
Dropped 5th, for cleaner sounding chords and more interesting voicings with fewer notes.
Multi out split, where each note above is assigned to different midi channels for different instruments. SATB. So you play one note on your keyboard, but chord it creates can be assigned to Cello, Viola, 1st and 2nnd violin, or Bari, Trombone, Tenor and trumpet.
Cakewalk has a number of Arpeggio functions,  so these chords could then feed into and make use of them. The multi out split tool would allow in the case of a say a five note voicing, to send the bottom not to a bass, the top to a lead, with the middle three to an arpeggiotor.   
An input and play edit mode. The former where you set up the chords The later where after you have played a key sequence, then as it plays, you can focus on each chord voicing and make adjustments on the fly.
 
Yeah there is Cthulu, and MidiChords, and tool like EXKeys circle of fifths tool, but nothing that really combines them like this. The idea was well received, but ignored by the bakers.
 
 
 

gustabo

Kamikaze

BobF
If you want the Baker's attention, submit feature requests and/or problem reports as required.
 
 

Really, you think they given feature requests any attention in the past 3 years.

They've fixed a few that I've reported.

That's reporting, not feature requests. They ignore my last submission. They denied 2 of my problems, then fixed them . Other than some account issues, I've not really submitted much ever.  

One feature request that was implemented, was being able to record synths in real time. But that was a result of a fuss made in the this Sonar section, not of the feature request itself. Which is exactly the goal the OP is try to achieve here.

oy, i have a few DAWs installed right now, and let me tell you... the learning curve alone... i am not sure I am up for it.   I mean you literally have to sit with it for a month or maybe more.  Double clicking a clip doesn't get me into the PRV, selecting notes is all different, where's my quantize again?   all this crap.  UGH.  
 
CAKEWALK - JUST FIX YER PRODUCT PLEASE??!?!?!

SilverBlueMedallion
wow, just started testing Studio One.  Just the FEEL of it is amazing.   

The GUI is fast, responsive... doesn't take forever to load.   

I almost feel Sonar is running off some very old code or something.  It is extremely sluggish.

that was my impression when i switched over to studio one 3 pro around 2 years ago, it is really nice, rock solid and has a lot of great features, and it just seemed to make sense to me, it felt very intuitive, like hand in glove. for me, platinum has been closing the gap especially with various performance enhancements, plugin load balancing etc plus some new features and stuff, which has been tempting me to use sonar more and more, the main things that keep me with s1 are the arranger track, scratch pads (i could begrudgingly let them go) and there is other stuff, but most of all i can't achieve the same sound with sonar (no, not the same old daw (a) sounds better than daw (b) argument/illusion) since s1 introduced mix engine fx and the console shaper (not just like the normal plugin setup that just kind of sits on top of everything, but this is deep within the audio/summing engine, before it hits the tracks/daw whatever the terminology is) try as i may i can not replicate the same 'sound' in sonar, i have tried with various saturation fx, waves nls etc, etc, but just can't get it. with the drive, nose and crosstalk of the console shaper it just does something almost magical for me, and i have just started working with the newly released ctc-1 pro console shaper, which steps it up another notch, being quite a bit better than the old console shaper, so . . . again it's not like the old argument of daw (a) sounding better/different than daw (b), but more like how harrisons mixbus has a different/arguably better sound than other doors daw's (lol), it's not imagination, it's quite real and there are reasons for it. owning both mixbus and s13 pro, i happen to much prefer the sound i can achieve with s1, not to mention much prefer to work in it than mixbus by a long way.
 
i'm a lifetime sonar member, so i keep an eye on things, and it is getting more and more tempting, just a few hurdles in the way, but i do like the performance and other enhancements and features, and the general direction (something i wasn't as happy with for a period shortly after the release of platinum)

Kamikaze
 
One of my feature requests from my old log in was a chord MFX. the idea has been stewing in my head, and I keep meaning to make a mock up of the idea, to convey the potential better. But to do so would require a lot of a work on my behalf, and even though it received a good number of votes, it's never had a comment from the bakers nor have any of the other top voted items. By developing the chord MFX, they wouldn't have to mess with any of the internal chord of the Sonar, and it would provide a midi composition tool, when we haven't had anything for two years, and it would show they do implement from the feature requests.

I have been playing around with Liquid Notes, from Re-Compose for the past couple of days.  What an eye-opener!  These features should be included in any modern sequencer, or at least as a plugin.
 
To use this tool. which is a stand-alone app, requires round tripping via MIDI files.  The equivalent of working with a secondary DAW. 
 
The songwriting assistant that offers a controllable range of alternatives for chords and harmonies in a MIDI arrangement.
 
Load the MIDI tracks of your projects into Liquid Notes and have them harmonically analyzed providing you with the corresponding chord symbols and a combined piano roll view of the notes in all tracks. Regardless of the complexity and style of the arrangement, Liquid Notes provides an accurate harmonic analysis of your music. And it establishes a solid base for the changes and alterations you may want to make to selected tracks or an entire song. Lay down the foundation to a new tune in no time!
 
The software offers a wealth of revolutionary and creative music making features. You can transform the chords and harmonic progression to your liking, use the convenient drop-down chord selector, change the basic functionality and directionality of any chord, and spice up the flavor of your music by adding varying degrees of tension and harmonic color to your chords with the simple twist of a knob.
 

Anderton
 
That said, the specialty of one of Cakewalk's new engineers is MIDI. 

Thanks for the heads up. This is the best news I've heard in a while.

Studio One's comment about MIDI being archaic and them adapting it to fit needs internally was a nice idea to me. Internal to a DAW, there is no reason that MIDI cannot be made much more dynamic than "convention" IMO, e.g. inside the DAW, there is no need for channel restrictions (passing MIDI discretely (send?) from one VST to another so that a controller cannot even fire that channel on you... like channels 17 - XX), etc. This does very much preclude saving a project as a .mid file, but allows a dynamic that I have not truly found yet. MIDI isolation (i.e., Channel 1 from patch point A is only seen at patch point B, will not interfere with Channel 1 from patch point C feeding D, etc.). MIDI internally does not need to be "channel 1 is seen by everyone and everything" (unless the user desires). So many VSTis now transmit MIDI (!!!), so a "MIDI send" feature would alleviate a lot of the routing and functional woes that exist in the "only 16 channels seen by everything listening" world.

SilverBlueMedallion
well that last response is really a nice way to wrap this post with a bow and softly kiss it away as 'no big deal'... but the fact is....  for over a decade the same MIDI bugs have existed within Sonar causing users to leave and/or have major problems with the product interrupting creative workflow.

It's like saying "all parents hit their kids sometimes".

 
It's not at all like saying that, and I suspect you know that too. Or maybe you truly did not get the point, so here it is again in very simple language:
 
Every DAW does some things well and some things not so well.
 
It is not possible for a DAW to do everything well or fix all bugs. This is too small an industry, and its resources are too limited (in large part, thanks to software theft and software devaluation by companies that make their money from hardware, which can't be downloaded from a torrent. Put your efforts into stopping that rather than bashing the people who are constrained by it if you truly want better software). Even Apple, which has virtually unlimited resources and cash reserves, can't release a software update anymore that doesn't break something (ask Native Instruments). More specifically to music, there were MIDI timing issues in Logic that persisted for years (and may still persist, for all I know).
 
Because no DAW can do everything well, DAWs compete with each other. This is why I use multiple programs. I would feel truly stupid posting in Ableton's forum "Live's priority is clearly live performance, but I do a lot of studio work and if you guys don't include basic studio functions SONAR has like Mix Recall, upsampling, and ARA integration, I'm leaving." Instead - take a deep breath - I use Ableton Live for live performance. It's not their fault they're not aiming to satisfy all the needs I have. It would be my fault if I used it expecting it to fulfill all my particular needs.
 
Acting like MIDI not currently being SONAR's strong point is some earth-shattering discovery on your part that demands immediate attention is a waste of forum bandwidth. My problem with your laundry list is not that it identifies what you consider issues per se, but that it does nothing to help people get more out of SONAR. I don't recall you contributing anything to the forum that's intended to help other users get more out of the program, show them some cool technique, or help someone troubleshoot a technical problem.
 
Consider that if someone who has contributed to SONAR users in this forum and taken the time to learn how the program works has an issue, it has some real weight and credibility behind it. That's what gets results. You dilute any strong points you may have when you put them on the same level as "issues" like notes with 4 tick durations not preserving that duration when converted from PRV to Step Sequencer, dismissing an alternate workflow that does what you want to do because it's not the way you want to do it, or personal preferences that may matter to only a handful of users.
 

Yes, its software and far more trivial than that, but the logic of saying "all software has their limitations" is really just a way to soften the intended impact of the post.

 
No. It's a way to introduce some objective reality. If you worked with other programs as much as you worked with SONAR, you'd still have a laundry list of complaints. It would just be a different list.

When it comes to MIDI implementation, like I said, Sonar might be the worst or close to it.

 
For you. You are not the only person in the world, you have not used all DAWs (how was your experience with MIDI in Adobe Audition?), and you are most certainly not speaking for all the people who use MIDI in SONAR successfully to create the music they want to create. I use MIDI all the time. No, I don't do multi-layered classical compositions using VSL libraries with 100 tracks and Note Expression to score Lord or the Rings or whatever, nor do I prefer to work in Staff View, which remains a sore point with me. But every project I do has multiple MIDI instruments with plenty of controllers. Some of my audio-for-video soundtracks are all MIDI instruments because you never know how/when video will be cut, and MIDI is more flexible than audio. To you, being able to enter exact numeric modulation values into a step sequencer is crucial. I doubt many share that need.

Without posts like these, the necessary visibility may not make its way up to the bakers as easily.   My posts have often times led to private messages being sent from Cakewalk engineers themselves to me where we work on things together, in fact I have one going on right now.

 
So the Bakers are giving you personal attention on a personal level via private messages, but that's not enough, and you demand more attention - so you publicly dress down the people who are already aware of your existence and engaging with you. Got it.

The tone and subject matter, and writing style is crafted INTENTIONALLY to enhance the chances of visibility by the bakers.  Who wants to get lost down in the flow?

Certainly not those who constantly demand the attention of others.


If you truly believe the Bakers aren't aware that improvements can be made to SONAR, and have logged more bugs than you would ever discover in years of working with SONAR, I don't know what to say. Sure, I have complaints about SONAR. Who doesn't? If you look back over the last year of updates, it would be obvious to any objective observer that Cakewalk's priority has been to make the program more efficient, pleasing to the eye, and bug-free. I'm hoping the next year is dedicated to making the process of making music more efficient. Better arranging tools and MIDI improvements would be a good place to start. Is that what they'll do? I don't know. But, I've submitted those requests through proper channels because I believe that's the most effective way to effect change, not public tantrums. Whether they're implemented is up to Cakewalk, not me...similarly to how Ableton Live still can't record solo button presses, 16 years after its introduction, despite the requests of numerous people, including me. Ableton says it's buried too deep in the code; I believe them. That's the end of it. (But SONAR's Matrix View can record solo button presses...)
 
People often ask me for recommendations regarding software. I don't always recommend SONAR by any means. I analyze their needs, and try to match them up with the current state and feature sets of various programs.
 
The bottom line: I NEVER expect any programs of any kind to do what I want them to do. I expect them to do what the engineers designed them to do, in accordance with what they see as priorities and (so they can stay in business) the needs of the majority of their user base. I make my decision of what software to use based on how congruent their design goals are with my needs. I recommend everyone who has a choice of different programs to do the same.