I just use a spray can of RAID to take care of all the bugs in my computer

ampfixer
As a former member of the American Society for Quality, I can't get behind a design philosophy that says defects are inevitable. It breeds complacency...

 
Hmmm. I'm not a member of any fancy-sounding societies, but I don't see where "defects are inevitable" was offered as a design philosophy. It's just a reality, whether it is acknowledged or not, and more so in the world of insanely complex software, and Cakewalk has its particular approach to trying to mitigate it as much as possible in a way that strikes a balance between product development and innovation against customer satisfaction. Not necessarily the best possible balance or the best possible approach, but one that seems to work for lots of users, myself included. Craig simply articulated a bit more about how it works. 
 
I would say that "pretending that bugs and defects aren't inevitable" is arguably a more flawed philosophy than acknowledging reality, and trying to find ways to work around it as much as possible, with maximum customer satisfaction and viable business continuity as paramount operating goals. 
 
Any company which purports to guarantee a product without a single defect or bug or flaw... probably shouldn't be trusted. As Wesley put it in The Princess Bride... "Life is pain, Princess... Anyone who says differently is selling something"

I am not in disagreement with Craig's comments. His observations are spot-on. I simply think that defects are not inevitable and accepting them is the wrong way to go. Having said that, I realize that perfection comes at a cost. Defects in the code used in a spacecraft are far more significant than errors in the code for a DAW. That's one of the reasons it cost so much to launch rockets. Failure is not an option.
 
But should coders anywhere start from the premise that of 6 new features, 98% of the code will work? That's how I interpret the idea that bugs are inevitable.
 
I worked with a large corporation that took pride in the fact that their production compliance was always above 97%. They reported it every month and the employees thought they were knocking it out of the park. What they didn't report to the employees was that the ~3% non-conformance was costing the company over a million dollars per month and limiting their ability to do things like give the employees a raise. They also didn't mention that their chief competitor was always at a compliance rate above 99% and taking some of their business.

ampfixer
As a former member of the American Society for Quality, I can't get behind a design philosophy that says defects are inevitable. It breeds complacency. Points 2 and 3 of Craig's list can be mitigated by the developer. Point 1 is an embarrassment. If you make something that has a defect through successive revisions, you need to get your house in order. Why? Because that defect will become harder to fix as everything around it changes and more features are added.
 
Don't disagree with Craig's comments but I do have a different view. 

Well I actually agree with your view as to how things should be. The problem is "the real world." My gold standard for bug-free operation used to be the Mac OS, but that's no longer the case, and iOS is even more of a moving target.
 
This may be a naive attitude but I figure if a company like Apple with virtually unlimited resources can't avoid major bugs in a released version of the software, no music software company can come even close unless the software is a closed environment.
 

ampfixer
I worked with a large corporation that took pride in the fact that their production compliance was always above 97%. They reported it every month and the employees thought they were knocking it out of the park. What they didn't report to the employees was that the ~3% non-conformance was costing the company over a million dollars per month and limiting their ability to do things like give the employees a raise. They also didn't mention that their chief competitor was always at a compliance rate above 99% and taking some of their business.

 
Now THAT is the kind of real-world viewpoint often missing in forum discussions about business, software, engineering, etc. Errors have consequences beyond customer dissatisfaction.

I  owned a business ( Cactus )  and so I used to read books and go to seminars about improving your chances of actually making money. 
One lesson that I truly believed in was: 
10 happy customers might tell 10 people about your business in a positive light. 
1 Unhappy customer will tell 20 people or more in a negative light. 
 
Now fast forward to the internet and how consumers shop and make choices about which product to buy. 
There are always those reviews right handy on most shopping sites. I always read the reviews on Sweetwater as example. And for Sonar this forum might be there biggest "review" 
As said,we only hear the loudest from unhappy customers. 
It was even speculated why Cake might want to ditch the forum. 
But I think this forum is golden in keeping them in business because we provide a service to users that they would have to hire more staff to achieve. 
I help out here because I want Cakewalk to get better because then I'm going to benefit too. 

ampfixer
As a former member of the American Society for Quality, I can't get behind a design philosophy that says defects are inevitable. It breeds complacency. Points 2 and 3 of Craig's list can be mitigated by the developer. Point 1 is an embarrassment. If you make something that has a defect through successive revisions, you need to get your house in order. Why? Because that defect will become harder to fix as everything around it changes and more features are added.
 
Don't disagree with Craig's comments but I do have a different view. 

As an enthusiast I couldn't afford to buy virtually bug free software. Do you consider the big three OSs bug free? They aren't. The closest thing I know to bug free is termed safety critical - and that is not bug free, but it's as close as you will get. That is software that, if it fails, could result in the loss of human life. Safety critical OSs cost thousands of dollars. There is a class of tests called modified condition decision coverage -
 
“every condition in a decision in the program has taken all possible outcomes at least once, every decision in the program has taken all possible outcomes at least once, and each condition in a decision has been shown to independently affect that decision’s outcome. A condition is shown to independently affect a decision’s outcome by varying just that condition while holding fixed all other possible conditions” - Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification, Document No. RTCA/DO-178B.
 
And that is just one class of tests, albeit the most expensive. That wouldn't be just the host, but all VSTs and VSTis have to be tested the same way. Safety critical SW has to be certified on specific HW, so you wouldn't be free to buy some generic HW - there would only be some small number of HW platforms you could use. So the HW would likely cost 2 or 3 times what most people are paying and windows/OSX/iOS apps wouldn't run on it so it would be dedicated HW. In general safety critical SW costs about 10 times as much to develop as normal SW, but if there are real-time constraints, think tracking, that number goes up to 20 to 30 times non safety critical costs.
 
Instead of $399, best case, Sonar Platinum would be around $7999, but it would be really solid  Of course you also have to double or triple the cost of the PC you're running on and throw in a couple thousand for the OS so a base DAW would be $12000. Omnisphere would add $9580, but it would be cheaper if it were a HW synth, so we wouldn't have it! Reaktor 6 $3980. 
 
Really?
 
http://www.rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/100010
 
http://www.risktec.co.uk/knowledge-bank/technical-articles/an-introduction-to-safety-critical-software.aspx
 
My 2 cents.
 

Thanks for the information. I agree with you that defect free anything is expensive, no argument. I'm feeling guilty that the thread has been hijacked but if anyone wants to talk about QA theory and application feel free to shoot me a PM.

Don't feel guilty, the question was answered in the first few posts and the subsequent discussion is worthwhile. The cost of music software is very low compared to the potential market size and amount of work required. Companies generally can't do more than they're already doing, or they would do so to gain a competitive advantage. What faces companies is deciding whether they're making the correct tradeoffs. 

vorxio
 
But what happens for the bug/fixes ?  Can I still receive the fixes ?
 
If I bought a software with a defect (that can be introduced in the last rolling update) I would like to have it fixed without "buying it again"
 

What you could easily do if this happened, is to use Command Center to roll back one release prior to the defect that was just introduced in the last rolling update.  Problem solved!

bapu

scottfa
No, and if support is an important criteria i would  read these  forums carefully  before committing to Sonar.  

This forum is an excellent peer to peer help resource.
 
If you are patient and describe your problem in detail I want to say nearly all problems can be solved by many of the users here. I've seen it time and time again and in my own little way I've helped a few too.

Absolutely true... But as has been stated  many  times  this is not support. If the helpful people here such as yourself leave the forum for some reason the end user is out of luck. I can tell you that i have, as an experiment, tried booking a support phone call at least  once a week since last  May and have been unable to do so. If Cakewalk did not have the wonderful people on this forum i do not believe they would still be in business .