There is an argument most of us have seen pop up from time to time as to whether a staff view should be in a DAW. For once let us conduct this simple request without all the pros and cons and upvote Sonar so they can see it makes a good sales point and makes a number of users very happy. Give cake a little push to devote some serious coding to produce a decent usable staff editor.
 
Regardless of what you think of Protools I urge you to go to their sight and see the Lynda.com demo of Protools 11 Score Editor, which is already a version behing the current release. The layout and time saving processes in many ways gives the same flexibility and logical behaviour as the Sonar piano roll view.
Protools competes in the same marketing sector as Sonar (right down to a monthly sub) and sad to say Protools is winning the race, which is further embedding it as the the pro engineer's tool of choice. 

I along, I am sure, with others that don't have a need for some features in the Sonar DAW; but nonetheless will support a fellow Sonar user. Don't divide or fragment our efforts, instead we should be building a killer feature (if just to stick it to Protools smugness).

As I said at the start let us not use this issue as an excuse  to push some other agenda - 1 progression at a time so as to NOT overburden the code engineer's meetings. :-)
 
 
 
 

I really don't know what more the user base could do to support staff view mods in Sonar. There are 10's if not 100's of threads on this subject going back years. I have given up on this because Cake is gonna do what they are gonna do. I kept hoping for a surprise announcement (like the reversal on Mac OSX Alpha) but I have given up even hoping. A major reason I bought Cubase was the notation.

I don't think the bottleneck is convincing Cakewalk to spend development time on staff view, but convincing Cakewalk not to spend development time on enhancing aspects of the program they believe are wanted by the greatest number of users. (Also, what exists is sufficiently functional for many users; e.g., see the article "Anatomy of a SONAR Project: Virtual Harmonics" in the February eZine.)
 
PLEASE don't interpret the above as my saying I wouldn't want to see a world-class Staff View in SONAR - I would, if for no other reason than to appeal to the educational market, and to provide a competitive edge over DAWs that don't have a Staff View (e.g., Studio One, Ableton, Bitwig, Reason, etc.). Cakewalk can correct me if I'm wrong, but realistically I see only three ways an enhanced staff view could happen in the near future: 

• Technology, or a turnkey solution, becomes available that allows implementing an enhanced Staff View. The "turnkey solution" is basically what Avid did for Pro Tools; they bought Sibelius, so all they had to do was integrate existing code. OTOH new technology is what allowed a Mac version of SONAR to get off the ground (which underlines the "never say never" effect ). If a better Staff View does happen in the near future, my bet would be that one of these would be the reason, not Cakewalk taking developers off other projects to do Staff View.
• There has been a change of priorities among the general SONAR user base, and a greater number of SONAR users now want Staff View enhancements compared to more general enhancements that are also time-consuming/complex (e.g., plug-in load balancing to allow loading more plug-ins with greater dropout resistance, better comping and take management, etc.).
• Instead of hiring more support people, which is the #1 priority for now, Cakewalk decides to leave support as is and shift resources to hiring developers who specialize in notation. 

However - there are some pretty smart people on this forum, so just because I can't think of more options doesn't mean someone else won't.

microapp
I really don't know what more the user base could do to support staff view mods in Sonar. There are 10's if not 100's of threads on this subject going back years. I have given up on this because Cake is gonna do what they are gonna do. I kept hoping for a surprise announcement (like the reversal on Mac OSX Alpha) but I have given up even hoping. A major reason I bought Cubase was the notation.

And meanwhile brag about how they listened to us.

Kamikaze

microapp
I really don't know what more the user base could do to support staff view mods in Sonar. There are 10's if not 100's of threads on this subject going back years. I have given up on this because Cake is gonna do what they are gonna do. I kept hoping for a surprise announcement (like the reversal on Mac OSX Alpha) but I have given up even hoping. A major reason I bought Cubase was the notation.

And meanwhile brag about how they listened to us.

If that's actually intended to be a serious comment, I'll take the time to give you a serious answer and list all the features and fixes that have been implemented in direct response to community requests.
 
With all due respect, Microapp recognizes that different programs emphasize different features. Notation is very important to him, so he uses a program that, along with Logic, has emphasized notation since Day 1. People whose priority is a gapless audio engine use Live. People whose priority is exchanging files with studios that come from a 24-track 2" heritage and don't need advanced MIDI use Pro Tools. I use SONAR because my priority is being able to handle an extremely wide range of projects. And so on. 
 
Not only has Cakewalk never promised they would enhance staff view - so you can't say they're leading you on - Bill Jackson specifically stated Cakewalk's position in the last thread. Instead of saying "OK, thanks for being straight with us," the reaction from some Staff View advocates was essentially "that's not a good enough answer, we demand enhanced staff view because what we want is more important than what other people want."
 
You're acting like Cakewalk could do notation easily, and they're just blowing you off. Nothing could be further from truth. Well, except for "Cakewalk doesn't listen to the community."
 
For the record, I'll say it once more: I've love to see SONAR have a world-class Staff View. I'd also love to see Tesla cars cost $30,000 instead of what they cost now. Maybe someday they will, but I'd be wasting my time to gather a group of people to demand Tesla produce a $30,000 car. Granted, a huge breakthrough in battery technology could make it possible...but my asking for a $30,000 car isn't going to produce a breakthrough in battery technology. A breakthrough in battery technology will produce a $30,000 car.

Also for the record, I totally respect vmw's opinion and his motivation. It wasn't "all about me," it was all about making SONAR a better program, which we all want. The stumbling block is that different people have very different ideas about what would make SONAR a better program. The best Cakewalk can do is try to make the majority happy, because there aren't the resources to take care of everyone's requests.
 
But there are also two fine points upon which I'd like to comment. The first is the appeal to all users of SONAR. Not all users want notation. Now, what's really cool about vmw is he makes it very clear that whether he needs a feature or not, he supports those users who want their pet features to happen. I think he's probably the kind of person who even if he didn't want synth recording, would be aware of the large number of requests for it, and feel a certain satisfaction that those people got what they wanted. But the problem is some requests are easy to satisfy, and some are difficult. Unfortunately notation belongs in the latter category...think of it as the MIDI guitar of software 
 
The second is that "Pro Tools is winning the race." Unfortunately, the entire industry is losing the race. Sales of DAWs and interfaces have declined year over year for the past five years, and Pro Tools continues to decline in absolute numbers as well; it's been difficult for programs that were dependent primarily on the Mac platform to survive in light of the Mac cutting the price of Logic to $199 and giving away GarageBand for free. I won't argue with those who believe Apple  purposely devalued software so they could more easily sell high-margin hardware. Pro Tools remains the big fish, but it's in an ever-smaller pond...furthermore, the number of interfaces sold vastly outnumbers the number of DAWs sold. So either people who own DAWs like to buy several new interfaces every year, or people are stealing software but they can't steal an interface, so they have to buy one.
 
Cakewalk is actually bucking the downward trend. And there are some companies that are doing very well, like Focusrite and Universal Audio. But, survival in this market is like walking a tightrope, and anything can happen. The problem with notation that keeps being glossed over is that it's very difficult to get right. If it was easy, I assume Avid and PreSonus would have hired a couple programmers to write a great staff view instead of coughing up the money to buy Sibelius and Notion respectively (and even with Notion, SOP still doesn't have a staff view. That's not a knock on PreSonus, just an indication that it's not easy).
 
Reality is not always the way we like it. If we can change it, so much the better. But some aspects are easier to change than others, like notation...and human nature 

vmw
Protools competes in the same marketing sector as Sonar (right down to a monthly sub) and sad to say Protools is winning the race, which is further embedding it as the the pro engineer's tool of choice.

The fault in the logic of statements like the above, is that appealing to engineers gets you a very small percentage of the market, compared to DIY users and musicians.

That means less development dollars. If professionals alone, could support a product like a modern DAW? Then Avid's profits wouldn't be going down the toilet! Engineers might like it, but most DIY engineers and musos seem to find PT clunky.

Also the user market for notation products is tiny and if Avid are winning that race against Sonar? They're winning a very tiny race!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against notation. Like Craig, I wouldn't mind seeing a better staff, drum and score view, but I wouldn't want them to halt everything else to make a better score editor. Other notation programs took entire teams to create them and Avid didn't make their own. They brought one and bolted it on.

Similarly Steinberg hired the old sibelius team to create Dorico. So instead of asking Cake to make one that's better, you should be appealing to Gibson to buy something like Finale and bolt it onto Sonar.

Anderton
I don't think the bottleneck is convincing Cakewalk to spend development time on staff view, but convincing Cakewalk not to spend development time on enhancing aspects of the program they believe are wanted by the greatest number of users.
 

Exactly, Craig.
I think by now Cakewalk has a fairly accurate idea of the interest in notation for every type of Sonar user. It is not like nobody ever mentioned it.
They have at least an estimate of potential income vs development cost. 
It is up to them to make a business judgment. They chose other things as being more important than notation at least for now. If there was a choice between Mac OSX support and notation I would choose OSX support (and there is no chance whatsoever I will ever buy a Mac). It is simply a better business decision and Cakewalk most likely has some data to back it up..
I would prefer they ignore notation completely if it is not possible to produce a top-notch product and notation is NOT that easy.

Anderton

Kamikaze
 
And meanwhile brag about how they listened to us.

If that's actually intended to be a serious comment........

 
Yes it was, and I don't really care about what followed

Kamikaze

Anderton

Kamikaze
 
And meanwhile brag about how they listened to us.

If that's actually intended to be a serious comment........

Yes it was

 
Then refer to the end of this post. I didn't take the time to research all the bug fixes that have been collected in the eZine but you're welcome to look through them. You'll recognize dozens of fixes that were first brought up in the forums. Also look for the threads where people mentioned gratitude for fixes that were made.
 

and I don't really care about what followed

 
Of course not! Why care about a detailed, logical post when making snarky, misleading statements is so much easier?
 
All of the following were requested by the community. Of course there were also additions that weren’t requested by the community, but have turned out to been very popular (e.g., VocalSync, Smart Swipe, Mix Recall, better ARA integration - this allows for features like superior tempo extraction, IRs for ReMatrix Solo, etc.).

• Synth recording
• Greater color customization
• Comping and take lane improvements
• Mac OS X version
• Better plug-in management
• More mastering capabilities
• QWERTY keyboard controller (Cakewalk added a touch virtual keyboard as well, although few people had asked for it)
• Monthly payment plans
• Free update from TH2 to TH3
• Additional themes
• Staff view fixes
• Better logic for instrument solo and drum maps
• More default colors in the color picker
• Tempo extraction - the ability to sync to tracks played in free time
• Aux tracks and patch points
• Numerous speed optimizations
• MIDI Engine enhancements that eliminated stuck notes
• Relative Video path
• Upsampling
• Windows 10 compatibility (the day it was released, FYI)
• Drum Replacer
• Enhancements to Mix Recall

 
...and read the list of bug fixes in the eZine, most of which were user-driven.
 
Saying Cakewalk hasn't been listening to what the community wants is absurd. Some could even argue that because Cakewalk has done the above instead of enhancing Staff View, they have indeed been listening to the community.