Funny, I use an old Focusrite Saffire 6 USB on my laptop rig with Notion and have never had a problem!

brundlefly
 

Helene Kolpakova
I recorded the track almost entirely from my keyboard. With minor edits in the piano roll. And you guessed it, the current notation is a total mess. It's absolutely useless as it is right now.

It can probably be improved greatly with the right settings, and some additional editing in the PRV. Here are the main things you will need to do to get the piece to display well as notation:
 
- Record the piece to a click or align SONAR's timeline to it after the fact using Set Measure/Beat At Now (nothing will work as expected if the MIDI isn't closely aligned to the timeline with the correct meter(s) set).
- Manually split left- and right-hand parts of the original track to two new tracks, and designate those two tracks the bass and treble clefs of a grand staff in the Layout section of the Staff View.
- Quantize note start times of these two 'notation' tracks to 100% at the appropriate resolution.
- Set the Display Resolution appropriately, and enable Fill Durations and Trim Durations.
- In areas that still don't display as expected, you will probably need to to do some manual trimming/filling of durations in the PRV to get the desired result.
 
Depending on the style of the composition, there may still be things that SONAR can't get right,  but if it's a 'simple piece' as you described, you should be able to get a serviceable result.

It's nice with workarounds and all.
But underneath suggestions there is compromized art - what and how you play.
Daw should be enabler of art - not disabler.
 
Some proper notation minimum requirements(now not fulfilled in Sonar staff view):
a) handling of midi into notation must be kept separate, not compromizing how you play or anything. Any quantization needed to make it readable is separate system, and all transparent to user. So midi and visual notation are kept as two systems internally.
b) handling of any tuplet category like triplets - again not compromizing what you play.
You should be able to play on 1st and 3rd on triplets, or you leave out most usable beats.
 
Looking for decent notation I ended up buying Cubase Pro, and done that I also started using it for everything and have notation integrated. I looked at 5-6 different separate notation software as well, but total solution was Cubase.
 
I think Mac version is a smart move overall for Sonar in near future, but after that notation is among the very tools that needs getting up to standard. If a carpenters hammer is pointy, it's not much work getting done.

At this point, I've come to accept that notation (Staff View), and to a lesser extent automation editing, remains a limited priority with Sonar. It has certainly received little TLC during the membership period and years before. So in view of being a "lifer" I've lowered my expectations and I'm currently looking a Notion and possibly Cubase for those needs.
 
I can actually believe that my uses of Sonar places me in a minority, and Cakewalk has to do what their customers in general benefit from. I'm sure Analytics will prove that no one uses notation, anyway

Base 57
Analytics will prove that I don't use the Staff View.
 Which is why many folks are worried about analytics. I would LOVE for Staff View to be improved. If I could print out lead sheets or horn parts, piano parts that look like proper sheet music, that would be great. As it is today too much effort is required. It is easier to chart things by hand.

But there will always be notes!  Music and technology will change, but there will always be notation....
 
Exhibit A:  One of the most quoted and borrowed from piece of music in film and pop!
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3izbPKZCc84
 
This piece is about 100 years old.  It survives, despite all the changes in Technology because of the NOTES and notation. In another 100 years it will still be performed and stolen from and quoted. If Sonar wants to survive the next wave of tech changes it needs to grab the common thread first.  Notation.
 
 

A new issue has cropped up with the latest (June, 2016 and some earlier) releases of Platinum.  When inputting notes on the staff with a mouse, the grid doesn't work at all, for example if you choose a quarter-note, and place it on the staff, if you're a bit off the quarter-note will be place 60 ticks from where you want it.  This is because the snap-to grid is stuck on 60 ticks (with a timebase of 480 this is a 32nd note).  It should work so that whatever note value you choose, the snap-to function follows that value, i.e. you select a 16th note and the snap-to grid moves to 120.  This bug makes it hard, not impossible) to always place notes exactly where you want them.  With rolling updates I expect this to be fixed soon...
 
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com
 

Base 57
Analytics will prove that I don't use the Staff View.
Which is why many folks are worried about analytics. 

Consider the alternative: If no one uses the staff view, from analytics alone Cakewalk could just as easily conclude that no one uses it because it doesn't serve peoples' needs. Remember that analytics is only part of how Cakewalk uncovers user preferences. There are also the regular user surveys, this forum, feature requests, and work is nearing completion on the feedback portal. Combining all of these presents a much more complete picture
 
Cakewalk understands "you can't prove a negative." Analytics excel for things that everyone uses, like which plug-ins are most popular, the most-used resolutions and sampling rates, which interfaces are most common, etc. Getting this kind of information from user surveys or the forum would be incredibly time-consuming and probably inaccurate.
 

Nice job Jim!

Anderton

Base 57
Analytics will prove that I don't use the Staff View.
Which is why many folks are worried about analytics. 

Consider the alternative: If no one uses the staff view, from analytics alone Cakewalk could just as easily conclude that no one uses it because it doesn't serve peoples' needs. Remember that analytics is only part of how Cakewalk uncovers user preferences. There are also the regular user surveys, this forum, feature requests, and work is nearing completion on the feedback portal. Combining all of these presents a much more complete picture.
 

I have complete confidence that this is true. The problem is user surveys (I never get these, or e-mail), this forum, feature requests and the upcoming feedback portal will all demonstrate that the analytics are correct.
 
I'm not trying to be negative here. I've been a very happy Twelve Tone / Cake customer for over twenty years. Staff View has always been IMO the weakest part of the program.  However, I used Sibelius for a couple of years and while it made for a prettier page it was a tedious creativity sapping pita to work with. So for my limited score printing needs I have returned to pencil and paper.
 
I am sure the problem with SV is technical beyond my comprehension. When we read a score, musicians see much more than the lines and dots. Just as when people look at a pointillist image, people see art, a computer only sees a bunch of dots.
 
The PRV can be very expressive from a sonic standpoint but is impossible for most musicians to read for performance purposes. Switch to SV and that expressive part is difficult to read at best. Quantize, Fill durations etc. whatever needs to be done to make it look correct in SV, it no longer sounds correct when played through a synth. [Work-around, clone the track. Assign the output of cloned track to unused midi out. Edit the clone. Simple.]
 
It has been a long time since I have used other DAWs or notation apps, but I am sure they all have their flaws regarding notation. As I wrote yesterday I would LOVE to have an improved SV. I plan to become a lifetime member so perhaps one day I will.

Bill Jackson [Cakewalk]
In the spirit of being totally honest, though... I will admit that there are no current developments to the Staff View in progress.

This is sad, very sad.

Afrodrum

Bill Jackson [Cakewalk]
In the spirit of being totally honest, though... I will admit that there are no current developments to the Staff View in progress.

This is sad, very sad.

You're quoting something from January 16, 2015. You may also want to quote Bill's earlier post from the same day to get a better insight into why this thread is still alive. The status Bill referred to at the time may or may not still describe the current situation. Depends if you're a glass is half empty (or half full) user.

I haven't done any experiments generating MUSIC XML from SONAR to take that into a dedicated notation program.  Without reading the other 900+ comments in this thread (I did read the beginning), did anyone report experience doing this?  How did it work?  The times I have worked with Music XML in other programs, the results were buggy, and that's assuming it didn't crash the receiving program.  I would still rather stay in SONAR because I use staff view to edit as well as compose.
 
I would absolutely pay for an add-on to improve staff view in SONAR.  Those of us who need this function to work well, really need it.  I think it is established that there are quite a few of us using notation, but I concur that the rest do not need to pay for it to improve.

michael diemer

Afrodrum

Bill Jackson [Cakewalk]
In the spirit of being totally honest, though... I will admit that there are no current developments to the Staff View in progress.

This is sad, very sad.

Which is why I am now using Reaper. I know that their brand new notation feature will constantly be improved. 

If you are not aware, Steinberg has been developing an all new notation program to compete directly with Sibelius and Finale.  The development is led by Daniel Spreadbury, formerly of Sibelius, and Steinberg hired most of the Sibelius staff when they were made redundant with the Avid takeover of Sibelius.
 
This is a fresh approach to the entire challenge of notational composition.  However, if particular mote is the recent disclosure that the first version of the new product (called Dorico) will include substantial parts of Cubase embedded into and tightly integrated with the notation functions.  It will be possible, for example, to do the composition in notation (notes rests, etc) and then fine tune the playback by adjusting the resulting MIDI -- all from within the single platform.
 
If it is important to have good notation alongside a good DAW capability, this could to be the best solution available for awhile.  V1 ships by the end of the year and will be lacking some features, such as support for chords.

cparmerlee

michael diemer

Afrodrum

Bill Jackson [Cakewalk]
In the spirit of being totally honest, though... I will admit that there are no current developments to the Staff View in progress.

This is sad, very sad.

Which is why I am now using Reaper. I know that their brand new notation feature will constantly be improved. 

If you are not aware, Steinberg has been developing an all new notation program to compete directly with Sibelius and Finale.  The development is led by Daniel Spreadbury, formerly of Sibelius, and Steinberg hired most of the Sibelius staff when they were made redundant with the Avid takeover of Sibelius.
 
This is a fresh approach to the entire challenge of notational composition.  However, if particular mote is the recent disclosure that the first version of the new product (called Dorico) will include substantial parts of Cubase embedded into and tightly integrated with the notation functions.  It will be possible, for example, to do the composition in notation (notes rests, etc) and then fine tune the playback by adjusting the resulting MIDI -- all from within the single platform.
 
If it is important to have good notation alongside a good DAW capability, this could to be the best solution available for awhile.  V1 ships by the end of the year and will be lacking some features, such as support for chords.

It is already possible to do this in Sonar and Reaper. I do most of my work in staff/notation view, and then try to make it sound good by using Sonar/Reaper's DAW feature.
 
If I can get Reaper for 60.00, and Dorico costs 5 or 6 times as much...I bought Reaper.

jsg
quote: "If the millenials don't want or need staff view then maybe we(e) baby boomers and gen x er's are barking up the wrong tree.  I'd love it of course, but maybe it's simply not cost effective.  I just read how Roger Linn is on a mission to *save the note*.   Is that really what it comes down to? :D:D"
 
It's millennials, and the staff view is not a generational thing.  If it were merely a generational preference, how do you explain that notation has been in use for over 1000 years? 
 
JerrySubmit Post
www.jerrygerber.com/symph9mvt4.htm

 
 or that it is now in Reaper, I wouldn't be surprised other DAWs are considering adding notation.