Sonar 3 through Sonar 5 when Ron Kuper was focused on making the audio engine more efficient, and he was posting in the public forums all the time about it.

I'll chime in. I did beta work way back when Michael Nicholas was doing the support. I left because I was busting my butt to make the program better as were all the testers. The results were 3 versions of cwpa that were loaded with bugs that still got released. I actually started using Paris audio or something. Then Cake PA 9 came out, which was one of the best versions ever.

I used Sonar but didn't really jump back on board until Sonar 5, which to me was another killer version. 6 came out and I had nothing but problems with midi. One of the bakers contacted me to beta test a few things to help fix the midi and we did. I felt pretty happy to have been a.part of that.

After the fiasco of Sonar X1, I was asked to be a beta tester and jumped at the chance in hopes we'd never see anything like that again. Of course I took it too seriously and had to be reprimanded a few times. I nearly left twice because I just felt like once again, I wasn't being heard. Features being changed and altered by people that develop the program.....while people like me sat and used it working 14 hour days. I told one dude in private "if you used this program to complete 3-5 songs in their entirety, I'd be impressed." He never replied.

As things progressed, we testers were starting to make a difference. We had more baker interaction and could actually speak to them when we needed them. Getting to know Noel and Willy, Keith and a few others was quite awesome. Sometimes they took the baker hats off and were just like us.

Gibson took over and baker interaction was less and less. A few guys were let go or left making the work load insane. Bug reports remained open so I sort of lost my will to push on. Besides, by this time the program was really stable anyway. All the stuff I found was minor....but I still did the work. From sort of backing down from the beta stuff, I stayed away from the forum too. I gave away a lot of free advice and ate quite a bit of crap at times. It wasn't worth it to me to get all huffy over people who wouldn't have the guts to say what they said on here to anyone's face in person. Seeing people like them running around saying whatever they wanted made me sick. I was glad the bakers hired us to be forum hosts. To this day I've never banned a soul...so if you got roughed up, it wasn't me! ;)

The good thing about my beta work here was, dropping the Cakewalk name helped me get into other companies where I test like ceremony, fxpansion, acme bar gig and Fractal Audio where I'm now also a legit endorsed artist sitting along side of guys like Vai and Petrucci. So it's been a really great experience for me and I have no regrets.

As long as Sonar works for me, I'll not be jumping ship. I have a well oiled machine. I don't need to update and upgrade to the latest and greatest all the time. Drivers, configurations, troubleshooting, aren't you guys tired of that? I retired my two work horse computers from the net, updates and upgrades. I turn on my system everyday and work without issues like I'm using a hardware recorder. If I was left with sonar plat and these machines for the rest of my life, I'd be golden. Don't be too fast to look for something else if what you have works great. :)

-Danny