Please add an LFO tool!

space_cowboy
K Perry you seem to get my point. I have never been good at drawing a straight line with a ruler, much less something on the pc.  

Anderton

sharke
 
The automation shape drawing tools are horrible, let's face it. If you're looking to create a very definite sine wave, for example, it's very hard to get exactly what you want. I find it hard to get the curve started the way I intend. It's one of those things you have to fiddle around with for ages to get it just right (even with the shift key held - you almost always end up with a "botched" start to the curve), and even if you do get it right, implementing it across an entire track is troublesome as the screen scrolls. I've been using Sonar for about 5 years and have never gotten the hang of it - just imagine a kid firing up Sonar for the first time and wanting to apply some cool LFO effects. He's going to give up pretty easily. 
 
Here's a screencast of my typical botched efforts to draw an LFO effect with the shape drawing tools. I'm sure lots of you have the same frustration. 
 

 
Look...I know you're a bright guy, but the things you seem to find difficult are easy to do. Cubase and SONAR offer the same way of doing this because it works and is flexible. I can draw a perfect waveform of any phase or amplitude I want, offset by any amount I want, with dynamically varying depth that doesn't require creating another envelope, any time I want...and tweak it afterward, create any waveform, etc. etc. 
 
I think explaining this would make a great column for Sound on Sound, although I question how important it is musically to be able to do these things. The main place I want modulation changes is with virtual instruments, and since the invention of matrix modulation, they all pretty much have it anyway. If not, the Z3TA makes a great multi-purpose processor/panner/synchronized filter.
 
But if I do need to use LFO modulation for volume and panning, there are plenty of simple ways to do it, and they offer a great deal of flexibility. I really don't see the problem. I do agree that a kid firing up the program for the first time will not find it easy, but the kid is probably using virtual instruments that do what's needed so the idea of modulating volume faders or panning would seem redundant. And if it needs to be applied to audio tracks...SONAR has several variations on the tools needed to do it. I just don't any of this as a roadblock to making music.
 
How about this. Instead if rhetorical questions, give an example of some musical modulation effect you're tried to create in SONAR but found too difficult, post a short musical example so I can get the context, and I'll do a quick video on the easiest/fastest way I know of to make it happen using SONAR's toolset.

Anderton
Because it isn't "problematic and fiddly" if you simply want periodic waveforms, like the OP requested. If the OP had requested something as arcane as your "challenge," I would not have responded because I wouldn't have been able to provide an answer that would have allowed him to do what he requested. He thought what he wanted to do required having an LFO, which SONAR doesn't have, so I solved his problem within the existing toolset.

Anderton
You did not include a short audio example, as requested, so I could have a musical context of what you were trying to accomplish - which was the whole point of my offering a way to come up with a way to do something equivalent with SONAR's toolset. Anyway, I'll take it on faith it these kind of operations are essential to your music, and I will take your word for it that there are easier ways to do those things than with SONAR. However, I was curious how difficult it would be to do those in SONAR (I never know what I'll find out when doing research anyway, so it's always worth learning), and found the following (if you really want me to waste my time taking a screen capture movie, uploading, etc. I will if you don't believe me):
 
(1) in 25 seconds. 
(2) in 29 seconds, however this left a space at the beginning of where the 45 degree out of phase waveform started. If it's necessary to delete that space, it took another 10 seconds (thank you, ripple editing).
(3) If you want a perfectly straight line, it's not possible in SONAR. If you're willing to settle for a line so straight no human being on the face of the earth could tell the difference between it and a straight line...3 seconds, 5 seconds to redo if it wasn't straight enough.

AndertonBut I find this type of "challenge" meaningless. All programs can do things other programs can't do. Try to duplicate the following using anything but SONAR's waveform drawing tools...particularly the real-time instant phase changes, the hard limiting of the peaks and valleys, and the offset to optimize the excursion to a chorus unit's modulation rate: 
 

 
This has a valid musical application, and you can hear this technique used on my Neo- album and on my next project, Simplicity. As mentioned, I don't particularly want the regular whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of an LFO all over the place. By limiting excursions and changing offsets, I can create constantly varying changes that aren't predictable, but are loosely under my control so they aren't totally random. Furthermore, I can overwrite sections easily (come to think of it, I should have demoed that...it's pretty dramatic), change amplitudes of particular sections while leaving other undisturbed, and so on.