FWIW, I agree that list this would be a good thing to put on the web site. It probably wouldn't matter too much to first time buyers, or casual users, but to upgraders, and especially long term users, it really helps to flesh out the "What's New" page, which was the first page I looked at, and the page I've returned to a few times already. Maybe a simple "Under the Hood" link for those who are interested.

FWIW, I agree that list this would be a good thing to put on the web site. It probably wouldn't matter too much to first time buyers, or casual users, but to upgraders, and especially long term users, it really helps to flesh out the "What's New" page, which was the first page I looked at, and the page I've returned to a few times already. Maybe a simple "Under the Hood" link for those who are interested.

God you have good ideas!

ORIGINAL: John

FWIW, I agree that list this would be a good thing to put on the web site. It probably wouldn't matter too much to first time buyers, or casual users, but to upgraders, and especially long term users, it really helps to flesh out the "What's New" page, which was the first page I looked at, and the page I've returned to a few times already. Maybe a simple "Under the Hood" link for those who are interested.

God you have good ideas!

THAT WAS MINE FIRST!!!

Thanks very much for this.

Agreed with what others said about making this kind of thing a permanent sub-section of the "what's new" blurb. So few developers give out this kind of info, but it's precisely the kind of thing I always want to know, and I'm plainly not alone there.

I also think that we're past the point of massive paradigm shifts in DAWs, at least for the time being, so these kind of refinements are becoming far more important to upgrade customers. Possibly less for new customers, but then again, those customers might be moving from another program, and seeking to compare on precisely these kind of issues.

I didn't even get past the first section. That's all I needed to hear. Can't wait to get my copy in the mail. In fact can I just go pick it up?

I think this thread convinced me to throw down my $180 for the upgrade. THIS is what I've been waiting for.
I go to the reaper forums and see a lot of stuff like this. A long list of drawn-out fixes and improvements. I'm very happy to see that Cakewalk has worked on a list like this.
I was never upset per say with the performance of Sonar, but if it's faster and behaves better than I'm all for it!

Real programming, what's that? <g> Seriously what was unprecedented for us, was the amount of work that was done this time on internals - i.e. features that are not directly user visible or stuff that looks very simple on the surface. Myself and Keith spent the greater part of this year staring at code in the audio engine. When you see code permanently etched on your retina you know you have a problem :-)

Overall I hope this explanation helps makes the case to our users for optimizations and internals being treated as equal to other user visible features. I've seen posts where users feel that they shouldn't have to pay for optimizations.
If anything optimizations are far more costly to implement and test than many normal features. Why? Because they potentially require very extended testing. For a case in question - the feature I worked on to allow dynamic reloading of the audio engine. This was required to allow making dynamic configuration changes. Though it was implemented early this year it took many months of tweaking to get the bugs out and make it work right. There were hundreds of little exception cases to cover. The same applied to dynamic arm and the innocent looking "MinimizeDriverStateChanges" feature (required to keep ASIO/WDM devices independently running from the transport). Both these exposed a ton of driver incompatibilities that we had to work around and/or work with hardware vendors to help them resolve their problems.

Our beta testers sure had their work cut out for them this time round and we're grateful for their help and patience while we worked through all of this.

ORIGINAL: Rothchild

If you'd had said that the first time I'd have ordered it on Monday! ;-)

Thanks Noel, this really is far more interesting and shows that ya'll have been doing some real programing and not just negotiating license deals on soft synths! :-p

Ta
Child

You could always reorder ;-)

ORIGINAL: mudgel

Another big thanks from me but I'd already ordered within minutes of availability.

Noel;

This excellent unsolicited posting by you is exactly why I am a Cakewalk customer.

It is why I commit 99% of my client work to Sonar and why I have chosen Sonar to teach in my University courses. Thank you, and let you team know that those of us who professionally use this product every day appreciate the work.

-D

While I loved the MIDI improvements in 7, (which were essential for me), this update has me even a little more excited for some reason.

Noel may recall that I had some serious motorboating problems last year and had to resort to firing up my Cubase 4 license during an emergency scoring session while a workaround was figured out here. (Oh no! Gasp! What shall we do!? LOL) Noel also knows the benchmark-aware of us really wanted to get some more under-the-hood improvements, and all I have to say, is look at all the goodies in S8 related to the engine! This, plus a few other key updates (specifically, h264 and instrument tracks), really make this upgrade more exciting to me than 7.

Heck, I'm even happy to finally get a live input bounce! I'd like to see this available without having to "bounce to tracks" -- but hey, now we have the core functionality of it built-in. I'll put in my feature request for an improvement to it in a month or two. ;) No need to get greedy, yet.

I am also really interested to see how the new GUI updating improvements will affect my interface experience with some plugins under high loads (i.e. Arturia plugins get really bogged down in S7 under high load) and I will even be looking forward to seeing how the new tweaks to timeline/VSTTimeInfo issues will affect some plugins. I have a few that behave a little differently in Sonar than they do in Cubase or Live, for example, and I'm curious to see if the timestamp/timeline has anything to do with it, or if any of the other VST improvements will change their behavior.

I also like the other refinements, like arming/disarming during recording, playback... that's great. And then I appreciate all the ASIO work that was done.

I'm even tempted to fire up Vista x64 again. :)

As I mentioned in another thread, I kind of look at this upgrade as a "meat and potatoes" upgrade versus a "flashy" upgrade. I appreciate that Noel has code imprinted on his retinas, and I can't wait to see all these improvements in action. To me, these, plus h264 and instrument tracks make the whole package easily worth the upgrade price. The other new plugins, while very nice, are frosting on the "cake."

"Some folks don't think they should have to pay for upgrades"

It is completely beyond me how anyone with a 3 digit IQ could think that Cakewalk should spend a year working on their code (in any area) and then not expect to get paid for it

Einstein was right - the most plentiful thing in the universe is not hydrogen - it is stupidity

I'm excited to receive my upgrade and appreciate the hard work Cakewalk put into this version - it sounds like it will be great

Brammer

Very interesting. This I think is enough for me to upgrade from v6. The new plugs and stuff are interesting, but improved functionality is the most important thing to me.

Very good insight and precise Noel... it's all in the detail as they say

so here's a few questions

1) which was the biggest headache to implement or fix (ya know.. that illusive warning message/logic error even though the code has no errors) ?
2) which part if you could choose only one thing are the Dev team most proud of ?
3) Jolt cola or copious amounts of coffee ?

For a fellow Sonar user who is unable to access to the Internet at work:

"Will Sonar 8 still work properly with a single processor CPU?"

Thanks!

(Ordered my upgrade this AM!)

Doug