ubuntu
In a certain sense Cakewalk/Roland contributed to the "trashing" by turning on the mute button and inundating us with silence. If you alienate your clients, they will eventually trash your products!

They have not done that. They have repeatedly said over the many years that they do not interact on these forums. On rare occasions Noel or someone may post but there is no requirement for it or duty to do so.
 
I don't know where this idea comes from that CW engages people on this forum or that we are owed something from them. What is hard to understand about a peer to peer forum? 
 
If you really care about the product maybe it would be best to have them do their jobs and not stop to answer silly questions from curious forum members.   

mike_mccue
I still think SONAR 8.5 Classic Edition was the best all arounder Audio and MIDI DAW ever.
 
Just a few little fixes that had been on the Cakewalk Do list for about 10 years and it would have been 99% there.
 
I used it for 8 hours yesterday and it still feels fresh. I had Fabfilter stuff on everything and it just works great for me.
 
Every time I look at SONAR X I think it looks like it was made to seem like Home Studio on steroids with an emphasis on drag and drop loop convenience.
 
It's hard to take Pro Channel seriously when you prefer to use top of the field dsp. The claim that independent efx gui windows is confusing cracks me up. Seriously. I think it's funny.
 
The audio tracking features have been downgraded with a clumsy use of display space. The elimination of layers and the crude adoption of lanes defied the acknowledgement that SONAR's layers were one of it's most powerful features... a feature that set it apart and above more popular DAWs like Pro Tools.
 
The friendly names audio input debacle is still a sad, sad joke. All the other DAWs do it the right way while SONAR users explain that never having "input 2" listed as "input 2" is not a big deal. Seriously. I think it's sad. 
 
I think SONAR's drum maps are really sweet. I think they are the best, but I haven't tried Cubase in a while.
 
...
I still like to work in SONAR 8.5 Classic Edition because it has great MIDI tools and the audio works great but I've developed a plan to use less and less MIDI so as to make the most of Pro Tools audio production strengths because it feels like Cakewalk has simply abandoned any efforts to get to 99% and has decided to give away free stuff instead of servicing their top of the line product.

 
I agree with a lot of these points. 8.5 was the high water mark in Sonar's life cycle. Spending time fixing old bugs (corrupt projects, disk may be full errors, etc.), making some needed tweaks, building in true to VST support (it's still just the Fxpansion wrapper built-in and updated), would have been a worthwhile direction for Cakewalk. Some of the GUI ideas in the X series aren't bad, but they were poorly implemented (dockable console: good - giant, non-resizable console: bad), while a lot of the new features are just gimmicky (see Pro Channel), or poorly implemented (Take Layers).
 
Cakewalk should have built upon the strength of 8.5, and looked around at competing DAWs for what were fundamental features that Sonar was lacking, and added those, with more professional oriented "wow" features.
 
Imagine if Sonar X1 was a "super" version of 8.5 with:
 
1. Reaper's routing and Varispeed playback/recording,
2. Logic and Studio One's awesome plugin navigation system,
3. The Studio One plugin Browser,
4. Cubase's Notation (which isn't setting the world on fire but is a big improvement over what's Sonar's had for the last decade),
5. Pro Tools' pen and Beat Detective features,
6. True built-in VST2/3 support,
7. Bug fixes for all the old issues (Disk May Be Full error, Corrupt Project files, etc.)
 
Now, that would have been a Sonar X1 worth having!!! Hell, if it took them up to X2 to add those features, we as users, would still be in a much better place today. I'd trade-in every last bit of X2 for that.
 
Frankly, I'm not surprised at all the recent turnover at Cakewalk. It's quite possible that the powers-that-be weren't happy with the X1/X2 results, held those they viewed as responsible accountable, and are reorganizing to change directions. This would also explain the X2B silence. At least, from a customer-perspective, that would be the best possible scenario. The worst case scenario would be that they're letting the wrong people go for all the wrong reasons, and Sonar will continue to race towards the bottom of the barrel. With Roland being in charge, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter.

From the KVR thread:

Yes, we are going to release 7.0.6, I still cannot give any specifics or a release date, but definitively there is going to be more maintenance updates. 

Best regards, 
GN
----
Guillermo Navarrete, Product Specialist 
Steinberg 
Hamburg, Germany 
Check out Steinberg on Steinberg

 
 

...just sayin'...

vintagevibe
From the KVR thread:

Yes, we are going to release 7.0.6, I still cannot give any specifics or a release date, but definitively there is going to be more maintenance updates. 

Best regards, 
GN
----
Guillermo Navarrete, Product Specialist 
Steinberg 
Hamburg, Germany 
Check out Steinberg on Steinberg

 
 

...just sayin'...

Thats nice but CW doesn't do that as a rule. 
 
Keep in mind I am addressing the notion that CW has somehow stopped talking to us about its future plans. I maintain CW has never talked about its plans. Why is it being viewed as new behavior?  

I used to dream of getting one of these:  
 

Jimbo 88

Leadfoot
Remembering my beloved Tascam 4-track cassette portastudio I had in the mid eighties makes me appreciate the power we have nowadays. Remember the endless bouncing and sound degradation? Sometimes I think that some of the people doing the griping need to go back and re-acquaint themselves with the older technology for a while. Maybe they'll have a new found appreciation for what they're able to accomplish now.

+1...thing is, I could not even afford a 4 track cassette system back in the day those things came out.  Always had gear envy of guys who did. 

John

vintagevibe
From the KVR thread:

Yes, we are going to release 7.0.6, I still cannot give any specifics or a release date, but definitively there is going to be more maintenance updates. 

Best regards, 
GN
----
Guillermo Navarrete, Product Specialist 
Steinberg 
Hamburg, Germany 
Check out Steinberg on Steinberg

 
 

...just sayin'...

Thats nice but CW doesn't do that as a rule. 
 
Keep in mind I am addressing the notion that CW has somehow stopped talking to us about its future plans. I maintain CW has never talked about its plans. Why is it being viewed as new behavior?  

 
I disagree.  While they have always had a policy of not saying when or if new releases were coming they were never this tight lipped about EVERYTHING.  They used to be more open about fixes.  CTO's would post on here about problems people were having.  My take is that after a certain laid off employee posted on here about is dismissal Roland laid the law down.  Anyway I can't ever remember a time (going back to when this was a newsgroup) that they have had a total communication blackout.  It's very distasteful to me.