Customers who require technical support and are not receiving it are the damaged parties. Cakewalk should assist and not criticize those parties.

mcdonalk
Customers who require technical support and are not receiving it are the damaged parties. Cakewalk should assist and not criticize those parties.

Where's the criticism from Cakewalk? They acknowledge there is a problem and are working to fix it. 

Been waiting over a month for support in my issue which consisted of sonar reverting to demo mode even though I have already paid well over 12 months of installments .I tired rolling back a few versions thanks to suggestions posted on here from helpful users but that didn't work. I was forced to make further payments for the ability to save and export even though I already own all I needed .
Still no reply to my email's and phone support hasn't been a option for 3 weeks .since the lifetime updates support is non existent .
I knew it would happen and it has, my issue is something only cakewalk themselves can solve as it is account related but fair play for anything related to the program itself you cannot beat this site .

Mr. Anderton,
I've been reading your columns for years...no...decades...long before I was a Cakewalk user.
I really like the functioning parts of Cakewalk Sonar Platinum but
1. Cakewalk has listed funtions in the users manual that techs could not get to function in my Platinum DAW. Even after updating Windows 8.1 and uninstalling and re-installing Platinum, these functions are NOT working as stated in the user's manual. These are not obscure functions. These are heavily needed functions: Select any or all tracks, hold [control] change edit filter from clip to automation or back. They wrote a tech report in February and after checking for days and weeks, they never addressed it ever again.
Also, the manual shows that any selected tracks can be "bounced to tracks" for an internal bounce and that always corrupted some soft synths. Never worked properly.
 
If I could change the name from NEVER to Woefully Inadequate, I will do that in a second. I do not know how to change the title.

Chuck Jones: I believe your upset because a couple features are not working the way you want them to so you use Cakewalks site to start a petition against buying their products ?
 
Seriously, Chuck...which part don't you understand? I am not complaining because something is not working the way I want it to work. I am upset because I bought this software based on features that Cakewalk have included online and nobody has corrected the manual or told me I'm doing anything wrong, so don't tell me that the problems I'm experiencing are of my own creation. They are not.

I hope this gets sorted out for you.   It's easy for people to get really irate when software doesn't work for them. Check out gaming threads.  If it were a toaster you can take it back.
 Too bad DAWs are treated like religions.  When one is irate it is very hard to choose our words carefully. When we don't it offends those religious ones and a jihad breaks out and you get that "beat down Sonar style".
 
 Believe it or not there are some support issues even developers get stumped. Few people probably remember Gigastudio 2. People could have almost identical setups and different issues.  Back when Yellow Tools was around I would get an odd error only on one system.
 
 Sometimes the only fix is to switch religions despite the money invested. Later one you could try a demo and see if the issue was solved.
  

chuckebaby
This will be my last post....

I'm hoping that you mean just for this thread! 
 
Walt

bgl1
It did not happen when Roland owned Cakewalk.

 
Not true at all. There was considerable dissatisfaction with Cakewalk support during the Roland era, as this article details (it's not a forum post or thread, it's an article from NJN Network and brings up some interesting points - like how Cakewalk should simply give up on free support and start charging). Consider yourself fortunate your problems were addressed. Or consider this thread from 2006. I was able to find these within seconds of asking Google; there are plenty more.
 
But it's not surprising. People have always complained about Cakewalk support, just as people complain about Native Instruments, Steinberg, Microsoft, Apple, and anyone else who makes software. There are even threads littering the internet that complain about Waves, which most people consider as having some of the best support around.
 
I could just as easily dredge up plenty of threads about Cakewalk support being helpful since Gibson acquired the company, like this one, this one, this one from two weeks ago, this one, this one, this one...and here's one that complains about Studio One support, praises Cakewalk support, and then pans Cakewalk support. Go figure. 
 
Of course there have been major/serious issues lately, but they're in the process of being fixed. You can't just snap your fingers and have fully trained employees answering questions about SONAR. But I've been tracking the progress in hiring because naturally, I too am concerned, and there are people being hired. There's not much else Cakewalk can do to improve support right now other than hire more people to provide it, so that's what they're doing (as well as working on the feedback portal). Meanwhile, issues are being solved...just not enough, and not fast enough. But this too shall pass. 
 
Meanwhile, I'l remind everyone that Obedia.com provides excellent phone support for SONAR. You need to pay, but compared to just about any other company that charges per incident, their prices are extremely reasonable. Most importantly, they don't just support SONAR, they will find out what's wrong with your computer if that's where the problem lies. After all, you really can't expect Cakewalk to support products from (for example) Dell and Microsoft...yet some of the people who complain about Cakewalk support, as well as support from other DAW companies, expect exactly that. When I've had computer problems that affected SONAR (twice), Obedia solved them in under 15 minutes, which also improved the performance of programs other than SONAR.

To all of you who are offering advice for the problems I've experienced with Cakewalk Sonar Platinum:
 
1. I appreciate the desire to help me solve the 2 overarching problems that I've experienced. These are not obscure problems. They are much needed functions that are listed in the manual that are not working on my system. Asus laptop, Windows 8.1, 16gig RAM, i7 (3rd generation) processor, M-Audio Fast Track Pro set to Wave 16bit/44.1k, Sonar Platinum 22.7.0.
 
2. These are not problems that have not been addressed by Cakewalk Tech Support. They've logged into my system a few times in the late winter and early spring and never solved these issues. My sessions are rather large and full of synth and fx plugs. Using lanes helps but they suck up so much screen real estate that I really do want to be able to view automation without using lanes.
 
3. I can switch my view filter across multiple audio tracks but only one instrument track at a time. That is maddeningly inconvenient. I appreciate all the advice I've gotten from so many people over the years, but with my current "fat" sessions, some well needed AND PROMISED functionality has never worked for me...nor for Techs who've logged in tried it for themselves, AND, written up but never addressed these issues. I'm sure you understand my frustration. I've got more work to do and I've always gotten through with "work-arounds" and that's not right.
 
4. Mr. Anderton, I will never be your boss. Receiving good advice...fantastic. Bossing you....nope.
 
Bruce
 

I suppose it is all relative.  Ever try to get iPhone support?  You can wait for two hours at the Genius Bar and the solution will probably be to buy a new phone.  My intent is not to insult Apple: just to provide perspective.
 
I got very frustrated when I had Sonar problems that took a couple of weeks to resolve, but when you consider how deep the software is and how little it costs relative to the development, I understand that Cakewalk can't realistically have 100s of people standing by.  It sounds like they are working to improve.

bgl1
To all of you who are offering advice for the problems I've experienced with Cakewalk Sonar Platinum:
 
1. I appreciate the desire to help me solve the 2 overarching problems that I've experienced. These are not obscure problems. They are much needed functions that are listed in the manual that are not working on my system. Asus laptop, Windows 8.1, 16gig RAM, i7 (3rd generation) processor, M-Audio Fast Track Pro set to Wave 16bit/44.1k, Sonar Platinum 22.7.0.
 
2. These are not problems that have not been addressed by Cakewalk Tech Support. They've logged into my system a few times in the late winter and early spring and never solved these issues. My sessions are rather large and full of synth and fx plugs. Using lanes helps but they suck up so much screen real estate that I really do want to be able to view automation without using lanes.
 
3. I can switch my view filter across multiple audio tracks but only one instrument track at a time. That is maddeningly inconvenient. I appreciate all the advice I've gotten from so many people over the years, but with my current "fat" sessions, some well needed AND PROMISED functionality has never worked for me...nor for Techs who've logged in tried it for themselves, AND, written up but never addressed these issues. I'm sure you understand my frustration. I've got more work to do and I've always gotten through with "work-arounds" and that's not right.
 
4. Mr. Anderton, I will never be your boss. Receiving good advice...fantastic. Bossing you....nope.
 
Bruce
 

Based on this description, that you CAN switch edit filters en masse as described in the manual for audio tracks but NOT on Instrument tracks, then this is NOT a technical support issue. It is a "Problem Reporter" issue.
 
So IF the edit filters on Quick Grouped Instrument tracks are indeed supposed to change simultaneously (I am not sure but yeah, I'd say they probably should and I would say this is a "bug") then the appropriate way to deal with it is to create a Problem Report and send it to Cake so the development team can add it to their list of things that need to be fixed.
 
When you called Cakewalk and they confirmed the issue though they likely create the Problem Report on their end and added it to the queue.
 
These Reports are NOT dealt with sequentially based on when the reports are received. There is a "triage" system so the most problematic bugs that are affecting the most amount of users get fast tracked to the top of the development team's to do list. Lower priority bugs stay in the queue until there is nothing more pressing to be fixed. Sometimes these issues stay there for YEARS because they affect so few people and/or although perhaps annoying (and in some cases EXTREMELY annoying) to specific users they aren't actually making it so important tasks simply cannot be done at all (eg: In this case sure, having to manually change each edit filter one at a time is time consuming but they are changing and the outcome is the same as if the Quick Grouping was working).
 
Many people here have sepent a LOT of time carefully putting together Problem Reports using the advised procedure. Usually it starts with posting (to this Sonar sub forum) a description of the problem, a list of steps to reproduce and then waiting for other people to test the issue to see if it is affecting everyone or if it is system specific. If it is confirmed then the next step is to create the official Problem Report and send it to Cakewalk. It gets added to the queue and that's that. It either gets fixed or it doesn't.
 
Keep in mind that...
 
a) Some issues that may seem very minor are actually a HUGE problem to fix. As in to correct the issue a whole swath of code needs to be dug into that could potentially break many MANY other things that would cause many MANY more problems for many MANY more users. That's why over the past few years Cakewalk has been progressively gutting out these old and busted chunks of code so they can fix things more easily/add previously impossible new features in the future without wreaking havoc on the program.
 
b) That Cakewalk is a smallish company with limited development resources. It ain't Microsoft with building full of code monkeys all slapping away day and night (and in MS's case screwing things up anyway... lol). Thus the triaging. Also Cake might receive a dozen or so reports of the same issue so it may seem like you are being ignored but it would be impractical to keep every single person reporting the same bug(s) completely in the loop as to the status of these issues. Nothing would get done.
 
So you can never know exactly what the hold up is on your own pet bug. What I CAN tell you is that since X2 I have personally had a whole slew of EXTREMELY problematic bugs (and some less catastrophic ones) slowly get fixed randomly over time. Seriously I was ready to jump ship near the end of the X2 cycle and was VERY upset (to the point of getting into some heated arguments with a couple Bakers here on the forum). These days the monthly eZines have a laundry list of issues that have been resolved since the last release (before you had to wait/hope for a quickfix patch or an entire year for a new version). Many of the problems are ANCIENT and some are new little things that have popped up during the current code cleanup/implementation of new features. Based on that I think Cake have gotten to a point where they aren't in constant "emergency" mode trying to stomp down really nasty bugs and are able to chip away at these smaller issues that have been piling up over the years. A very good sign IMO.
 
Now I am not trying to chastise or deride you. Just pointing out the realities of the situation so you don't continue to waste your time yelling at clouds (or at least yelling at the WRONG clouds) and don't antagonize the forum members who are willing to trip over themselves to help with whatever they can. Even the Bakers have a breaking point when it comes to the "squeaky wheelers" who refuse to understand what's going on (which is why I'm assuming they have not reached out to you based on this thread... at least not publicly).
 
Based on the info provided so far everything that can be done about your problems has been done. Now it's up to the development team and as noted they are likely busy with current projects/more important problem reports. Heck, they may even have this scheduled for repair in the near future BUT they simply cannot drop everything at the snap of yours (or anyone's) fingers to deal with issues the instant they are reported. They have a schedule.
 
The ONLY thing you can do at this point is make a choice for YOURSELF as to whether the issue(s) you are experiencing are "deal breakers" or decide to stick with it and use workarounds provided here or you concoct yourself. For example there are a whole SLEW of bugs that recently held me up on some work I've been doing. They were somewhat obscure but they actually made the work IMPOSSIBLE in Sonar after a certain point. So I simply figured out how to get that part of the project done in Reaper and then once completed moved everything back into Sonar. Annoying? Definitely but nothing is perfect so use what you got to git 'er dun.
 
As for the support issues I already stated my thoughts on that earlier. It is indeed a really ridiculous scenario but again there are ways to get help in the meantime.
 
You, my friend, however do not need tech support for the issues described. You need some patience and a willingness to accept and implement the workarounds suggested until development gets a chance to fix the problem (which could take years so better get started on those workarounds). Otherwise you just need to try another DAW that works how you like... but it is HIGHLY unlikely you will EVER find one that does all things exactly to your tastes/needs.
 
There is no perfect DAW. There is no perfect program.
 
Good luck and consider what I've said here. You will have a much easier time of things when you don't get too bogged down in the little annoyances.
 
Cheers.

As Mr. Anderton mentioned quite a few posts ago I should change the name from NO tech support, to woefully inadequate tech support. Is that even possible?
 
I've found many workarounds to keep going on these rather involved sessions.
 
A report was created in February and never updated nor addressed in any way. How long should I wait?
 
I am 1, quite frustrated at the predicaments I'm in, and 2, i'm appreciative of all the helpful advice that people offer, and 3, admittedly, I'm still not sure how long I should wait for these issues to get resolved.

I will repeat myself:
 
I reported my 2 issues in the winter and they were never solved

bgl1
As Mr. Anderton mentioned quite a few posts ago I should change the name from NO tech support, to woefully inadequate tech support. 

Hmmmmm.  Interesting interpretation of this:
 
 

Anderton
1. "NO MORE TECH SUPPORT FROM CAKEWALK" is false. People are getting support. The problem is there is more demand for support than people to fulfill those demands at this time. A correct thread title would be "NOT ENOUGH TECH SUPPORT FROM CAKEWALK." So, to restore balance in the Force, DO NOT PAY ANY MORE ATTENTION TO THE OP UNTIL HE CORRECTS HIS FALSE THREAD TITLE.

That's some creative licence right there:)

If it helps, reading about the US Presidential election might make this seem less serious.