The Early Access Program is Now Live for the Upcoming Release of SONAR 2017.08

This month’s release for SONAR Artist, Professional, and Platinum brings new features along with fixes & enhancements to many key elements of SONAR. 
 
New Features 
 
The Start Screen is an important part of SONAR, in this update we have continued to refine it by making the project creation process more straightforward with new templates, we are now displaying Demo Projects when installed (Coming Soon), and with the Discover tab you be able to more easily find news about Cakewalk and SONAR.  
 
The New Discover Tab 
(Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
 
The Start Screen will now display new notifications through the Discover Tab. In this tab you’ll see news about Cakewalk and SONAR, New Expansion Packs, Free content from our 30th Anniversary Celebration and be able to find all the latest issues of Tech+Music. 
 
New Demo Projects (Coming Soon) 
(Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
 
When the forthcoming Demo Projects installer is installed onto the computer the Start Screen will now display a Demo Projects tab. The Demo Projects installer will be available for all versions of SONAR including SONAR Artist, Professional, and Platinum. The Demo projects are a great way to get started with SONAR for first time users but can also be used to experiment with new features. We’ll be continuing to add new news as well as periodically refresh them with new content.  
 
Start Screen Improvements
 (Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
 
Using Ctrl + N or Ctrl+O it is now possible to create a new default project from the Start Screen as well as open a project from your drive. Clicking the New Project tab will now display templates and in this update we have streamlined the templates that are installed with SONAR. In addition, using the list view now display 16 projects simultaneously.  New users will now see 6 templates installed for each version of SONAR; Empty Project, Basic, 4-Track, 16-Track, Guitar Amps, and Vocals.
 
To remove older templates, you can navigate to the Cakewalk Content folder and select your version and open the Project Templates folder. 
 
Simplified Help Menu
(Artist, Professional, and Platinum)
The help menu in SONAR previously had many many things in there and could sometimes be confusing to navigate. We have simplified this greatly and made the menu much more straightforward. 
 
Fixes and Enhancements
(Platinum, Professional, and Artist)
 
General

• Paste Special did not respect Destination Track in some situations during Paste
• Creating FX Chains previously not add parameters to a control unless it was added twice

Stability

• Dithering to 24-bit when exporting FLAC previously could cause unexpected crackles in the exported file
• Resolved an issue where SONAR may crash on OMF Export

Track View

• Drag reordering a bus would was off by 1 when moved to a new position
• Editing minimized Track View clips was previously difficult to slip-edit/crop on the right edge

Piano Roll View

• The Transform Tool no longer bounces clips together when doing velocity changes
• The Transform button now reflects Hard or Soft mode in the button when switching
• The Transform Tool’s Mask mode will now respond to Hard and Soft mode when Drawing through the Transform box
• Transform Tool now responds correctly when “Show Velocity on Selected Notes Only” is selected
• Transform Tool did not display preview correctly in certain conditions

To participate, you can obtain the Early Access release via:

• Cakewalk Command Center under the Rollback menu. Steps:
  • Start Command Center
  • Click the Settings button
  • Click the Check Now button
  • In the Connected Products list, right-click on the product or suite name you want early access to
  • Choose Rollback > Early Access 2017.08 from the context menu
• Through your products download page, under "Available Downloads."
  • Click the "Show Other Downloads" button to reveal the link.

If you encounter any critical issues prior to official public release, post them to the Problem Reports Forum. Please include SONAR 2017.08 Early Access in the post title, and refrain from including issues not related to SONAR 2017.08 as they may get missed. We’ll do our best to lock posts as we confirm the reports.
 
Thank you for your participation,
Cakewalk

I like it.  I know this isn't the kind of hard core feature set that gets the heartbeat up with long-term users. But this is the kind of "front door" that will allow new users to walk in and not be intimidated so much, and that is good for everybody.  And it looks like a good ratio of bug fixes to new features.

I think it's really great to focus on delivering one feature during a monthly sprint. 
 
I'm really looking forward to the new start screen.
 
~ Tony

I also like the Discover tab.  This looks like a solid release this month with features vs. bug squishes.
 
Thanks Bakers!   

I like it!

I like the demo projects. I like to see what others are doing with Sonar.

@John
Maybe my english is not sufficient, because I have to translate from german.
Therefore we misunderstood us.
I don't want to see the preview of thousends of files.
I only want to see the preview of the cwp-files (the project files).
In my case the folder of "recent files" shows the preview picture of 12 projects.
If I choose "existing project" I would like to see the 25 preview pictures (icons) from my 25 projects of the disc. 
Nothing more.
 

THambrecht
SONAR needs a folder and a projectname in order to save audio and mixscenes. SONAR does not know that you never want to save your work. Otherwise SONAR has to force you to select a folder at the the first audio recording, which would be even more annoying.

Clearly not true since I could do it before this update.

I'm refering mainly to the clone track gain setting issue that continues through track templates. Not pilot error. Also the cloned vst tempo issue.

Thanks Cakewalk

gswitz
I had not heard of http://bakery.cakewalk.com until now. Thanks for the info.

I must be missing something.  It seems entirely redundant with this forum.  It says the mission is "a community for Cakewalk users to ask questions, share ideas and discuss audio recording and production technology".  Isn't that the mission of  forum.cakewalk.com?