The psychology of the wallet - and a whole lot about VCA's...

Steady is the word about Sonar under the membership system. A steady income stream for them, steady updates and new features for us. And there have been many updates and new features since the start of membership. Having had sonar professional for several years before the membership thingee the updates would come in spurts.  After awhile updates were saved for a new version.  With a new version comes all the costs associated with marketing, change overs etc.  The membership system calms that cycle down somewhat, which means things are more steady for the business and for the customer.  No longer will features and updates that the customer can use, even bug fixes, be saved for the next big release - at least not to the extent things were before.
 
Going to a membership system and then just milking it for all its worth is *not* what they did.
 
 

lfm
Now as my Sonar membership expired in feb, I have looked to see what major stuff was saved up for one year anniversary and probably the largest crowd of users are to open their wallets again.
 
To my disappointment - nothing was saved up - not a single surprise feature?

If Cakewalk had done that, some would complain that the marketing people at Cakewalk forced engineering to hold back on an important new feature just to make people upgrade, that really sucks, I'm switching to Reaper, etc. No matter what Cakewalk does, there are people who will complain about it.
 
The crux of your post is about what matters to you. I guess VCA faders matter to you because you might need them someday, but they don't matter to me. Nor does being able to put buses or folders within folders. You didn't mention Drum Replacer as a major 2015 feature so I guess it didn't matter to you, but I've salvaged many a track with it - and its audio-to-MIDI triggering capabilities, combined with Melodyne's audio-to-MIDI, are incredibly useful...but only if you use MIDI. The Paint tool, which is quite cool, also matters only if you use MIDI. Enhanced Clip support has been a big deal for me, as have the optimizations - SONAR has never been faster - and VocalSync. But, if you do only instrumental work and never need to do ADR, then VocalSync wouldn't matter to you.
 
In March we had Tempo Detection so you can have tempo follow freely-played parts or parts without a click automatically - that's huge (Studio One is the only other DAW that has it, although it's a more cumbersome implementation). However if all you do is four-on-the-floor EDM, then it wouldn't matter to you. The new EQ and Multiband linear phase, channel independent, mid-side-friendly processors are exceptionally good processors by any standards. But if you don't care about mid-side processing, are content not being able to process the left and right channels independently, and are happy with the phase issues of analog emulations, then they wouldn't matter to you.
 
Personally I think the idea of holding back stuff just to lure people into renewing goes against what the Membership model is all about, which is to allow Cakewalk to release new stuff when it's ready. I felt Newburyport was a lackluster update, but after seeing what happened in March and April, it's understandable - Tempo Detection and the new processors are complex features, and Cakewalk waited until they were ready.
 
Because I work with a huge variety of projects, from narration to video scores, all the features mentioned above are useful to me. If they're not useful to you...well, then they're not...which to most users, is probably as irrelevant as their being useful to me. All that really matters, and frankly all that should matter, is whether the features are useful to them. 

Anderton
 
In March we had Tempo Detection so you can have tempo follow freely-played parts or parts without a click automatically - that's huge (Studio One is the only other DAW that has it, although it's a more cumbersome implementation). However if all you do is four-on-the-floor EDM, then it wouldn't matter to you. The new EQ and Multiband linear phase, channel independent, mid-side-friendly processors are exceptionally good processors by any standards. But if you don't care about mid-side processing, are content not being able to process the left and right channels independently, and are happy with the phase issues of analog emulations, then they wouldn't matter to you.
 
 

Thanks for your thorough comment.
And you are right in the sense that what matters to one person is a don't care by another.
 
But don't agree it would be anything like lure anybody, having something major saved up for expire date for the many. Having 50% discount renewing before end of year really tells you want us hanging in there - features are the best way and more important than cost.
 
If it's automatic Tempo Detection it's cool.
I recently did on Cubase, and I had to use Logical Editor for the midi stuff to be stretched.
They have Tempo Detection but it has to be 7s long - and it was an intro I wanted to change tempo on to match tempo map. So to change from 137 bpm to 89.8 bpm tempo I had to insert formulas for that relationship to stretch the clip - so nothing automatic about it. Beat Calculator helped a bit.
Haven't tried audio tempo detection in Cubase yet and don't know how cumbersome it would be.
Many things in Cubase are uphill battle - but it works really well once getting how to do it and all Waves plugins are supported with no exceptions. Some Waves favourites are not supported by Sonar, reasons I left Reaper too.
 
Cakewalk Sonar has improved and superseeded many things in Cubase and I'm sure you will continue doing that. That's why I bother looking.
 
And still wait for top voted stuff on Features and Ideas forum to be recognized by devs.
Certain things are not needing a vote - as Seth or Noel announced a year or so ago - you look at trend in musical industry etc. I think VCA's fit that part. Trying on film score this year for me - I'm sure VCA's are really useful - having much larger parts balanced consistently without having to alter send automation as well.
 
I keep looking at Sonar and what is happening.....

I was intrigued by the membership model when it was announced -- how it would be implemented, how it could increase efficiency and productivity with the development team, etc.  I have to say, I like the way Cakewalk does it, so much so, that when the time to renew my yearly membership came up recently and there wasn't anything really exciting to me on the upcoming page, I renewed anyway, because I thought the past year was great in terms of what they delivered and I expect it to continue.  I also enjoy getting something new every month or two.  I normally don't upgrade just to "keep up" -- I've skipped several versions to save money.  (Been using Sonar since 2002; occasionally glance at the forums since I don't get the e-mails anymore.)  Anyway, just adding my 2 cents...