Doktor Avalanche
In fact with recent new functionality over the last 4 months I haven't seen anybody ask for what is being delivered.

There were requests in this forum for a Drum Replacer, Plug-In Upsampling, MIDI engine improvements, and Windows 10 compatibility. These all happened in the last four months. The Virtual Keyboard was five months ago, but people asked for that too. Also, several of the enhancements to Mix Recall, Drum Replacer, and VocalSync were in response to requests.

Doktor Avalanche
There were better things to do in my view. Drum maps UI doesn't work very well, clean audio folder does not work at all, obvious improvements and bug fixes needed with takelanes and other areas of major functionality.

To develop Start Screen is easy and fun :) To develop Drum Maps and Take Lanes is terribly difficult and boring. This is the reason.

Adq
To develop Start Screen is easy and fun :) To develop Drum Maps and Take Lanes is terribly difficult and boring. This is the reason.

Actually as a developer myself I don't see these enhancements being terribly difficult at all. Drum maps esp. Actually a new drum maps UI would be perfect for newbie developer.
 
I think you are probably right about it being boring. Developers have a tendency to do what excites them at the end of the day, developing a data entry form is hardly cutting edge development. It's really extraordinary if you think about it that these areas have not been sorted out as a matter of priority and I'll take that on board as a pretty good reason.

icontakt

Anderton

icontakt
 I've heard that the demo version doesn't even allow the user to save projects. At that point many will probably just forget Sonar and try some other daw.

That's quite common behavior for demo versions (e.g., Ableton Live and Studio One Pro won't save projects; Reason won't let you open projects or export to audio). The other usual limitations are full feature but time-limited, or something annoying (random white noise bursts or silence, having to restart every 30 minutes, or whatever).

 
I've been trying out Studio One 3 demo for the last couple of days and have been saving projects with no problem. I don't think it has any limitations, either.

Interesting, they must have changed their policy. I based what I said on this from Rekkerd.org: "The Studio One 30-day demo version is available for Windows and Mac upon request (email address required). The demo is fully functional with the exception of saving of documents or exporting audio." 
 
That was my experience when I tried the demo, but that was quite a while ago.

Anderton
I agree that revising the Start screen is somewhat underwhelming, although there are new companion elements (like the new templates that come with it). Being able to pin projects and templates is helpful, as is having notifications so you know when, for example, an update is available. 
 
However, the background is that track-to-track recording, which some people have been quite vocal about wanting and is scheduled for the next update, is a very complex undertaking. It's understandable that August would be a "light" update to allow the developers the time needed to do track-to-track recording right.
 

Exactly.  If the whole of the year's updates is enumerated in a single list, it's really obvious that there is a lot of value in total.  That's my opinion anyway.  In the past I was never able to get even a single annual update to be all about me 
 

Anderton

Doktor Avalanche
In fact with recent new functionality over the last 4 months I haven't seen anybody ask for what is being delivered.

There were requests in this forum for a Drum Replacer, Plug-In Upsampling, MIDI engine improvements, and Windows 10 compatibility. These all happened in the last four months. The Virtual Keyboard was five months ago, but people asked for that too. Also, several of the enhancements to Mix Recall, Drum Replacer, and VocalSync were in response to requests.

I didn't see a request for a drum replacer, was it huge with lots of votes? The plugin upsampler?... Well I saw your threads. Nobody asked for win10 certification, previous versions are probably win10 compatible, I do agree it win10 was a bloody good thing to do. I don't think any of these were in the top 10 or top 100. And none of these go anywhere near functionality that was present in X3E which is desperately in need. Forums are pretty silent about the other functionality (dare I say it again) probably because most of us have given up.

Now don't get me wrong, the enhancements were good and impressive. I'm not slagging it off. I'm just talking about main priorities, issues that seemed to have lasted forever. Day to day workflow. I remember when the survey came out several months ago there was a few long discussion threads as a by product, and it seemed pretty clear what people needed.

I think Platinum got off to a good start but I feel that long outstanding issues have been sidelined a little recently. Still this audio routing stuff is something to look forward to. At least CCC got sorted as well.

RD9
The new start screen described in the video looks useful to me.  I was wondering how it will handle the fact that I turn off internet access when using Sonar to avoid pops and clicks.  How will it know there are updates?  Also, I hope there won't be an annoying delay while it looks for the internet connection. 
Based on recent history with CW programming these issues are probably "handled with aplomb".
 
Cheers

Yeah I thought that, one hopes it will be tested offline. Of course the news feed won't know anything unless you are on the internet. Hope they sorted it so it's a seperate background process much like the plugin scanner and that it terminates quickly.

Doktor Avalanche
Actually as a developer myself I don't see these enhancements being terribly difficult at all. Drum maps esp. Actually a new drum maps UI would be perfect for newbie developer.

I mean not only drum maps UI form, but a massive improvement for all Drum Map chain: track view, map editor, midi routing, drum pane, drawing tools, etc.

Doktor Avalanche
I didn't see a request for a drum replacer

 
As soon as it was announced that a drum replacer was forthcoming, the forum was filled with people who inquired about when it would be available because they wanted it. AFAIC that qualifies as requests. For many production styles Drum Replacers are a very big deal.
 

The plugin upsampler?... Well I saw your threads.

 
People won't ask for something if they don't know it exists. As soon as I mentioned the improvements at 96 kHz, someone suggested upsampling during render. Others confirmed that upsampling made a difference, and what Noel did was WAY better than the workarounds I proposed. I can't imagine someone putting in a nebulous feature request for "improved audio quality" but once given an indication of how that could be done, they wanted it. (Frankly, I was skeptical that is was worth the development time because not everything benefits from upsampling. However, after doing final renders on all the songs for my next album, I have to say the cumulative difference is significant and I'm glad the feature has been included.)
 

Nobody asked for win10 certification, previous versions are probably win10 compatible, I do agree it win10 was a bloody good thing to do. I don't think any of these were in the top 10 or top 100.

 
Several threads were started as soon as the preview version was announced, and people wondered about Windows 10 compatibility. I'm pretty sure both Windows 10 compatibility and the Drum Replacer would place in the Top 10, or at least the Top 20, of desirable enhancements.
 

I'm just talking about main priorities, issues that seemed to have lasted forever. Day to day workflow. I remember when the survey came out several months ago there was a few long discussion threads as a by product, and it seemed pretty clear what people needed.

 
Don't think I consider issues like ACT's problems, remaining comping issues, etc. unimportant. It's vital that these be addressed. It's great that some of the deal-breaker Staff View issues were fixed but of course, it won't make any difference to anyone who doesn't use Staff View, and anyone who doesn't use Drum Maps will wonder why you mention it constantly. Obviously Drum Maps are important to you and other people, but is it more important that Staff View? Fixing ACT? Take Lane clean-up (granted, there have already been improvements to that but more could be done)?
 
There are some people who don't want new features - just fixes. I understand that. There are other people who no matter how many bug fixes you do, want new features and I understand that as well. Look at the threads about how Cubase has some whizbang MIDI chord feature...I bet the people posting those threads would rather have SONAR incorporate a whizbang MIDI chord feature than a new Drum Map UI. OTOH I doubt you care about having a whizbang MIDI chord feature.
 
Personally, I want to see a "drum machine mode" in the Piano Roll View where previous notes are still visible and accessible for editing while doing overdubs. We all have certain things we want, but the one thing I can guarantee you is that there will always be tradeoffs between what the community wants, what they think they want, what they don't know they want, and the available company resources. How well Cakewalk navigates multiple conflicting priorities to satisfy the greatest number of users will determine the company's success.
 

John T
Indeed. I'm pretty sure that the last thing I want is development solely guided by forum requests.

Well, development is indeed guided by forum requests, but not dictated by them. And like you, I agree that's a good thing.
 
Keyboard magazine did a reader survey many years ago where not one reader asked for sheet music in the magazine. Yet the editor thought it would be a great improvement, so he went ahead and started including it anyway. It became one of the most popular elements of the magazine...but people didn't know they could ask for it, so they didn't.

Anderton

Doktor Avalanche
I didn't see a request for a drum replacer

 
As soon as it was announced that a drum replacer was forthcoming, the forum was filled with people who inquired about when it would be available because they wanted it. AFAIC that qualifies as requests. For many production styles Drum Replacers are a very big deal.
 

The plugin upsampler?... Well I saw your threads.

 
People won't ask for something if they don't know it exists. As soon as I mentioned the improvements at 96 kHz, someone suggested upsampling during render. Others confirmed that upsampling made a difference, and what Noel did was WAY better than the workarounds I proposed. I can't imagine someone putting in a nebulous feature request for "improved audio quality" but once given an indication of how that could be done, they wanted it. (Frankly, I was skeptical that is was worth the development time because not everything benefits from upsampling. However, after doing final renders on all the songs for my next album, I have to say the cumulative difference is significant and I'm glad the feature has been included.)
 

Nobody asked for win10 certification, previous versions are probably win10 compatible, I do agree it win10 was a bloody good thing to do. I don't think any of these were in the top 10 or top 100.

 
Several threads were started as soon as the preview version was announced, and people wondered about Windows 10 compatibility. I'm pretty sure both Windows 10 compatibility and the Drum Replacer would place in the Top 10, or at least the Top 20, of desirable enhancements.
 

I'm just talking about main priorities, issues that seemed to have lasted forever. Day to day workflow. I remember when the survey came out several months ago there was a few long discussion threads as a by product, and it seemed pretty clear what people needed.

 
Don't think I consider issues like ACT's problems, remaining comping issues, etc. unimportant. It's vital that these be addressed. It's great that some of the deal-breaker Staff View issues were fixed but of course, it won't make any difference to anyone who doesn't use Staff View, and anyone who doesn't use Drum Maps will wonder why you mention it constantly. Obviously Drum Maps are important to you and other people, but is it more important that Staff View? Fixing ACT? Take Lane clean-up (granted, there have already been improvements to that but more could be done)?
 
There are some people who don't want new features - just fixes. I understand that. There are other people who no matter how many bug fixes you do, want new features and I understand that as well. Look at the threads about how Cubase has some whizbang MIDI chord feature...I bet the people posting those threads would rather have SONAR incorporate a whizbang MIDI chord feature than a new Drum Map UI. OTOH I doubt you care about having a whizbang MIDI chord feature.
 
Personally, I want to see a "drum machine mode" in the Piano Roll View where previous notes are still visible and accessible for editing while doing overdubs. We all have certain things we want, but the one thing I can guarantee you is that there will always be tradeoffs between what the community wants, what they think they want, what they don't know they want, and the available company resources. How well Cakewalk navigates multiple conflicting priorities to satisfy the greatest number of users will determine the company's success.
 

One of your super long massive threads designed to make us relent and put our hands up. :) :)

I stand by what I said earlier I don't think it was inaccurate. I won't disagree with much of what you have written either.I also wish to state again windows 10 certification is not the same as compatibility. But again I say it was a good thing it got certified.

Meat and potatos Craig, meat and potatos.. :) It's 7 months now. I think the roadmap for the next 5 months is super critical now. That will be my critical review point...

Rap Pro and Z3TA+2 on the other hand is a different matter, the silence we've had is far too long. Might as well add concrete limiter.

Cheers..

It is good that we have some new features every month at least. Maybe when their ideas will be over at some point, there will be more attention for feature requests :)

To put it all in balance the audio routing was definitely one of those vocal requests. Cakewalk have certainly gone the right way about that one with their approach so far, we shall see how it goes.

Doktor Avalanche
One of your super long massive threads designed to make us relent and put our hands up. :) :)

 
You stated as a fact that you hadn’t seen anyone ask for what has been delivered over the past four month. I disagreed and gave a three-sentence reply. Every one of those three sentences was a true statement, but you disputed them. I felt you were expecting a response, so I responded.
 
My purpose is not to get people to relent and put their hands up, but to provide what I feel are detailed and transparent responses. I have no illusion that people can be reasoned out of positions they didn’t use reason to attain, but I believe there are people here who are interested in entertaining a variety of viewpoints.