Will there be an x3 F?

New shiny things!
 

kennywtelejazz
I play guitar and I like to tune down even now and then , so I'm currently running mine tweaked as the X3 Eb Producer Edition  
 
Yeah ,  I know it ain't really funny  ……just killing some time after a late night music session 
 
Kenny
 

I had to drop the D version.

Grum.

Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]
We don't share product roadmaps for competitive reasons.

I thought we had advanced notice of each update in x3!

I'm not suggesting we need another update. Just say so if there isn't going to be one.

X3 broke with the tradition of previous years. At one time during the update process we were even told how a particular fix wouldn't make it into the next update but the one after that.

Those sorts of time it's were let slip with every update during X3s update cycle.

Much discussion was held about the openness and return to a former level of user interaction and company transparency.

Is it really going to give away a trade advantage by saying there won't be any more updates or there'll be one more in this device cycle to clean up a few lingering bugs. Just a discussion.

mudgel
Much discussion was held about the openness and return to a former level of user interaction and company transparency.

 
The ability to interact on the forums will go in cycles. Remember, Cakewalk is a small company. If they're on the forums, they're not doing something else. For example, there's now a video series on the virtual instruments by Karl Rose that needed to be put into production. Dan Gonzalez just finished a comprehensive video series on compression and the PC2A, as well as some stories for the blog (as have I). There's always more to be done than time to do it, so the company needs to make choices about how to best use its resources. I think they're doing a very good job of juggling priorities.
 

Is it really going to give away a trade advantage by saying there won't be any more updates or there'll be one more in this device cycle to clean up a few lingering bugs.

Product roadmaps, which includes updates, are not for public consumption. When Cakewalk has announced something in advance, it's because they're 100% SURE it will happen. Anything under 100%, even if it's 99.9%, doesn't get announced.

AT
Cake does what it wants to do - it is like having a crazy girlfriend.  Sometimes she gives you ideas of what she will do, other times everything is a complete surprise.  Just enjoy the ride.  Because it doesn't help to complain.
 
@

I'm swapping my girlfriend for Cakewalk, thanks for waking me up (has saved hours of therapy).

I'm all for keeping things on the down low until it's time to announce an update or change
Life itself is a lot lot that , and things sometimes work out to be on a need to know basis …. 
when you really need to know ……...you'll know...
 
hhhmmm,
I've never looked at the concept of asking Cakewalk to be my official old lady  
( I wonder if she can afford all the therapy that would take )
 
Oh well , a little bit of candle light , while strumming my guitar into my DAW has sure kept me out of a fair amount of serious trouble
 
Kenny 
 
PS : who really cares about what I'm saying ? …..I do 

it is a little bit sad, but the vapor ware epidemic of the late 1980s pretty much spoiled things for consumers. And yeah, for those that might not remember, it really was that bad!

It isn't just software either - hardware can be very unpredictable right up until the first production run (sometimes even after the first production run<G>!)

No names, but I worked on a product, we had a dozen units from the pre-production run, everything looked great, and whammo - not even a technical glitch, but a legal one, and the product never made it to market. Fortunately for the company the product was not widely announced (the owners were very gun shy of becoming another purveyor of vapor), but there were enough folks that knew we had completed the pre-production run, and that except for a slight heat issue the hardware worked really well, so it was more than a little embarrassing at the next big trade show!

Still not names, but as a customer I remember waiting more than a year from the "we are shipping" announcement to actual delivery of a sample library. And the developer, who I am sure was all but in a panic, kept saying "real soon now" - which was a huge error (at least I thought so.) I bought that mythical library, and I think the year spent waiting was part of the reason it did not live up to expectations.

With software it's even worse. I've worked on projects where the bugs just never stopped popping their ugly little heads up - or at least that how it seemed at the time. This was not MI software either, something relatively simple - internet security<G>. I can recall agreeing, reluctantly, to participate in a bake-off that was scheduled six months out. We did not make it. and that made a lot of the investors very nervous!

How can you miss a six month deadline you ask? Turns out it is a LOT easier than it looks...

So while it would be nice if Cakewalk could announce their plans, I think it is wise of them do be cautious. Of course I can be calm, and even generous, because X3e is working quite well for me. My biggest gripe at the moment is some 'fun' with large Kontakt instances, matching outputs to tracks, which is nothing new, and of course the plugin manager still drives me nuts. All in all that's not so bad!

wst3
it is a little bit sad, but the vapor ware epidemic of the late 1980s pretty much spoiled things for consumers. And yeah, for those that might not remember, it really was that bad!

Isn't this when the current Sampletank came out and they announced work on Sampletank 3?

As much as I love free updates, assuming Cakewalk sticks to the average of a version a year, I really hope they are working on X4 now!
While some issues remain with X3, there has already been a tremendous amount of fixes. By now, I would happily pay for new features (or just stick with X3, 'cause it's pretty ****in' as is).

I am often asked "how soon/ how long will it take you to....." I try not to respond, but when pressed I have little choice- most people give the earliest possible/ best eta, then one thing or another and they're late, having to apologize and explain and reschedule- I actually go the other way around, meaning the slowest. longest expectation and add a few onto that-there is some grumbling, but an "alright...."; acceptance- this allows me do the job without feeling stressed or rushed, paying my usual meticulous attention to detail as I go along, and when I'm done, hey ! I'm early ! and people are happy.
 
I am not the fastest- but I strive to earn a reputation for consistent reliability.
I think we've all been burned enough by flash-in-the-pan cheap junk- not just software, but durable goods like cars, furnishings, gadgets etc.- where we pay a good dollar we have a right to expect it to work.  I would rather have no update than something rushed that causes it's own host of problems. If cakewalk wants to invest in delivering a better product to it's customers,  it is their own choice- but I would like to ask others to refrain from pressing them so that they feel compelled to rush something broken out be it a patch, an update or a whole new iteration.

Disclaimer: I do not speak for Cakewalk. The following is what I've seen ALL software companies do, based on my experience of consulting over the years to Ableton, Avid, Sony, Steinberg, Microsoft, Native Instruments, Opcode, InMusic, PreSonus, Acoustica, Passport, and many others; I assume Cakewalk works similarly.
 
There are some problems with "fix all the bugs first before moving on." Showing a bug exists, and providing the steps to reproduce it, doesn't necessarily provide the path to fix it and more importantly, QC the fix. Sonar X3 has been out for 7 months - look at the fixes that have happened, divide by the number of days, and you can figure an average of days/bug. It would take a long time to fix every documented bug no matter how minor, so all progress would stop on development.
 
Also, fixing bugs can create new bugs. The POD Farm fix that happened is a good example of that, but there have been others. So after you roll out the bug fixes, then there's another round to fix the new bugs that surface, unless you've spent extra time in QC. It's like the famous calculus example of a ball that goes halfway to the wall each time it bounces. In theory, it will never reach the wall but at some point you say okay, it's reached the wall
 
Then there's also the issue of feature requests vs. bugs. If there's a feature request that would massively benefit the majority of users compared to a bug fix for a really esoteric situation that affects only a handful of users, which should the manufacturer pursue? A handful of users will say fix the bug, the majority will say feature request (remember, you can't have both).
 
But let's assume it is actually possible fix all the bugs, and the bugs that result from the fixes, sometime in 2015. Other companies that don't feel a need to fix all the bugs will add shiny new features, and then people will come into the forum and complain that "Hey, Reaper lets me concatenate quadratic defluxers, Sonar can't do that, wow Sonar sucks!" Then to add insult to injury, Cakewalk finally does get around to adding new features, and some of the bugs that were supposedly "fixed" resurface because now they're interacting with different software.
 
What software companies do is after a release, they come up with a fix as soon as possible to deal with "showstopper" bugs. Then as reports come in, they fix more bugs. Eventually they get to the point where they decide that enough bugs have been fixed and the ball has reached the metaphorical wall, but at that point, they DON'T just flick a switch where bug fixing stops and development begins. What happens is bug fixes and development proceed in parallel, so that the bugs are tested in the context of the next generation of software, which can potentially keep "fixed" bugs truly fixed.
 
It is simply not possible to fix all bugs, meet demands for feature requests, and develop new features and products simultaneously. Not even a company with Microsoft's resources (just a bit more than Cakewalk's, know what I mean?) can pull it off. Apple can't pull it off or iPhones would still be on iOS 7 and work perfectly instead of arriving at 7.1 through many inbetween steps. Apple didn't wait until 7.1 fixed the bugs from 7 before releasing a new iPhone model. No matter how smart the Bakers are, I don't expect them to do what neither Microsoft nor Apple have been able to do...nor any other DAW manufacturer, for that matter. So, I believe they will continue making what they feel are the appropriate tradeoffs to satisfy the needs of as much of their customer base as possible, in as timely a manner as possible.
 
However, I did request that Sonar be able to concatenate quadratic defluxers in a future version.
 
 

The next Sonar version may very well be a Tascam-branded product...