Craig I think you using generalised stats to somehow prove a point. I look at it real world, it's pretty clear what needs fixing (around 70 or so bugs). The last time I saw a survey on what bugs needed fixing was never. Why? Because it's mainly a waste of time. The impact of a bug is pretty clear once you have reproduced the issue. People have different workflows, there is no right or 'most popular' workflow as far as I'm aware. Some people will be happy because they use certain features, and others won't because they use different features. Now of course if a bug has a workaround that would reduce the priority but people should not be expected to work around it forever.

Sure better workflow features are good but I don't see any trade off here at all unless it makes buggy functionality redundant. Completely rewriting drum maps would be an example here. The UI could be replaced and hopefully the scrambled egg audio routing fixed.

Let's face it there is still a backlog and catchup to do, large enough to still be concerning, but Cakewalk hopefully still has a grip, we will know anyway for sure if old bugs are hanging around or not once X4 is released so I don't pass any judgement.

CakeAlexS
Sure better workflow features are good but I don't see any trade off here at all unless it makes buggy functionality redundant.

 
The tradeoff is time required to fix things vs. implement new features. For example, if someone said to me "we can fix drum maps or we can implement new comping protocols," I'd take the comping protocols but it's likely others would prefer the drum maps. Given limited resources the question is which expenditure of time is going to have a positive impact on the greatest number of users. A bug like a loop timing problems is pretty significant IMHO and impact quite a few people, whereas hearing silence if you solo a bus with an external insert probably isn't as big a deal. Again if it was up to me, I'd say fix the loop timing...I can use quick grouping to hear a bus by itself. Give me a feature I use other programs for instead, I'll deal with the bus.
 
I don't have any point to prove, just presenting observations. There are still complaints about Logic MIDI timing issues (that's just one thread) even after all these years, and when I think of the resources Apple has...as it's not possible to do everything that needs to be done, choices have to be made, resources have to be allocated, and issues need to be prioritized (largely based on what gets reported to Cakewalk).

Alex's "stat" of 70 would be meaningful if we could take into consideration (if there are 3000 users of X3 and say 10000 users of SONAR in general) the total percentage of ALL users affected by those bugs and the true financial impact of those bugs. We all know in each of our worlds there is only one user, but not to Cakewalk.
 
IOW do 63% or 2% of studio owners lose $10K or $200 per year on said bugs (affecting their workflow).
 
Alas we can never know that so we sit around and speculate that it's unthinkable that *any* user could use SONAR with that one truly irritable bug (you know that one) even though many say "man, that doesn't affect me". 
 
I remember when I was the head of development of a software company and single user would use that line on me but the 100s of companies that used our software (with 1000s of user) would not even mention it (the bug) in passing as being significant. We called those level 2 or level 3 bugs.
 
FWIW, as a hobbyist those 70 bugs you collected are of no consequence to me. I still record tracks (audio and MIDI) and I get songs done.
 
If I was running a "for hire" studio I'm still not 100% sure any of those 70 bugs would affect my bottom line. I may want to perceive that they do do but how can I, in reality, ever really measure that? Oh yeah, speculation on the perceived loss of revenue using the 3 mouse click work around.
 
Now if MIDI or audio simply no longer worked, or all VST/VSTi functionality ceased to exist..... well.....

A point about new features that's often overlooked is that new features are NOT included solely to create an attractive upgrade for existing users. Any company that relies solely on upgrades from an existing user base is doomed. There are always people buying their first DAW, and they have many choices. Of course no DAW will have all features but still, the more features that can be included to entice first-time buyers, the better. If DAW "XYZ" has some killer feature someone needs that Sonar doesn't have, Sonar will not be that person's choice.
 
New features also get mindshare in print, press releases, forums for competing companies, etc. We are fortunate that X3 has caused some people to switch DAWs, and equally fortunate that the base X3 version has gotten a lot of attention for offering unlimited MIDI and audio tracks - something most sub-$99 programs don't offer. Hopefully these users will turn into Sonar fans and buy upgrades in the future, but still, we need to attract new users - especially because X3 rocks, and many people are still learning how to take advantage of what it offers.
 
 

Craig just say some bugs have more priority then others then. It's that simple. That's why sadly some bugs never get fixed because impact is perceived to be low.

Bapu the reality is that the list points to 70 threads with actual people involved. Some issues are actually quite nasty. It's quite easy to see what could be important, unfortunately it would probably take half a day to read all the threads so it's probably easier to pass judgement by scanning it over it 5 mins sadly. The thing is many of the issues have other threads about the same issues years ago that many people simply gave up on figuring it would never be fixed.

Personally I can say drum maps wasted two days for me, in the end I abandoned them and was pretty pissed. Should we fix drum maps? Well the arguement could still be 'no' because it could be perceived that I was the only person using them? All that it takes is one person to say it is trivial and that's that. Am I writing about drum maps bugs every day? No.

CakeAlexS
Bapu the reality is that the list points to 70 threads with actual people involved. 

I was only pointing that it's unlikely that all 70 threads are bugs that all 70 OP's say that all 70 bugs are all "Showstoppers" in toto. IOW does user #1 agree that all other 69 are showstoppers? And so on and so on.
 
I agree that any bug at any time can be BIG TIME serious to any number of users but not all bugs affect all users.
 
I too think drum maps are futzed up. Do I want them "fixed". Yup. Will I lose sleep over the fact that I once lost a few hours because of drum maps. Nope. I can still make drum tracks without maps.

Put another way. Let's say there are 3,725.8 touch points in SONAR.
 
A) Do all users use all of them
2) Does any bug in any touch point affect the majority of the ENTIRE user base
iii) Why don't they fix drum maps when at least 12 users I know of have submitted feature requests/bug reports

Nope not all showstoppers. In fact I wouldn't say any or many are. And of course Bapu hurdles are there to be jumped over couldn't agree more :)

And with your last post there really is no way to answer those questions. However I don't think it's useful to fix bugs via a vote. It is not impossible to reduce them down to bare minimum and once that happens the debates end anyway.

There are some good perspectives here. I know that no software company will please everyone. It's a bell shaped curve. For most, they are fairly happy users. On the far right you have those that think you walk on water. On the far left, you have those that everything has gone wrong for and they think you are the devil. You can skew the bell to the right (or screw up and skew it to the left), but you still have a bell.
 
Balancing bug fixes and new feature development while trying to balance customer retention (upgrades) and new customer acquisition is a VERY tricky deal. It's truly part art and science. Unfortunately, that means that some bugs just never get addressed, and for those on the left of the bell curve for that issue, it's a huge show stopping issue and negates EVERYTHING else done by the dev team. Seriously, a customer that doesn't get the one most important thing they want can easily turn that into acting like your company hasn't done a single important thing. It's all about priority, and prioritizing development resources is a very complex animal.
 
Overall, I'm impressed with the choices Cakewalk has made; I'm on the bell towards the right. :) Would I do some things differently if I were in charge? Sure. However, I'm not walking in the footsteps of their CEO, and won't even pretend to understand the prioritization, staffing, regulation, reporting, support, training, competitive pressures, etc etc etc that he deals with. I can say that I run a software company doing over $5MM a year, and it's a tough job. I am proud to say our bell is skewed to the right, but there is still a tail on the other end. Someone is always unhappy with me. :)
 
I hope they resolve the issues that are important to you, because I know for you they are critical. Just don't believe that if they don't, they don't care about it or about you as a customer; I'm certain that's not the case.
 
Also, announcing a new version early is a terrible thing to do. It slows down current sales and creates expectations on the new release. If something happens to delay the release (could even have nothing to do with the software), you have angry customers. Best to wait until you hit beta testing to tell the world. If they are close, they get kudos from me for keeping it so quiet.
 
I haven't missed an update since the early days, but I have waited a few months to see how a release would shake out. To be very honest, X2 was unusable to me as it was never stable, and I went back to X1. I wrote this off to goodwill with the company earned over many years with me. X3 has been awesome. If X3 had been as unstable as X2, I'm almost certain I would have moved on to another platform.
 
In the end, we all get to vote with our wallets. :)
 

So far happy customer at this end. X3E was a milestone. I'm just pushy :)