As daws get to the point that they do everything you could possibly want them to, I see streamlining and fixing longstanding bugs as the way to keep up sales over time.
 
Maybe Staff view will get some love once everything else is taken care of.
 

malcolmb
I don't like Piano Roll View as I cannot 'see' music in that view - I can see music in Staff View on a stave. When I think music, I think notes on a stave. Always have, always will.

I detest the piano roll paradigm for viewing notes, even disregarding the note durations - I'd love to see a 'staff roll'.  You can immediately look at a 'note' and see the value, the intervals etc.
 

 

 
Interestingly, This is from "Notion" so maybe someone will get this, although I'd just want this as a different view from piano roll.  
 
Melodyne has a staff representation - reduced to just noteheads, but it's nice instead of going blind try to read a piano spaced lines back to a 'keyboard'.
 
I think Amiga bars and Pipes had something similar, as did the ancient Buchla 

 
 
 That said, I find Sonar's Staff view very useable for what I do - and I'm very happy with it.  I just mainly use it as a tool for creating chord sheets and for transcribing from a mp3 song (after I tempo map it).
 
Although I can see it would be limiting for experts.
 
 

dubdisciple

Did anyone actually ask for groove  matrix? I think it was something that was cheap and easy pseudo-Ableton thing to implement.  They have made a few minor improvents but it probably gets touched less than staff view.  I doubt there are many users who are dependent on it.

Absolutely - the same concept was originally developed in Project 5, and once that was gone quite a few people asked to have it (or a close facsimile) implemented in SONAR.
 

Cityrat - good to hear I am not alone! I do take your point about a staff roll although I just have this thing about needing note blobs to have tails!
 
I write all my music by notation and as you can see from my signature, am still plodding away with HomeStudio 7XL and XP. This Christmas I had planned to upgrade to a new Windows 8 computer and Sonar X3. I was rather looking forward to it! But notwithstanding what I said above, I must admit this thread has given me pause for thought. Have Sonar really done away with the note icon in staff view? I fully understand about using keybinding and I can see how that might possibly improve workflow. But I do worry if that in itself an indication of the future progressively degraded path of Staff View and Sonar's commitment to it. As the move from the old Home Studio to X3 is a major work flow change in itself, I may have to review other DAW options. I really would rather not as I do love Sonar - but writing music is difficult enough as it is without having to puzzle my way through the software all the time!

stevec..thanks.  I really had no idea there was actually a demand for it.  Were you among them and did it meet the expectations?

Cityrat - 
Along the same lines, Vielklang 2's "hybrid score" view is the same type of thing - 
http://www.zplane.de/products/images/stories/vielklang/vk2_hybridscore.png
I would like this as a view that could be flipped from PRV - basically switching between the piano keys/note names view and the "hybrid" score type view.
I wouldn't see this as a replacement for improvements to the Staff View either - just a way to make MIDI composition from the PRV more amenable to working for wide range of users.
 

Brando
Cityrat - 
Along the same lines, Vielklang 2's "hybrid score" view is the same type of thing - 
http://www.zplane.de/products/images/stories/vielklang/vk2_hybridscore.png
I would like this as a view that could be flipped from PRV - basically switching between the piano keys/note names view and the "hybrid" score type view.
I wouldn't see this as a replacement for improvements to the Staff View either - just a way to make MIDI composition from the PRV more amenable to working for wide range of users.
 

Had not seen that - very nice.  It just seems easier (when you read notation) to have the staff gridlines vs a representation of a 'piano' that you need to look back to the 'keys' to see the note 'frequency'.
 
I'd love to just have an option to flip the view from PRV to SRV(?)  for a hybrid view.  Someday *somebody* is going to do it.  And probably midi people AND staff people will hate it!  But I'd love it 
 

I doubt anyone hates it if it does not take away from whatever it is they prefer.  I would guess those who did not use it would be ambivalent towards it.

dubdisciple
stevec..thanks.  I really had no idea there was actually a demand for it.  Were you among them and did it meet the expectations?

Your welcome.   By the time P5 was on its way out I really wasn't that into it any longer.   P5 was my attempt at using a completely pattern based system as that was something I was interested in trying.   I just never fell in with it the way I planned, so wound up using the plugins in SONAR more than P5 itself around that time.   It did have some nice points though...
 
That said, I really would like to use the Matrix View more.  I see a lot of potential with it, it's just the "set up" part that always sets me back - having to get clips in a ready state to be triggered.   I have done a few things using the delivered content and it was really OK for me in that context.  But I can only do so much with any delivered content before needing to add my own stuff... and then it's back to that set up part.    It's a vicous cycle.   
 
 
 
 
Edit: Back to the OP - that would be pretty cool to see a staff(s) as a semi-transparent background in the PRV.
 

cityrat
But I'd love it 

Me too!