And now for the positive, constructive and helpful comment from a guy that actually has some influence and NEVER lowers himself to insults or bashing from what I've seen. This post is factual, on point without a hint of marketing double speak, innuendo or condescension. Some of you could learn from this man. I know I have.
Anderton
Beepster, let me suggest a different approach: track down the things that "don't work" in X2 so you don't feel limited by that version. For example there's another thread you started about how bouncing doesn't work, but it was pilot error. There may be other instances like that. X2 had been stable for me and while there were a few non-repeatable bugs (pretty much all software has those), nothing was a show-stopper or prevented me from getting serious work done with everything from narration to remixing to recording new songs to audio-for-video.
I was at a conference where someone said the same basic thing about "They should fix all the bugs in X2" and I was curious what bugs he was experiencing. So I asked him to name the top three bugs that impaired his ability to get work done, and he mentioned the same bug that I've experienced--the audio engine flips out sometimes when looping sections for very long periods of time and moving the loop points. That was the only bug he could recall. I suggested he stop the transport occasionally (like every few minutes) and then restart, a workaround that worked for me. Hopefully it will work for him, but his not being able to recall any bugs other than that one was interesting.
The other semi-consistent bug I experienced was applying to V-Vocal to individual clips in a take layer, but I did that rarely so the bug hardly ever surfaced. I either waited until the comping was done before applying V-Vocal to specific sections, or just pulled the clip into its own track and applied V-Vocal. Again, no huge deal, and those are the only bugs I can recall in my own X2 setup.
Rather than focusing on obtaining a custom version of Sonar, which isn't going to happen because X3's product line has already been finalized, I think you'd be better off quantifying what are the most problematic elements for you with X2 and fixing those or finding workarounds. In the hundreds of hours I put into X2, nothing was serious enough to prevent me from getting work done faster than I could with other DAWs.
Craig, first off I will preface this by saying that a year and a half ago I had no idea who you were or that guys like you existed. Watching your vids, reading your articles and seeing you interact here on this forum has been educational and inspirational. I do not say such things lightly. I have learned a ridiculous amount about the "new" audio production from you and in that short year and a half have gained tremendous respect for your work. I no longer look at my DAW as simply a multi track recorder/mixing board. It is now as much an creative instrument to me as my guitars. I rewatched the Advanced Workshop series again recently and again drew an insane amount of new concepts and ideas from them and am sure if I watch it again in a few months I will find even more gems I didn't fully understand this time around. I think one of the best things to have come out of all the chaos of the past year at Cake is for them to have you on board with the knew owners. Hopefully they let your input mold the future of Cakewalk because I could not think of anyone more suited to the task.
Not sucking up or practicing hero worship here. Just stating fact and giving praise where it is due.
Now that the gooshy stuff is out of the way... you are correct that in that thread you are referring to there was indeed pilot error in play and I popped a little. That was a result of already being frustrated by this thread and having studied and wrangled with that problem for a few days only to have it fail when I actually tried to do it. Normally I would try to put all the burden of guilt on myself in a situation like that until it was absolutely verified something was indeed wrong with the program. It just seems that this happens any time I try to do anything beyond the absolute basics despite combing the manual and watching/reading everything I can get my hands on. The manual entry I had dug up was indeed missing a very crucial step but I could have dug further into my various notes, additional guides or other resources until I found the flaw in my approach. Fortunately the forum pulled my butt out of the fire before gear started becoming airborne (thanks again, jb). So yeah, I screwed up out of impatience and frustration there and intend to add a "solved" to the title once I'm done typing this.
As far as the "bugs" and issues I've experienced they are intermittent yet consistent and have all been verified by other users many times. If you saw my manual notes you'd see the plethora of additional notes detailing features I tried as described in the manual that failed along with any possible work arounds I had found. I will keep it to the most persistent and work deterring problems I have. I have detailed these many times before on the forum...
1) The selection bug: Starting in X2 it seems in some projects after a while this problem slowly creeps in and entrenches itself into the project getting worse and worse as work progresses. When selecting various data in various areas of the GUI (particularly the Clips Pane and PRV but also in other areas as well) other random data will get selected as well. For example... in the clips pane I may select one clip to edit. What will happen is other completely unrelated clips will get selected as well. No matter how many times you clear the selection and reselect the desired clip those same extra clips get selected. Any changes you make to the desired clip will now affect the other clips. You can't move, trim, splice, apply effects or fades without screwing up the other data. Many times these extra clips are off screen so by the time you realize it you may have already made many moves which you either have to undo or correct... except when you try to make those corrections all the clips are still linked somehow. Even worse is when you save the project with the unwanted changes. The clips were not accidentally linked through any user input. They just start getting stuck together and as time goes on the behavior becomes more widespread to where you almost can't select anything without unrelated clips getting selected as well.
A couple workarounds are a) using Ctrl Click to deselect the unwanted selections BUT sometimes this doesn't work, especially if the bug has really invaded the project and will sometimes cause crashes if you keep trying. You also have to double check every single clip in the program every time you make a move or you might miss one. Not very efficient. The other workaround, and the one that I use on every project now whether the bug has surfaced or not as a preventative measure is to lock ALL Pos/Data of ALL the clips/tracks until I need to make an edit. This guarantees nothing is getting moved unless it is intended however it is an enormous workflow killer having lock and unlock stuff as you edit. In the PRV or other areas I haven't found any suitable workarounds yet so I just have to deal with it but fortunately it's not as common and deselect/reselect seems to work a little better despite the occasional freeze up.
2) Audiosnap: This just not work well. The transients flicker off and on like Christmas lights, disappear, give false statuses, refuse to move randomly for no reason then start moving again. This makes it extremely difficult to work with and sometimes it just refuses to work at all. Also it doesn't seem to want to save in the middle of a session. It's an all or nothing prospect. I was working on a very lengthy track that required a lot of finite adjustments. I spent a whole day working on it and ended up saving my progress and shut down for the night. When I opened the project the next day it was unusable. Totally corrupted to the point absolutely nothing could be done. No playback, screens spilling over into other screens, big blocks of pixels popping up everywhere all ended up in hard crashes. It was trashed. The only workaround to these issues is accept that I just can't stretch things as I intend if the program decides not to play nice leading to highly compromised end results for my efforts and any changes must be bounced before saving and closing the program. Even then it's dicey.
3) Graphical glitches: Just constant graphical glitches. False status, disappearing waves, notes, transients, parameters, flashing screens, track control boxes freaking out, on and on. I know it's not my system because almost every video I have seen using X2, including the Cake produced ones show the same graphical errors. The only exception was FBBs Effects Workshop. Not sure if he edited those out or he just has the best system in the world. It is all very distracting.
4) Intermittent or broken controls: Sometimes I have to press buttons multiple times to get them to work if they work at all. There have been many times where I was trying something new and the buttons wouldn't respond so I thought it was a broken feature but then later I'd try it again and they'd magically work. Some buttons are just borked. Like the MSR buttons on the Take Lanes. They have never worked reliably for me and I avoid them at all costs to the point that I mute my clips instead of muting lanes. There are other weird input gremlins I've experienced as well like my QWERTY shortcuts causing different behavior than the associated button commands and vice versa. All this just pops up on occasion but again it's distracting and keeps me second guessing myself and having to refer to the manual or my notes just to make sure I'm not making a mistake.
So those a re the main issues. I have experienced other commonly reported stuff like the Looping issue you mentioned. None of this stuff happens consistently (except for some of the audiosnap weirdness) but it all happens enough and in combination to lead to a syndrome of frustration, paranoia and diminished productivity. If these issues just happened with a little less frequency I could tolerate them but it seems like every few actions I take SOMETHING minor happens. It's like death by a thousand paper cuts. I however have very few hard crashes compared to X1 but plenty of little freeze ups and engine stops for seemingly no reason. I've started keeping the Performance Module in my Control Bar to see if there are any spikes but I am hardly using any resources at all. It's a heavy duty system with a clean windows 7 install and very little extra added aside from my audio stuff. I've tweaked it as per Cake tech supports suggestions, I bought a modern and compatible interface, I've been using MSE for my AV and have now started disabling it while working, I am not connected to the internet, I have run scans, checked power features, everything and nothing will get these annoying little glitches out of my hair.
If I was already proficient with the program or advanced digital recording concepts it would be a little more bearable but as someone who is just learning this software and all the more modern functions it has really gotten in my way.
You are right though... it is possible to get things done but it is slooooooow going. I will not give up and after I do a review of everything I've learned this past year I am wiping the system, calling tech support and starting from scratch to hopefully get some better performance out of it.
Anyway, thanks for chiming in and I hope this has shown you where I'm coming from. I think all this stuff is very cool and Sonar is very cutting edge but it does have some issues. I just don't like having company representatives act like I'm crazy for being disappointed about those issues. I give credit where credit is due and give Sonar and Cake praise for many aspects of the product and their business. I won't however pretend like all the issues I mentioned above don't exist or that they don't interfere with my work. If we all did that nothing would get fixed.
Cheers and take care.