I ask this every update. And since as far as I can tell no one has post the complete fixes & improvements list, can one of you brave souls tell me if there is any change to the "Tempo View". I'm really hoping for a node and spline based tempo map. But anything other than the incredibly imprecise and fussy pen based tempo editing method. A method, I might point out, has not been significantly improved since Sonar 2. Anyone?

 Nope.  It's pretty much straight line or free hand.  There's always next year.

Will never happen unless you feature request it.

You can't get any more precise than using the "Insert New Tempo" command. Works just fine. You can change to the exact tempo at the exact point in time that you like.

puffer
I ask this every update. And since as far as I can tell no one has post the complete fixes & improvements list, can one of you brave souls tell me if there is any change to the "Tempo View".
 
I'm really hoping for a node and spline based tempo map. But anything other than the incredibly imprecise and fussy pen based tempo editing method. A method, I might point out, has not been significantly improved since Sonar 2.
 

You're not alone, Puffer.  Fine-grained tempo control is extraordinarily important to the type of music I'm pursuing.  So much so that I'm going to transition to Cubase which delivers a much better solution (not 100% effective but better than SONAR for my purposes).  Disclaimer: this assessment is based on reading documentation only.  I have not yet had the opportunity to do some serious work using the Cubase facilities.
 
It's really a shame.  There are many reasons I would prefer to stick with SONAR, and the modest upgrades to making the Tempo View into a full-fledged editing tool like the PRV would probably not be all that much work.

dmbaer
Fine-grained tempo control is extraordinarily important to the type of music I'm pursuing.

Finer than .01 BPM and one tempo change per tick?   It makes no sense to have a higher density of tempo changes than you have notes; it's not possible to hear a tempo change between notes. And I challenge anyone to hear the difference between 100.01 and 100.009BPM in a musical context
 
I think you must mean something like "more flexible" control.
 
 

I think something like splines might be useful.

A feature request?! Do tell.

Sylvan, thanks for the logical fallacy -- "Works for me, ergo it works for you." -- but that doesn't really help. Specifically, I'm talking about editing tempo maps, where the tempo ramps up and down, sometimes in very short amounts of time - something that applies to scoring, to orchestration, to commercial music cues - i.e. not some obscure feature. It's also a great effect in abstract electronic, pop, rock. Rather than just jumping to a new tempo there is a curve or slope. The instrumentation plays along with this slope. The current state of the tempo draw tool is woefully unwieldy for doing this with any degree of precision. Not even any "smart tool" curves and lines, just a pen and a really hard-to-read, spreadsheet-like table. Try this. Take a project that is MIDI data, open the "Tempo View" window, and draw a bunch of tempo changes. Have them slope 1 or 2 bars, or even 4 or 5. More or less simple. Now go in change those tempos to be a bit little faster and slower, by 1 or 2 or 3 or 10 BPM. Or change the length of the slope leading up to a new tempo change but landing on a precise beat. I'm not saying it can't be done; I've been working around this for 10 years. I just wish Cakewalk would truly bring all aspects of their program up to date, rather than just throwing more VSTs at us.

brundlefly

dmbaer
Fine-grained tempo control is extraordinarily important to the type of music I'm pursuing.

Finer than .01 BPM and one tempo change per tick?   It makes no sense to have a higher density of tempo changes than you have notes; it's not possible to hear a tempo change between notes. And I challenge anyone to hear the difference between 100.01 and 100.009BPM in a musical context
 
I think you must mean something like "more flexible" control. 

I quite agree that tempo events between notes is nothing more than wasting resources (both storage and processing cycles).  And I'm not talking about subtle tempo variations/differences.
 
By "fine grained" I mean being able to have (and readily edit) tempo changes every eighth note (or quarter note triplets or possibly even 16th notes).  I wrote a useful program (certainly useful for me, anyway, but probably not for the majority of other computer musicians) that takes a "click track" of MIDI note-on events and turns it into MIDI tempo track with tempo events at the desired division of a beat.  It may not seem like a big deal, but to be able to edit those by clicking and dragging tempo event "markers" up and down in an editor is much easier to work with than using a draw tool, which is all we have at our disposal in the SONAR tempo editor.  Yes, you can accomplish exactly the same thing with either approach in theory, but in practice using click and drag is gives you results with less stress and better accuracy.
 
SONAR editors are generally first rate.  In both the Track View and in the PVR, we have the smart tool that is wonderfully efficient to work with.  But in the Tempo View, not so much.  It really feels like the Tempo View has been given second-class citizenship in the family of SONAR views.
 
The other thing that Cubase allows and SONAR does not is being able to disable the tempo track temporarily and have playback use a fixed tempo.  If you've nearly completed some work and have the tempo track established, but need to go back and, say, add an additional MIDI track while slowing down the temp to accommodate your less-than-virtuoso chops, this can come in extremely handy.
 
 

I'm not sure if many are aware, but tempo changes--especially gradual ones--were the hidden cause of some bugs and/or audio problems in Sonar as of X2.  I had multiple cases of headbanging (in a bad way), troubleshooting some audio glitch, etc, that turned out to occur over a tempo slope.  There was no fix, but at least it was explained.
 
I hope our friends beta-testing X3 do so with lots of rapid and gradual tempo changes to see how various functionality/effects/ARA/etc react.