Earlier today I went to the SAE Institute here in NYC in the hopes to get a glimpse of X3.  I was waiting in line to check-in at IMSTA when I checked my phone and read the Introducing Sonar X3 e-mail.  My excitement grew.  I quickly found the Cakewalk room and saw X3 on the monitor.  It looked very nice.  They talked mostly about VST3 and Melodyne.  When I asked about notation fixes/improvements, I was told that there was none and got the feeling that the Cakewalk staff did not want to hear any questions about it.  That's how I have been feeling for the last several years about Cakewalk in general: They do not want to hear about notation.
I'm very disappointed at Cakewalk for not giving a crap about all the requests to fix and improve notation.  I know I might get bombarded with anti-notation messages, but I want to make it clear that I don't want Sonar to become an advance notation editor but a DAW that has a decent notation display.
Let me give an example.  Enter a quarter triplet.  Looks good, right? Now, delete the center note as to create a triplet rest. Does not look like a triplet at all.  Right?  All I'm asking is for cakewalk to fix the staff view.  I don't need avant-garde notation just some functioning simple notation.
I also went to the Avid room and was chuckling inside when they were boasting their new 64-bit heroic deeds.  My condescending attitude came to a full stop when they mentioned that in the future they plan to have a better integration of Sibelius in Pro-Tools.
And to add insult to injury, as I was going back home on the subway I was reading the SOS review of Logic Pro X.  They are not crazy about it, but guess what is one of the new features that they do like: the score editor.
My question to Cakewalk: What the f*¢k?
Respectfully,
Sergio

Sergio, I feel your pain! I have repeatedly begged since Pro Audio 9 to please do something with the Staff View. I even bought the Cake sale of Notion 3 and was impressed enough to buy the 64 bit version Notion 4 because of the Rewire. Guess what? Rewire only worked in the 32 bit version of Sonar. I do like Notion. I asked then if they didn't think it was a good idea to work up something with the Notion guys. Now Notion belongs to Presonus. My main concern now is if X3 has been improved as far as the audio engine. My latency was really good in X1. X2 came along and it became borderline useable. It has not crashed but the clicks and pops by the time you get a good number of plugs going is nearly intolerable. I still stay loyal to Cake because I like the bang for the buck features and customer support has always been excellent. I'm hoping this buyout is a giant step to getting the DAW that Sonar should be.

The first Cakewalk program that I used came in a 5¹⁄₄-inch floppy disk and for the first time I'm seriously tempted to switch to another DAW.

Just curious - I have posted a couple of times that Finale has a once in a while sale on Finale - for $99.
 
Can you look at that as an option next time it comes around?
 
I know that for you and some number of others, notation is super important, but this is not likely the case for more than a small percentage of the user base.  I have had issues with Step Sequencer for forever, but it never bubbles up enough to warrant development attention for releases, so I DO understand that disappointment.
 
I am just thinking that if a $99 purchase of Finale does periodically come available, wouldn't it work for you to just pick up that piece of software to solve not having Sonar's notation stand in the way of your productivity?
 
I sort of look at it like some of the plugins that are included.  Some of the basic ones work, but are nowhere near as robust as third-party plugins, so I invested separately into Komplete 8 Ultimate - to give me the quality I needed for my work.
 
Just wondering, 
 
Bob Bone
 

I was at IMSTA today too. It was nice to see X3 in action, but nobody was demoing it! Maybe I came at an "in between" time, but whereas Studio One, Abelton and Cubase all had pretty involved demos going on with large projector screens, the Sonar room was just a small monitor with X3 on it and nobody doing a demonstration. I was a bit disappointed, although there was some good "craic" going on.

I am at IMSTA. We are giving more 1-on-1 sit downs rather than demos with the big projectors. Too many people with specific questions to do a demo from past experience. Dan's been talking to people all day and would have been happy to sit down with you. As for the notation question, we answered the question. Not sure what else we could do about at the show. 
 
We did get a chance to meet a lot of people today. Both existing and potentially new customers so it was a great experience. Overall a great day. 

Yeah I saw some pretty interesting stuff there. Gotta admit though, there were some rooms I only went in to get my card punched for the raffle (wasn't much interested in the Oxford outboard gear for example but spent 10 mins chatting to them anyway) and in the end, the last room I went in couldn't find their hole punch, after which I gave up on the raffle. What a waste, I could have really spent more time in the rooms I was really interested in (like Cake's) instead of running around like a maniac. Nice building though! What I would give for some of those studios. The wooden sound traps were beautiful.

I feel the "pain" about the staff view (as much as my limited knowledge of musical theory allows me to anyway...) but, if I remember correctly, Cake once had a specific product for notation. They sold it and... it became NOTION (which is now owned by Presonus... funny...)!
 
Bottom line for me: that deal must have had some kind of clause preventing Cake to develop their notation for "X" number of years...

The arc of Cakewalk development is long but it bends towards audio.
 
It is not just notation that has not moved very much, but MIDI as well. Even among users who compose their own music as opposed to recording someone else's, the tendency has been to go with step sequencing loops etc. The plan seems to be to appeal to two large but almost mutually exclusive user groups. The professional recording and editing group, and the neo-DJ's.
 
Notation is irrelevant to both, and would require somewhat different skillsets and a lot of work to program.  Judging by recent events at Sibelius, the world is not clamoring for high end notation/midi software.
 
Sonar's history as the great great grandson of a sequencer seems to have lost its significance.

I have to say, for me, IMSTA festa was a very positive experience. I got to see some new plugs, ask questions, learn new features of stuff I already have, laugh at bloviating sales pitches from SSL and Avid and pity the shmucks who believed them, get hooked up with some free software, and the ultimate icing on the cake: meeting Andrew and Dan while spending some quality time with Sonar X3.

Of this last part I have a few observations:
* The demo projects in X3 are amazing. The one they had open when I was there sounded fresh, current, energetic, and, as much as I loathe this word, professional. Anyone buying Sonar X3 and not studying the demo(s) should consider himself cheated out of some of his purchase's value.

* Colored tracks are definitely a huge asset in navigating a large project. Definitely a welcome addition.

* On the day of release, I did not run into any bugs when given the chance to get into the driver's seat. This was decidedly not the case with X2.

* I was able to easily reproduce the "disappearing top folder" bug is that I first reported in Sonar 8.5. (If you want to play along at home, place a track folder at the top of a project and then drag a track into it). I know, it's not a biggie, but I'd think its a bit embarrassing when a new user encounters it.

* I still have a laundry list of usability FRs:
--- a complete channel strip in the default ProChannel on studio (achievable with current offerings plus a compressor in an FX chain)
--- take lanes and automation lanes collapsing and expanding with auto track zoom. Closing them manually each time is a pain. I'm not a five year-old, don't make me clean up after myself.
--- when all pro channel modules don't fit on the screen, when one module is expanded, all others should collapse

* Andrew and Dan are amazing guys. I listened to them get grilled with the most ludicrous questions and criticisms (including that the learning curve has increased too much since the days of Cakewalk for DOS). They handled this unceasing barrage of BS with nearly superhuman courtesy and professionalism. While Brandon and Seth will rightfully be missed by many, I do not doubt that the public face of Cakewalk could not be in better hands.