Hello @ll; 
I'm looking for a good way to work with the matrix view harware-supported. However, all controllers that look remotely decent seem to have been crafted with Albeton in mind. Is there any piece of hardware (such as the Novation Launchpad, Akai's APC Series, or their likes) that any of you have successfully integrated into your production workflow with Sonar X? Are there maybe good (and, ideally, affordable) alternatives to the ones I mentioned? 

(I do have a Roland A-800 Keyboard Controller which provides me with several fader/slider + knob controly to play with, but the 8 pads provided don't quite suffice for anything beyond most basic arrangements, not even mentioning visual representation of occupied pads and their location in the currently active grid of cells)


Your feedback is very much appreciated. Thank you for your help. Best - Saur. 

The only thing that I have seen for the Matrix specifically is using 'touch' in Windows 8. Cakewalks videos show this to pretty good advantage. I would think the OS upgrade and a touch enabled monitor could be had for less than the price of a controller.
 
I'm currently looking into using a Surface RT (< $400) as a remote control device. If that works then it should also be able to control the Matrix.
 
Regards,

The idea hadn't occured to me, thanks! I'm a bit wary of Win 8, and adding a touch display to the price of the upgrade kinda kills the option for me right now, but thanks for the angle nonetheless! I think I may give the Launchpad a shot then, once I get the money scraped together, as it seems to be the cheapest shot to start with after all.  
 
Cheers! 

i don't own this but looks like fun and the price is right.Windows 7 too I believe.
https://www.leapmotion.com/product

I use the novation launchpad with sonar. I have to check, but I believe I installed the driver without the custom novation software so that it works as a midi device. I then treat it as an ACT controller in Sonar. It works fine as an input device, however the LEDs do not work. The LEDs are controlled via midi making it easy to build a piece of software to control the LEDs.  Unfortunately, I have not found support in Sonar's apis that makes a plug-in that interacts with the matrix view to control the launchpad's LEDs possible.
 
So if you don't care about the LEDs and don't mind setting up an ACT controller, The LaunchPad works well enough to fit the bill.
 
 

I'm hoping touch screens will be the future for such techniques.  But I'm waiting until the adjustable-angle large touchscreens get a little cheaper.  $400 and falling from $600.
 
@

QuNeo ?  I think they're a similar price to the Launchpad, perhaps a touch more expensive.

AT
I'm hoping touch screens will be the future for such techniques.  But I'm waiting until the adjustable-angle large touchscreens get a little cheaper.  $400 and falling from $600.
 
@

 
I guess it depends on your definition of large, but some of these are way less that $400
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/sna.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~topic=touch_monitor
 
If I were to get a 27" or larger touch screen, I would want to have resolution higher than 1080p.... Right now, a pair of those 21.5" monitors look pretty attractive as a work surface...
 

So I finally purchased a Surface RT to use as a remote control surface (pun intended). Got it home and set up the Remote Desktop Connection and...voila I was controlling Sonar X2 with the Surface RT. I specifically tested the Matrix and was pleasantly surprised that dragging and dropping via 'touch' from the X2 Browser to the Matrix was simple.
 
Still working through a few technical issues regarding user names and certificates but basically I had the thing up and running within 10 minutes.
 
Fun stuff. I'll supply more info as I assimilate the implications.
 
Regards

I gotta say, that with the improvements in matrix view, cakewalk would be well served to find some way of getting Launchpad to work... (with beslls and whistles) ..
 
sure touch is great, but a Launchpad is $100..