For anyone that remembers early versions of Sonar and the old forums- You could come on the forum day or night - back then there was that a list at the bottom that listed all the users that were currently online. After a while, you would learn to know who knew specific issues and could watch to see when that user was here so that you could message them and get the answer that you needed. But there were always 100's, and I mean literally 100's and 100's. Go back as far as you want and you'd find that the users that really loved Sonar, fully intended to stick around through the good and the bad and really only wanted the DAW to reach it's perfected potential and have always mostly asked for Cakewalk to stop with the wizbang stuff and just make it work and fix issues. Many of us have seen our suggestions implemented over the years. But then there were the fanboys that didn't seem to care what Cakewalk did - it was all good. I have never believed that those people were helping Cakewalk at all. It seemed that every one of them where of closed mind and would not accept anyone that disagreed with any premise or found fault of any sort with Sonar.
Cakewalk has always seemed to go for a larger and larger market share. That's business I suppose. But it ain't rocket science. Gaining larger market share, unless you have a absolute monopoly, always means cheaper. Usually cheapest. It only rarely means more technically specialized or perfected. Way back then they {Cakewalk}seemed to have had a core foundation of highly technical users that could accurately describe faults and management would always be on the boards to discuss issues, discover limitations and discuss proposed solutions. Sometimes extremely technical stuff. A very few of those old days users are still around but most are gone. I assume that like me, when Cakewalk dumped on us for that final time by abandoning traditional Sonar and went full steam ahead with the "clean sheet of paper" (to quote Greg Henderschott) into the X series with all of it's NEW user "features" and UI and workflow changes, they stopped upgrading and stopped coming here too. Maybe just not a good fit anymore. I myself did buy X1, but have no use for it at all. For this studio owner, it is worthless. Too clunky, intimately familiar navigational features gone. It is foreign to me and I have no interest at all in learning Cakewalk's new generation methodology. So I am stuck at forever buggy 8.5.3 - at least until something better comes along.
As an aside, this board has devolved into a group of users that seem to squabble over who has a higher knowledge of music theory, people that argue endlessly without moderator oversight, smart alecks and trolls and someone that shows up saying he or she has dumped 18 tracks of something into Sonar that is not in tempo and wants to line up a drum track and needs to get it done today. What ? Most of the delightful users that always made it a joy to read their daily post's seem to be gone.
Now moderators globally delete posts by banned users with no explanation or notes, leaving dangling threads with later posts then totally out of context. Yeah, I know it was unintentional but like many things about Sonar, it was a bad call.
There is nothing wrong with it but many posts seem to be from new users that must have just got their hands Cakewalk Sonar and apparently have never even used a computer, microphone or installed a driver before. Evidently many get into Sonar with no recording background and with no effort to study the complex "mechanics" of recording. Must be some sales gimmick that says get Sonar and instantly be a studio. Careful daily reading of the posts here and it is apparent that this board reflects the skill levels of the users. It doesn't look good long term for Cakewalk Sonar in my estimation. Sonar was supposed to be the flagship or top tier.
Sonar is complex - that's for sure. But it has had a ton of stuff added on that I know many studios have absolutely no need or use for. The problems Cakewalk now have are self inflicted. As far as I am concerned they told their long established core user base to beat it.
We have asked forever to fix it, complete it, whatever you want to call it. But what they have done is cheapen a product that was developed by extremely brilliant people into something that is almost toy like trying to turn it into a DAW that appealed to everyone. Pros want pro stuff that does the job, every time. I suspect that along the way they have lost many of those that really put Sonar to work everyday, stressed it to the max, had it running every plug imaginable and even across networks. Those people were the 80% that really helped provide the valuable technical development feedback. That was the philosophy that Cakewalk was built on. Some of us literally starting pleading and begging at version 6. Stop with the add ons in Sonar. Set us up as subscribers. We would pay.
I see you guys are still having the same dialog all these years later.