I had 2 really neat Friendly Name experiences this past week.
 
Last week I installed my new license to Studio One v2.52 on my new DAW. I've never used the program with external I/O hardware. It took about a minute to set up a project from scratch. I choose to use the factory 8 track template to record the 7 mics on my drum kit. Seconds after I clicked the choice I had 8 tracks loaded and here's the crazy thing... the tracks were automatically named:
 
Analog 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.
 
Which, just happens to be the very same names silk screened on the piece of hardware my mics are plugged in to. Awesome. I quickly relabeled the tracks Kick, Snare, OH L, OH R, Tom 1 Tom 2 and Hi Hat. Then I armed the tracks and made a recording of my drum kit. 
 
Wow.
 
 
 
Saturday I installed my new license of Pro Tools 11 on my new DAW. I've never used the program with my home DAW and 3rd party hardware. It took about a minute to set up a project from scratch. I choose to add 7 new audio tracks to record the 7 mics on my drum kit. Seconds after I clicked the choice I had 7 tracks loaded and here's the crazy thing... the tracks were named:
 
Input 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.
 
Which, just happens to be the very similar to the names silk screened on the piece of hardware my mics are plugged in to. Awesome. I quickly relabeled the tracks Kick, Snare, OH L, OH R, Tom 1 Tom 2 and Hi Hat. Then I armed the tracks and made a recording of my drum kit.
 
Wow.
 
 
With SONAR I use a custom made drum kit Track Template that I have set up to buffer me from being reminded that the "Friendly" names of my inputs are arcane assemblages of words and numbers that do nothing to make the experience friendly.
 
 
Come one Cakewalk!!!  I'm looking forward to Cakewalk some day getting it together and making it's friendly names as friendly as the other DAWs regular names.
 
That would be a welcome improvement and I really, really look forward to getting a chance to see it happen someday.
 
 
 
:-)
 
 
all the best,
mike
 

I am probably not being helpful and I may have dreamed it because I did much complaining about this very issue over the years (that and locking midi ports amongst other eventually adopted "features"), but I am pretty sure I renamed my ports something like Lynx 1 (left), Lynx 2 (right), Lynx 3 (left), and so on. But I can't use X1 so I don't know if they reverted back on it. Fwiw I'm still at 8.5.3. But I will check in a bit when I start up the studio.

Hi Mike,
I really hate to wade into platform v platform topics...it always feels to me like chefs arguing over which brand of cookware to use, but here goes:
 
I may be a bit confused here...Sonar absolutely allows you to create "Friendly Names" for track inputs and outputs. Those names can be anything you want, you just have to set them up.
 
That's the whole concept of friendly names and it's exactly the same in Cubase, PT10 (not sure about 11...haven't upgraded yet but I'd be shocked if it had changed) and Reaper; there are some default input and output names and you can change them to be whatever you'd like.
 
Are you talking about the default I/O naming convention?
 
Dean

Totally agree Mike !

Razorwit
...Sonar absolutely allows you to create "Friendly Names" for track inputs and outputs. Those names can be anything you want, you just have to set them up.
 
That's the whole concept of friendly names and it's exactly the same in Cubase, PT10 (not sure about 11...haven't upgraded yet but I'd be shocked if it had changed) and Reaper; there are some default input and output names and you can change them to be whatever you'd like.

 
 
Hi Dean,
 No I am speaking about the fact that you can not change them to be whatever you'd like in SONAR. Did they finally fix it in X2 after all these years?
 
 I get this same response every time I mention this... and then I have to remind the responder about this pesky little detail:
 
 Go select your analog input 2 (or any even numbered input) in a track in the track view.
 
 What does it say?
 
 Right input 1 or something friendly™ like that is about as friendly as I have ever gotten SONAR to be when I was looking to select input 2?
 
 
 The other programs don't play that silly little game. As you say, in many programs I can also label input 2 something friendly like "Kick Drum: RE20" and that is exactly what I will see when I go looking for it.
 
 It seems real simple.
 
 I look forward a to a time when SONAR will call input 2 "input 2" or something friendly like that.
 
 
 best regards,
mike
 
 
 
 

I've never had any problems with renaming I/O channels. I have outboard synths permanently wired to specific inputs on my interface (I don't use a mixer), so the input channels are named accordingly (e.g. "Left Hammond", "Stereo PC2R", "Mic 1", etc.)

bitflipper
I've never had any problems with renaming I/O channels. I have outboard synths permanently wired to specific inputs on my interface (I don't use a mixer), so the input channels are named accordingly (e.g. "Left Hammond", "Stereo PC2R", "Mic 1", etc.)

:-) Do you use any "Right" inputs or anything with an even number? :-)

Hi Mike,
Hmm...I may not be understanding what you're getting at Mike. Here is what my input list looks like. Notice names like "Great River Pre", "Sebatron" and "1176":

 
Is it just the "Left", "Right" and "Stereo" designations that are appended to the beginning? Cause if so, yeah, that's a bit annoying, but I guess it's never bugged me that much...
 
Dean

Because my audio interface's name Quad-Capture is a bit too long, I use its another name "UA-55" as a friendly name. When I select the left input of the device I choose "Left UA-55 1-2," which appears as "LeftUA5512" once selected. I wish it could be just "UA-55 L" :-)

I agree that SONAR's friendly names feature is the worst of the four products that I own.  I like Studio One 2.52, Reaper 4.0 and Samplitude much more than SONAR's implementation.  All three give you a nice tidy list based on whether you are using mono or stereo channels.  

My work around for SONAR was to create track templates for mono channel creation.  SONAR is great for teaching problem solving skills.
 
In fairness, SONAR is probably the best of the four for Plugin organization.   Well... it will be when they get the bugs worked out of the browser.