I heart these threads. I've been a fan of them since this was a newsgroup before Cakewalk even had audio. The sincere but totally unfocused and naive rants get my pulse up. The technical retorts make my pride soar. The ensuing angst makes me reconsider my own position and take a real look around the industry. And then I realize these threads are on EVERY DAW forum out there. Some worse than others. 

It is an age old marketing tactic and probably a necessary one in a world overrun by complexity.  Let's not pretend Cakewalk or any large company exists strictly our of benevolence. Even the most "caring" company has an ulterior motive for that care, even if some of it genuine. No software will ever be perfect for every user 100% of the time.  They could patch to infinity and there would always be something.  It seems like I get  100mb adobe acrobat reader patch every other day.   It simply comes down to pragmatism for any software company. 
 
I don't know about rest of you, but I honestly don't know if this forum represents  the majority or even a significant portion of the Cakewalk user base.  It may simply just attract the most vocal or even just the people with the most free time to post.  Cakewalk/ Roland cannot survive by hitting the panic button every time a negative thread pops up. It's difficult to balance being responsive to the needs of the many and yourself and trying to literally stick a pacifier in the mouth of every baby in the nursery, knowing that some will continue to cry anyway. 
 
Again, Cakewalk staff would not even bother with this exchange if they were as "take it or leave it" as some of you claim.  That's like me voluntarily picking a fight with my gf that I already know I can't win.  They could easily just skip this topic and and save everyone multiple pages of BS.  I'm not trying to insult people who are simply frustrated.  There are many of you who seem like decent people who are just annoyed.  Then again there are people who are downright troll like and simply find a way to find the absolute most negative thing to pitch in.  These are the types that would stand in the crowd during a lynching and volunteer rope without regard for  whether it was justice.  They just liked the chaos.  Having worked customer service in the past, there is nothing more deflating than trying to be helpful to someone who seems determined to be belligerent.

I've always had good response from support....maybe not in the forum, but support nonetheless.
 
Anyone who wants to ditch Sonar because of no response from the bakers should go onto the other DAW forums....it's the same everywhere (yes, even the Steinberg forum). Actually, the worst is the Avid forum. Want to talk about zero customer support? Yet Avid manages to squeeze $700 from users for a terrible DAW (Pro Tools). I have moved onto Mac just because I need better video features, but Sonar X2 is always my go-to tool for everything else. And believe me, the other big DAW's have their share of bugs!  

brconflict
Marketing guys eat this up. Sure, it makes sense to bypass X2b. If the features in X3 aren't enough to get people to upgrade, the fixes might do the trick. This is an age-old trick that happens to work.

Yes, but it's not a foregone conclusion.  We did, after all, get an X2a.  And X1 got as far as X1d.  That's not nothing.  Sometimes it makes better business sense to invest your resources in your current release, while other times it's better to focus on the next major release.  Since we aren't privy to what's happening behind the scenes, it's anybody's guess which way it'll go this particular time.  Historically, however, Cakewalk has a good record of supporting their product with updates and bug fixes.  And although X2 has been out a while now, it hasn't been all that long, and has already been patched once.  If an X2b is coming or not depends on how much development is going into X3.  

Heather, wicked, and dub have said it perfectly. Better than I could.
 
 

All DAW have bugs...
But other DAW have more interesting idea today. Today Sonar X2a is old-school, not the modern DAW. We need fantastic update if we want to have a modern DAW.

CW, please make Sonar X* better and stop making other unnecessary pieces.

OK, I'll bite.
 
>> Today Sonar X2a is old-school, not the modern DAW. We need fantastic update if we want to have a modern DAW.
 
Just what, exactly, would you consider to be a feature of a modern DAW that SONAR doesn't have?

Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]SONAR is not going anywhere.

 
I'm not sure you really wanted to put it that way..........
 
But seriously in the time it takes to walk across the hall and get a cup of coffee a CW spokesperson could easily post a simple "we're working on a bug fix version of X2a"....unless the truth is "we're working on a paid X3 upgrade".....then I'm pretty sure after reading all the threads here you probably wouldn't want to announce that.........
 

I don't think of the Roland folks climbing in on here and offering basically nothing but damage control is awesome or excellent customer service. It is marketing damage control.

I think a patch would show much more awesomeness and excellence! With X2a being out for so long and many reported issues yet to be fixed that we would get a bone.
 
I understand the lifecycle of software. I also understand that releases aren't ready until they are ready and there may be contractual agreements to prevent the release date of a product. With the software companies code to market strategies, there has to be some sort of tentative release date for a patch if one is being worked on. They must be having some major issues or we would have been notified by now of a potential time frame. With September coming along and possibly X3 very soon, We should know something is around the corner.
 
I would be happy just to hear oficially that there will be a patch. With the Roland folks hush hush on that, that concerns me. I am sure that if it meant enough $$ that someone who was in charge of the release management would say something.
 
I am just more concerned that there will be no X2b. All I want to know is if there will be one or not. I don't even need a date. I do not think that is asking too much. That would shut me up to know that oficially.

Not a modern DAW ....wow. So what do you consider a modern DAW? Sonar has been on the for front of many modern features.

I am sure that Cakewalk has a separate group of developers working on bugs and a separate group working on new features and X3. Historically, they will eventually roll them into one and call it X3, a paid up date. I am excited to see what X3 has to bring, hopefully some bug fixes and some more cool features. If it is not a big up date and I feel that it is not worth the purchase, I will simply skip a round. Nothing in X2 is a show stopper for me.