cowboydan

Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk]

mike_mccue
 
"FWIW, this kind of speculation has been happening for over a decade."
 
Yes, very much so. Each year we have waited only to learn that we are going to have to pay for the bug fixes.
 
Indeed, there was a claim by Cakewalk's CTO that X1 featured fixes for 10 year old bugs in it.
 
I don't need to speculate, I paid for 10 upgrades and I got some bugs fixed by being patient.
 
When does X3 come out?

There's more to every release than just some bug fixes. Narrowing it down to just that is pretty misleading and unfair. All new versions of products have fixes for old things... that's not exactly unique to SONAR. There was a lot of other work and tons of new features that went into the last 10 versions. Surely you can't ignore that?

Not to be rude I agree with you in the fact that a lot of good things came out of Sonar, but I believe with all the problem reports that came in to the company that you cannot ignore that seeing as the customer has to deal with this almost every day.
 

Part of what I do for Cakewalk is managing tech support, the fault reporter system, the problem reporter system and escalated support with our partners. I don't mean to be rude either (nor arrogant) but out of everyone on this forum today, I truly believe I have a very realistic view of the problems that come in as well as how many people legitimately love SONAR and are very pleased with the product. 
 
Nobody is "ignoring" customers nor issues with the product. We have a direct line of communication for everyone to contact us that has been stated countless times. There's even a forum sticky for everyone to see that lists how to go about it. It's been stated again and again that the forum is not a direct line of communication for us supporting our customers. There's a huge part of this story nobody on this forum is seeing. A lot of times people reporting issues on the forum have never even contacted our support team (and sometimes they'll even outright lie about this for some reason). We don't even charge for technical support, something that is for the most part unheard of with our competitors. Some of our direct competitors charge $300 a year for support, $5+ a minute, or $30+ a case.
 
So when I see statements (in general not necessarily in this thread) about Cakewalk not supporting its customers, these statements couldn't be further from the truth.
 
For whatever its worth, my part time gig is at a music college where we teach Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Digital Performer, Ableton Live, Waves, NI, etc. etc. so myself (as well as many other Cakewalkers) have a very realistic view of the state of other products as well. This isn't just me either, pretty much everyone at Cakewalk is a power user in multiple products and has a pretty well rounded understanding of what else is out there and what the customer experience is. We're customers too.
 
If you're running into major issues with SONAR X2, you should contact our support team so we can work towards a solution. We know all about this stuff. We use the products too. We are also SONAR users. We also know ProTools, Studio One, Live, Logic, etc. Seriously, I think many folks will be surprised to find we know all about troubleshooting and learning new things. Give us a chance.
 
SONAR X2a is not perfect, and there are minor bugs that pop up from time to time, but even with that being the case it is an extremely nice product that I'm convinced with proper support, proper hardware, and proper communication can be a great solution for anyone.
 
For whatever it is worth, the only recent case I can find from you on record was a question asking if X2b would be released to fix audio dropout issues. If you're experiencing audio dropouts, it's not SONAR that needs to be fixed with an update. Check out this article when you get a chance: http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013007
 
If that doesn't point you in the right direction, give our support team a call and we'll help you further. I'm sure we can get to the bottom of it.

sharke

Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]
It's not realistic to expect us to communicate about product plans, road maps, or business plans. I understand the frustration but don't take the silence as a sign of something bad. FWIW, this kind of speculation has been happening for over a decade. It's nothing new. We are all hard at work and when we have something we can discuss, we'll definitely communicate that to our customers via our website, emails, and forums. 
 
I do want to stress that anyone having serious issues should always contact Cakewalk support directly. We are happy to help out and often times a quick call can resolve an issue. 
 
 

I appreciate your post Andrew, but we're not looking for any top secret product plans or road maps. Just some info about whether or not X2 is going to be patched again would suffice. 

Sharke,
 
Any word on X2b (or patches in general) could be construed as an indication of further delay of X3.
 
As an ex-software developer I would never step into that quagmire in a public forum by making such a specific declaration.
 
I applaud Andrew's handling of this thread the way he did.
 

The SW industry has changed a lot. Ryan, if you are working on bug fixes, where are the bug fixing releases? I think that lot of people just expected something like this:
 
REAPER Pre-Release Discussion
Reaper Issue Tracker
or this:
Cubase 7 Issues
 
 

Mike m makes me laugh.

And Ryan, thanks for your posts. You make me feel happy.

I like the cakewalk family too.

I guess I don't get it. Sonar has worked well for me over the years. If it didn't, I would switch to something that did. I only speak to how I use it - audio mainly with a few midi tracks.
 

cparmerlee
 
I sense there may be an expectations problem here.  It seems that those who are most frustrated are viewing Sonar as a professional-grade product around which a commercial studio could be built.  That was never my expectation.  The pricing of the product indicated to me the product position was "Something approaching what a fully-equipped professional studio would use, but at a basement band price."  Those who are expecting more probably should follow Grem's advice.  But other than ProTools, which seems to be the Cadillac (and Cadillac-priced) product, my guess is that the grass isn't any greener with Cubase, Live or any of the other products in this category.  Rather than creating yet another hate mail thread, which clearly is not changing Cakewalk's marketing decisions, I suggest that folks invest that time in converting to one of the other products, and please let us know if the grass is truly greener over there.

 
It is clear to me why someone new to SONAR would have this perspective.
 
If you were a long time Cakewalk customer you would know that Cakewalk was one of the first professional MIDI sequencers and that professional musicians gladly paid good money to record and spit back MIDI programing with it.
 
Then about 8 years after that was established Cakewalk introduced a Product call Cakewalk Pro Audio 6 and it was astonishing to see that it could handle multi track audio better than most of our existing tape based multi track mechanisms. Astonishing.
 
Then a couple years after that we were introduced to streaming efx and virtual instruments with an open plug in architecture. People that owned professional TDM systems had no idea that some professionals were making native processing work. It took another 12 years for some people to figure out that it works.
 
Then slowly, ever so slowly, year after year, Cakewalk began to present their top tier professional product as a smorgasbord or kitchen sink package meant to appeal as a complete, turnkey, one stop shopping solution for people new to SONAR. The moniker "Producer" became a meaningless colloquialism.
 
It's easy to ignore features I don't use... I've been asked by Cakewalk reps to ignore the Step Sequencer, the Matrix, the Arp, the Pro Channel. 
 
It's hard to wait for bugs to be fixed while witnessing new features being rolled out and then learning that even they will be waiting on bugs fixes before the folks that wanted the new features will enjoy them.
 
 
I do not think it's correct to conclude that customers' unrealistic expectations are what have set the bar so high. The presentation of more and more, for less and less, has had a profound effect.
 
best regards,
mike
 

Ryan,
   Thanks for chiming in. Always appreciated to at least see someone address concerns such as these. I do have a few questions/comments, though, and hopefully won't ostracize myself from credibility I might have as a CW customer:
 
You mentioned that you're very aware of issues and that this forum is not to be used for direct support. I would beg that if you peruse Steinberg's forums, you'll see, not only are they very well laid out, but it's frequent that engineers or support staff will go through the forums and make suggestions that seems to be helpful, or at least say something like, "I'll take a look at that. Can you try [this] and tell me what happens?", or "That's a known bug in version x.x.x." It may not be as efficient as what Cakewalk does, but I really love their way (I own Wavelab for Mastering, so I'm there frequently).
 
It's ok if Cakewalk is stern about how they should be contacted regarding bugs, support calls, etc, but would Cakewalk either consider 24/7 support, or rethink working with us in the forums? Not all of us do this for a living, and we have daytime jobs, too. Many studios operate late night and on weekends. I'd pay for support to get those hours like I do with Waves, but it's not even an option here.
 
When reporting bugs, when/if there's any movement, I don't see it for at least 1-2 month(s). Any time I get a response, it's for an issue I reported, but I couldn't remember for what half the time because of the length of time in silence.
 
My sincere apologies for being so blunt, but Cakewalk doesn't seem to get the picture, from my perspective.
 
Thanks!

Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk]

mike_mccue
 
"FWIW, this kind of speculation has been happening for over a decade."
 
Yes, very much so. Each year we have waited only to learn that we are going to have to pay for the bug fixes.
 
Indeed, there was a claim by Cakewalk's CTO that X1 featured fixes for 10 year old bugs in it.
 
I don't need to speculate, I paid for 10 upgrades and I got some bugs fixed by being patient.
 
When does X3 come out?

There's more to every release than just some bug fixes. Narrowing it down to just that is pretty misleading and unfair. All new versions of products have fixes for old things... that's not exactly unique to SONAR. There was a lot of other work and tons of new features that went into the last 10 versions. Surely you can't ignore that?

I wouldn't ignore that, but if I'm not ready for X3's features (as I wasn't ready for Take Lanes in X2), I'd still like to get a patch for X2 in the meantime. When X3 comes out, which I'm guessing is probably next, why can't Cakewalk offer a patch for X2 at the same time? Surely those fixes can be separated? Thanks!

bapu

sharke

Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]
It's not realistic to expect us to communicate about product plans, road maps, or business plans. I understand the frustration but don't take the silence as a sign of something bad. FWIW, this kind of speculation has been happening for over a decade. It's nothing new. We are all hard at work and when we have something we can discuss, we'll definitely communicate that to our customers via our website, emails, and forums. 
 
I do want to stress that anyone having serious issues should always contact Cakewalk support directly. We are happy to help out and often times a quick call can resolve an issue. 
 
 

I appreciate your post Andrew, but we're not looking for any top secret product plans or road maps. Just some info about whether or not X2 is going to be patched again would suffice. 

Sharke,
 
Any word on X2b (or patches in general) could be construed as an indication of further delay of X3.
 
As an ex-software developer I would never step into that quagmire in a public forum by making such a specific declaration.
 
I applaud Andrew's handling of this thread the way he did.
 

Yes, exactly. It's a slippery slope when you start commenting on product plans and business plans. We just can't do it and honestly I don't know many other companies that are getting on their peer-to-peer forum to discuss product plans and other confidential information. We did a survey recently to our entire user base to get some more information so we can improve SONAR. We communicate weekly via newsletters and social media. We update our site regularly. We even come here every so often to answer questions. I think the real issue is not that we don't communicate or ignore our customers but that we won't answer questions that are part of overall business plan. 
 
The fact is we care a lot about customers. We try to offer as much value as we can to users. That includes Content Club, free videos and tips, special offers, and more. We offer free support and we probably communicate more in the peer-to-peer forum than any of our other competitors. We just released a new product last week. We have many more exciting announcements coming up. When we are ready, we will most definitely communicate. 
 
In the past I have seen countless threads that have nothing to do with SONAR or music on this forum. They involve Roland, ex-employees, product plans. We get countless complaints about them but in the fairness of discussion we leave them up. You do know that a lot of other companies delete those threads :)
 
We completely understand that you want to know what's next for SONAR. We can't comment at this time. Asking this question 10 different ways isn't going to change the answer. And putting ominous threads like this up spelling the demise of Cakewalk because we don't answer this one specific question isn't going to make us reveal our plans. I hope people understand that. 
 
Please be patient. I can say that SONAR's future is very bright. We are listening to users and when we have more information, we will let you know (I promise).

I'm very happy to hear from the mods today. Thanks for dropping in boys.
 
I guess what we don't see as users are the normal bits of being a business. When I was a quality assurance point man in a manufacturing division of 1,000 people, all I did was go to meetings and answer phone calls. The real work was for after 5:00 pm and weekends. IF I wanted to start a new initiative there was paperwork and a series of approvals all the way up to the president. It often took months to just get approval to fix something. Corporations are the sloths at times, while small business can be fast and flexible.
 
I imagine the rate of development at Cakewalk has slowed because there's more red tape involved in a corporate environment the size of Roland. Now, Cakewalk has a business plan and process that is part of a bigger animal. If they don't comply to the corporate franchise rules.... well, the corporation can freeze them out. They are no longer the little company that could, they are a strategic business unit within a huge corporation. If they want money to make changes they have to make a business case for it.
 
Corporations are bad and I feel sorry for the gang at Cakewalk. If we feel this frustrated, just imagine what it's like on the inside