I'm not talking about Bitflipper, Beagle, AT, Bapu, Billy (who left by the way because of where this forum is going) and the other well meaning, helpful, courteous dudes that have helped me and many others.
Every poster shares some responsibility for the direction this forum is going.
It's a real shame about Billy, he's been around much longer than I have, and I'd take much more notice of what he says than anything Cakewalk marketing could conjure up.
He's had a hard time recently because he carefully chronicled the difficulties he's been having with X1 since it was released and despite the issues that have made X1 unusable for him he's been pretty much hounded out by those that consider it heresy to do anything but bow before Cakewalk. From what I gathered he quit because he still can't use X1b how he'd like and needed a break from trying to get it to do what he wanted. He gave it a good 4 months of trying though.
Like me he is a true Sonar advocate but this release had made that position untenable.
Carissa spoke about posters affecting the products quality in the short, mid and long term and to my mind it's those doing the work Billy has been doing and not the happy thread crew that will affect the product for the better.
Cakewalk I feel have been guilty of neglecting the user base here by not acknowledging many of the real difficulties that clearly exist in X1 which has in my view led to much of the frustration and angst that is visibly more prevalent than it has been during previous releases.
Slighting particular members demeanour is not helpful in the current climate here because I know the majority of longer standing members and regular users all want the same thing, to be making music with the kick-ass DAW we all know from previous versions that Sonar can be.
It woulld have been difficult for many making the change to X1 anyway but you can't blame the users for the fact that the initial release was badly flawed by anybody's standards of a saleable product.
There's a factor which boiled over here too in that many bugs have persisted through various versions which has added to the the tinder box which was bound to flare up when anything but a predominantly stable new version turned up.
Anyways FWIW that's my take on the OP.
It's the quality of the product that will ultimately affect the short, mid and long term viability of the product, not the 'Game Changer' catch phrases hurled at us by any marketing dept or any whining from someone like me who spends far too much time here.
Ironically X1 has made me look at alternatives which is something I wouldn't have entertained this time last year.