Wookiee
Well Graig it did not take me 3 to 4 months either but we have had five maintenance patches
Not just maintenance; there were also enhancements that added dynamic updates of folders to show content added externally, created a media bin in the browser for the current project, incorporated Microsoft's new video engine while allowing you to still use the old one for backward compatibility, changed initialization to default to an ASIO driver if one was present, exposed MIDI out automatically for MIDI-out compatible plug-ins instead of having to do it manually, eliminated some timeouts, automatically instantiated the TTS-1 if you opened a MIDI file and no MIDI output ports were available, made the VST Scanner compatible with Vista even though it's not a supported OS, resized track control widgets dynamically, cleaned up several interface elements in X3d, added more localization translations, allowed automatic reversion to DirectShow if trying to open a video with compatibility problems, added several new accelerators to the Browser, etc. Although the vast majority of changes related to fixes, some of which were relatively esoteric or discovered only when Sonar got into the hands of enough people in the field, to be fair the patches have done more than just fixes.
There are plenty of programs that could have used more maintenance patches, but Cakewalk actually did them. To me, that's a positive as opposed to ignoring the requests for fixes, which would be a negative.
the last has broken something that was working in "D".
The jury's still out on that, VST3 is a bit of a moving target; see Alex's posts. Other VST3 instruments working fine in Sonar seems to imply the issue is deeper than just a simple yes/no compatibility problem.
What I am saying is do we really need a yearly release of a "New" product. Would it not perhaps be a little better to have say a two year cycle with a more robust product from day one.
While I certainly see your point there are two places where reality intrudes. With a few exceptions the industry is on an update schedule that averages out to about once a year, so Sonar has to be sufficiently agile to keep up. If users had to wait two years for Sonar to implement features that allow it to remain with competitive with other companies while dealing with fixes of ever-decreasing relevance to the majority of users, that would be problematic for keeping the company afloat. The other issue is that many of the fixes didn't become apparent until Sonar was out in the field for awhile. A program with Sonar's flexibility can be used in many different ways and some users may or may not have workflows that expose particular bugs. Also, sometimes problems occur after a release, like changes in Avid's Fast Track drivers that Sonar needed to accommodate. Unfortunately other companies don't key their changes to Sonar's release schedule. The Arturia issue might fall into this category; I just continue using the VST2 versions of Arturia's synths.
Most people seem pleased with X3's stability and Cakewalk's dedication to making it more so. There's always a balance that needs to be struck between not ignoring the past while preparing for the future; I think Cakewalk is doing a very good job of walking that fine line, but wouldn't expect everyone to agree.