New Sonar Platinum Update

[chris.r]

So now there are screensets and lenses - and to some degree mix recall is related too.

Would't just allowing presets for control bar or menus do the same thing, and more easily managed?

You can already save presets for menus and keyboard shortcuts as I recall.

You only get a lot of more features needed to recall one and not the other - like mix recall has.
Or to merge and replace menu part - or not.

Cakewalk is just complicating things as they work on their own ideas - and never bother with top voted feature requests like making staff view on par with what Cubase has, and arrange view/tracks as Cubase has. And they are to build a feature request system into Sonar as I understood, instead of just acting on the forum they have for this. They are just biting around the bush, kind of, never getting to the real features needed.

I think Sonar is a stunning daw, but why not floor everything else there is by taking on the little harder features as well. I saw no future in Sonar, and left for Cubase because of this.

An explanation of what lenses are, by the CTO:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3522271

Yeah 'lenses' implies 'focussed view' where 'workspaces' just implies 'places for tools'

Thanks for link.

I can't say this crystal sharp - it seems to overlap what screensets do.
Why not call it screensets v2.0 and an extension to that with the other stuff optional checkboxes or similar.

But lenses seem to mimic some that made me interested in StudioOne once, a mode for tracking, one for mixing, one for mastering etc. But that is what I used screensets for in Sonar. Screensets cover positions of views etc.

So Screenset Extensions or something seems more clear to me as a term, and you already have the selection pads and spots in control bar for that. You have operations to copy screenset from another project etc.

But I probably just did not read deep enough....

They might evolve in future both the Lenses and Screensets to a one matured feature. Like they did to Sonar: X1->X2->X3->'now'... and now we have a lovely DAW. Sometimes it just needs little more time to over-think and get everything in right order.

[lfm]

They might evolve in future both the Lenses and Screensets to a one matured feature. Like they did to Sonar: X1->X2->X3->'now'... and now we have a lovely DAW. Sometimes it just needs little more time to over-think and get everything in right order.

It might. It's just that Cakewalk sometimes unnecessarily invent the wheel again - even their own wheels(thinking screensets here). Thinking about Cakewalk Communication Center, installer thingy - that they did not look at all the installers out there, and not on all download managers there were out there in every browser even. It looked at something that something made that never saw an installer before, or a download manager.

And and launch new release their servers went down to a halt. And the biggest package, multi language documentation everybody had to download, to then let the installer select the one, and only one, to install. Obviously you do this better on server level, so not everybody had to download all that stuff. The basic install of Sonar update took maybe 15 minutes - but documentation like 90 minutes or so. Really weird choices there.

But Cake also shown more guts than any other developer, I think. To start the X-series, and as you said it took three years till X3 to get it right. And the determination of the monthly updates are impressive in my view - nobody else does that.

So I'm keeping an eye open for Cakewalk when they add something that I really want. Then they might get my money again. Nothing talks like money - and don't like the lifetime updates since it ruins any chance of making a statement not paying again. Cake live in their own bubble, kind of:
- let's make lenses
userbase:
- but top voted is doing something about notation
Cake:
- no we want to do lenses
userbase:
- would be great with arranger tracks like S1 and Cubase
Cake:
- to complicated. We want to do lenses

That's where you are when having lifetime updates - no way to get through - this is what I want or I stop paying.

Until one of those happend Cubase Pro is my daw. That was a year ago, now I know Cubase much better and learned to like it - and it will take more than that.

[JoseC.]

They might evolve in future both the Lenses and Screensets to a one matured feature. Like they did to Sonar: X1->X2->X3->'now'... and now we have a lovely DAW. Sometimes it just needs little more time to over-think and get everything in right order.

So I'm keeping an eye open for Cakewalk when they add something that I really want. Then they might get my money again. Nothing talks like money - and don't like the lifetime updates since it ruins any chance of making a statement not paying again. Cake live in their own bubble, kind of:
- let's make lenses
userbase:
- but top voted is doing something about notation
Cake:
- no we want to do lenses
userbase:
- would be great with arranger tracks like S1 and Cubase
Cake:
- to complicated. We want to do lenses

That's where you are when having lifetime updates - no way to get through - this is what I want or I stop paying.

Until one of those happend Cubase Pro is my daw. That was a year ago, now I know Cubase much better and learned to like it - and it will take more than that.

You keep on stating that staff view improvements is the "top voted feature" by the user base, but that is far from the truth. There is not such a poll. I certainly would like them to give notation a major overhaul, but they made it clear that this is very unlikely to happen, besides bug fixes and minor improvements from time to time. Sad reality for those using notation in a DAW is that most people don't care much about it, and that's why it has low priority. Sonar already has notation, and while it is clunky, it works for what it is meant.

OTOH, Lenses, by any name, is the first step towards recovering pre X1 customizing, including functionality, menus and views on a global basis. It goes far beyond screensets, that are per project, while lenses are global, with screensets included as part of them. The reasoning behind Lenses seems to be letting the user decide how much functionality is shown to him for his needs, and give him the option of creating multiple presets. Sonar has been frequently accused around here of being cluttered and bloated, so it might be that this feature has some demand, too.

[aMUSEd]

I wish they would hurry up and bring out the Mac version so I can test it before the Lifetime upgrade offer stops

[Jace-BeOS]

I wish they would hurry up and bring out the Mac version so I can test it before the Lifetime upgrade offer stops

I have a similar feeling about it, but I am pretty sure it will lack most of what Sonar has in it, other than the framework of the application itself. As such, it would not offer me any utility because the only utility I could get from a Mac version of Sonar is to not have to convert all my Sonar projects to Logic projects. Since I've already done that...

[Jace-BeOS]

Back to "lenses"... If they really wanted to talk about focusing on a particular work process, the word "focus" is useful, if not for the fact that it is already a term used in graphical user interface API discussion. Ever since learning to talk to developers about GUI behavior, I'm not fond of mixing terms like this. I'm still going with "workspace" or "screen set". Hell, even "mode" works. But marketing wants something they can make Cakewalk-unique, even if the idea isn't remotely unique in large (and bloated) content-creation software packages.

[lfm]

So I'm keeping an eye open for Cakewalk when they add something that I really want. Then they might get my money again. Nothing talks like money - and don't like the lifetime updates since it ruins any chance of making a statement not paying again. Cake live in their own bubble, kind of:
- let's make lenses
userbase:
- but top voted is doing something about notation
Cake:
- no we want to do lenses
userbase:
- would be great with arranger tracks like S1 and Cubase
Cake:
- to complicated. We want to do lenses

You keep on stating that staff view improvements is the "top voted feature" by the user base, but that is far from the truth. There is not such a poll. I certainly would like them to give notation a major overhaul, but they made it clear that this is very unlikely to happen, besides bug fixes and minor improvements from time to time. Sad reality for those using notation in a DAW is that most people don't care much about it, and that's why it has low priority. Sonar already has notation, and while it is clunky, it works for what it is meant.

There are two feature requests by SusanG that was top voted at the time I looked, that was 18 months ago. There is a statistics thing you can activate on that forum and these two were on top, and mine for arranger tracks next to those.

And I know notation is not likely to improve, you cannot do music requiring triplets and notation for that.

Since Sonar 4 ten years ago it's been riots in between regarding notation, and no interest to fix it. It's not everybodys concern, but still enough folks need it in the top daws around to make the effort.

This is what lifetime updates are like - they do what they like, you have no influence anymore. It will all be about what brings new users to Sonar - because those are the paying customers. And most likely that will be new content rather than improved workflow, unless done in a few hours.

So that's why I left - no future interest unless Cake reconsider. Looking for good enough notation, testing 6 different applications, I found you need to put at least $200 to get something that do the job. So when Cubase had 30% off campaign, it was just $150 extra to get Cubase Pro - and I'm home. I can do everything in Cubase from idea to finished mix, and have plenty headroom for what I can do as well. And fully supports all Waves plugins as well. It took some effort to learn and like Cubase, but now I'm there.

[aMUSEd]

I wish they would hurry up and bring out the Mac version so I can test it before the Lifetime upgrade offer stops

I have a similar feeling about it, but I am pretty sure it will lack most of what Sonar has in it, other than the framework of the application itself.

I know but that's the most important thing I need to check ie that it is stable and efficient (in particular good load balancing etc because that's what most of my current hosts are rubbish at), details can come later.

[pwal]

I wish they would hurry up and bring out the Mac version so I can test it before the Lifetime upgrade offer stops

I have a similar feeling about it, but I am pretty sure it will lack most of what Sonar has in it, other than the framework of the application itself.

I know but that's the most important thing I need to check ie that it is stable and efficient (in particular good load balancing etc because that's what most of my current hosts are rubbish at), details can come later.

the "fall" release (7 days remaining of "fall") will be an alpha, not even beta, so i'm not sure you could judge those criteria at that stage