Clunky?

[Starship Krupa]

People who can't think of anything "clunky" about Cakewalk probably either don't use or have given up on Drum Maps/Drum Grid/Drum Pane/Drum Map Manager.

The easter egg hunt that searching through the various views' menus is for new users must also have slipped their minds.

Anyone expecting the "Tracks" menu in Track View to be where you go to add or remove a track will be baffled. But wait! If you go to the "Track" (singular) menu in Console View, you can insert and delete tracks. The "Tracks" menu in PRV doesn't do either of those things.

Back to Track view, you can add tracks using "Insert" from the global menu, but in order to insert a blank measure or a marker, you must use "Project" from the global menu. It's like each view is a brand new experience!

After using the program for a couple of years, this stuff fades into the background, and that's when people start thinking "clunky? what? This program is totally effortless once you memorize how to do every operation you need to do" but when someone's new (and by that I mean the first several months, depending on memory retention), it's a big pain in the a55.

[Lord Tim]

I think in the case of the insert operations, a lot of things were moved around once we got Skylight back in the day (much to the displeasure of a lot of old-timers) to have it make more sense - which it did for the most part. 

A lot of things were split up between track / project / global operations to have the context of those operations make more sense once you were comfortable with the paradigm, and it makes a lot of logical sense. But I do tend to agree that on first sniff, a new user would have a few "argh, but why?!"moments.

[mettelus]

You almost need to take a step back and look at things from a wider perspective. When the original code writers for any software are available, updates are smoother. It takes some time to complete development on any product, but the passage of time and shifts in developers makes updates/revisions more complex. Some of the code has decades under its belt, so updates are almost tethered to the original design/vision without significant rewrites in some cases. From a cost perspective, those decisions have to be made often, and the more complex the code gets or has become, it is more probable to see things carried forward.

[John Vere]

Like I say 9 ways to insert an instrument track. I don’t think they ever remove old dialogue boxes when they created the new ones going back to the very first versions. 

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, John Nelson said:

The forced assignment of ins and outs as stereo pairs, with "friendly names" workaround is clunky.

The explanation given IIRC was that the code "evolved" a certain way and that was that.

There are other things I could probably come up with but again, the code hasn't been written from scratch in eons.

I don't accept that excuse, never have.

People on this forum used to patiently explain to me that the reason that some manufacturers' audio device names were so garbled up was that Cakewalk displayed what the driver told it. Well whoop-tee-doo. I don't care. Other DAW's are able to display this information in a way that makes sense. I wanted Cakewalk to either do that or let me edit the names.

Of course, developers are known for not caring how some other company implements this or that feature, and y'know what? I don't care how past programmers supposedly made things hard to change. It's not an answer or an excuse or even part of the discussion. It comes down to this: the program works one way, but I would like it to work another way. If how Steinberg's or Ableton's programmers do it is off the table, then how Cakewalk's earlier programmers did it is also off the table. If the former is no reason to do it, then the latter is no reason not to do it.

"Cubase does it this way!" Yeah, who cares? "Cakewalk has done it this way for decades!" Yeah, who cares?

Sure, it would be nice if Cakewalk would parse the list of devices supplied by the driver and name and sort them out automatically, but the ability to create our own friendly names is such an improvement over what it used to be, and very powerful. Most DAW's do it pretty well, but I've seen a couple that try to and have it come out no better. Letting me edit the names bypasses all that.

[Lord Tim]

There's certainly a "rock and a hard place" factor to a lot of stuff, to be sure. Just taking the External Insert thing as an example, this is a known limitation that is apparently a real problem to untangle under the hood because of a decision wayyyy back in the day. The same for adding a more modern scripting language. The scalable UI is another thing, and as we can see how they're at least willing to take on the task rather than putting it into the Too Hard, It's Baked In basket.

But there's also a narrow path to tread where a lot of this stuff is fixed/refined without angering their legacy users. Like I said with Skylight, a lot of people coming from older versions of Cakewalk/TTS products were NOT happy about the menus being moved around or the new keyboard shortcuts, etc. Imagine if those menus weren't just moved but the way someone found to be super fast to accomplish a task was taken out just to keep a new user from getting confused. Cue torches and pitchforks!

Again, it's a double edged sword with people finding parts of the UI missing, but Workspaces could solve a lot of this "multiple ways and several places to do this task" problem to a point.

[Starship Krupa]

19 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

A lot of things were split up between track / project / global operations to have the context of those operations make more sense once you were comfortable with the paradigm

After 5 years using the program, I guess I'm still waiting to get comfortable with the paradigm, because I think it's a mess. The global menu is for "global" things. What's in the "Insert" menu should be moved down to the "Track" menu and most of what's in the "Project" menu should be moved to the "Insert" menu.

Some of the global menus really belong down in the Track View, they affect things like tracks or even clips. The global Process menu is not right for the Nudge command. The Edit menu is not the right place for Aim Assist. The only argument for having them there is that someone from another company (that being Cakewalk, Inc.) did it that way.

It all looks like it was set up with little thought given to where someone would expect to find a given command. I just gave up and bound the Insert/Measures command to the Ins key because I was never going to remember where that command was in the heat of battle. If Insert/Measures belongs in a menu called "Project" that is 2 menus to the right of "Insert," then I'm out.

Clunky.

[OutrageProductions]

The next time I start following a thread like this I'm gonna have to pre-order the 'supersize cheese & biscuits platter' to go along with all the whine. 🤣 jk

[Starship Krupa]

2 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

Imagine if those menus weren't just moved but the way someone found to be super fast to accomplish a task was taken out just to keep a new user from getting confused. Cue torches and pitchforks!

I dunno. It's long been my belief that veteran users of complex software like this don't tend to use menu-hunting as a way to access commands. We tend eventually to go with keystrokes and context menus. That's my belief anyway.

So fine, have two menu configurations, one for the people who would be crushed not to find Insert Marker in the global Project menu and one for people who would look for it in the Insert menu. Won't we all just wind up hitting M or right-clicking on the ruler?

[Starship Krupa]

9 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

The next time I start following a thread like this I'm gonna have to pre-order the 'supersize cheese & biscuits platter' to go along with all the whine. 🤣 jk

Which type of whine do you prefer? The whine of old timers who want everything to stay the same or the whine of new users who want things to make more sense?

Or perhaps you savor the whine of those who think everyone else should just suck up whatever inconveniences they experience (or anticipate) in using the product?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[msmcleod]

I just want to re-iterate what @Lord Tim said in his original post, and add my 2p's worth...

What we're really looking for here is examples of where it's easier (or perhaps more intuitive) to do a particular task in another DAW compared to doing the same task in CbB. 

So we're talking about workflow features that CbB already has, and how the workflow could improve.  One example per post would help, describing how it's done in a particular DAW vs the same operation in CbB.

Also existing features that could simply be improved.

We're NOT talking about new features - they're better off as separate posts in the Feedback Loop section.

I would re-iterate (as Tim has already said), that any changes in workflow is a double-edged sword.  We don't want to upset/derail existing users by changing the existing workflow, nor do we want do dumb-down the workflow so much that the flexibility/granular control users rely on is lost.  At the same time, we do want to look into facilitating a far more intuitive & streamlined workflow.  Kind of contradictory, I know.  However the smart-tool is one example of how this could be done.

Drum Map / MIDI routing / Tab re-ordering are excellent examples of how existing features could be improved (thanks @Starship Krupa / @scook ).

Some comparisons with other DAW's would be great though (especially animated gif's to make it obvious).  Devs working on a single DAW day to day, means we rarely get time to really use another DAW beyond the most basic operations, and from some of the replies so far, it seems we're not the only ones.

One other thing... it strikes me that there are ways of doing things very quickly in CbB, but they're just not immediate obvious/intuitive to new users.  Drawing / manipulating shelves in automation springs to mind here, and also what modifiers do in drag/drop operations. The functions of modifiers are almost never explained in the help-module... maybe they should be.

If anyone has any ideas as to how we could make these operations more obvious to a newbie, we're all ears.

[Lord Tim]

There's certainly got to be some middle ground to cater enough to both parties. Fix the pinch points that are clearly making things annoying for people (new users especially) while retaining enough legacy functions/layouts to not lose long-time users.

I mean, that really sounds like that was the point of Cakewalk Next: make a product that didn't have to worry about 30 years of legacy users to keep happy, do it the "right" way from the start (which is still obviously subjective, of course). It's going to be interesting to see what that's like.

I think what I'd like to get out of this thread (aside from the great perspectives so far - cheers, everyone, these have all been excellent answers!) is, what areas are obviously not as good as they could be which we could pass onto the Bakers to refine, but without going so far as to change how the core layout and application works. Retaining as much as we can while taking out some barriers.

Clearly some parts are going to need a huge overhaul (the drum maps thing was a great point) but some basic things should just do the job with no fuss. No menu diving, no extra dialog boxes, no need to hunt for things or play a Shell Game looking for something that apparently is changed but no real idea what... That kind of thing.

That said too, some whole new features have really made a difference to day to day workflow too. Remember how painful cutting out sections of songs was before we got Ripple Editing? What about moving them around before we got the Arranger? We could do both things before but both things eliminated a bunch of Clunk and pinch points just by existing.

I have a good list of stuff I'd like to see refined or added too, of course, but I'm also realising how much legacy muscle memory I have when I see threads like this too.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Lord Tim

[User 905133]

7 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

Like I say 9 ways to insert an instrument track. I don’t think they ever remove old dialogue boxes when they created the new ones going back to the very first versions. 

Personally, I like the reverse compatibility, flexibility, and differences the various options have.  Sometimes I like the Menu Bar approach, sometimes the right-click context menu is more intuitive, sometimes I like using the browser (but not too much since it takes up real estate), etc.

I understand that some people don't like having more than one method.  To me, that's OK because they are free to use only one method if they choose.

Some people might like to only use the Synth Rack method, but if that were the only method available to users, everyone would have to use the Synth Rack. On the other hand, if that method is removed from the Synth Rack, people who always have the Synth Rack open (or really get a thrill out of opening and closing it constantly) would be at a disadvantage.

 

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, msmcleod said:

MIDI routing

If this would include having a single MIDI track being able to drive two different VSTi's, that's something I'd love to be able to do.

[User 905133]

To me, Workspaces is an amazingly powerful and very useful feature. I have given some thought to ways could be less "Clunky" (i.e., less awkward / more accessible). First and foremost would education (mini-tutorial/step-by-step guide), hierarchical selection (workspaces within folders), and Workspace-sharing (from users, or perhaps submitted by users and fine-tuned by staff, if resources permit) . 

[Lord Tim]

Just to throw my hat into the ring here, a few quick things that come to mind right away for me are:

Consistency - some views work a certain way, others don't. I get the reasoning behind the *why* we might want to have a left-mouse lasso to grab things in the PRV as opposed to a right-mouse one in the Track View, or different double click options, etc. but for a new user, imagine getting used to the standard conventions of most operating systems and then finding "oh that works when I enter in MIDI notes, but how come I can't grab a bunch of clips using that method?" when you try it. Again, I understand exactly why we have it like this and it works really well once you get used to it, but I can see that as a clunk for someone who just dives in. FWIW, REAPER did this first and I remember hating it when I first tried it out. To me it feels more natural in CbB, but it's still a "well that's odd" thing if you're used to selecting things in Windows in general.
 

Consistency (part 2: The Revenge):  Some views have been switched over to the Tracks / Inspector paradigm (eg: Tempo Track, Arranger Track, Articulation, etc). Fully onboard with that - these are GREAT enhancements rather than fiddling around opening up different views to do things, thus removing clunk. What about Meter/Key?  Markers? If this was expanded to offer stuff like DDP creation, would this stuff live in here? From what I've seen from Cubase, that's how they have the top of their main track view and it's very elegant. Additionally to that, this goes back to my "Shell Game" thing - unless you hit the hotkey to toggle Tempo View, where is it? You can actually drag down on the blank space above the track headers and it magically appears. Again, I get why this is, but why am I even guessing about it? There needs to be something obvious for new users especially.

Additionally with Markers, why do we have to delete them by clicking on them with your left-mouse, and while holding it down, pressing the delete key, or changing into the Markers View? Nothing else does that, and it's a big hold over from the CWPA days. It's little things like that which confuse and frustrate people, despite not really being a slower workflow at all. It's just unnecessary stuff to remember.
 

Shell Games: I saw it mentioned in a thread that adding new VSTs can be confusing. I'll admit, I've been burnt by this one. So you install a new Reverb plugin. CbB scans for it and says "hey there it is, great stuff" and then you look in your Plugins Browser and... where the hell is it? If it's a VST3, there's a good chance it's been added into the right category for manufacturer or effect type, but a lot of the time it gets dumped into Uncategorised. There should be a Newly Installed category and a chance to adjust where that new effects subsequently appears from there. No more guessing or hunting, much like I mentioned for hidden tracks like the Tempo track earlier.
 

UI/UX: Workspaces are fantastic, and are a real timesaver once you learn them. Screensets too. But how many people here can really tell the difference between Workspaces and Screensets? Yes, *I* know, but there's been SO MANY questions about this stuff over the years. Workspaces can also really bite people badly when stuff isn't where they expect it to be. How many times have we seen "Cakewalk is crap, they took out X feature!!11!! SONAR used to have this, I'm moving to Bitwig!!!!" and then they're told to change to a different Workspace that reveals that item they were ranting was removed, but really wasn't. There's got to be a better way (besides the new installation onboarding dialog) that helps you choose and understand what Workspaces do, and then after you're already established, helps you understand why things are missing or different. I have no good suggestions here, honestly. But there's got to be some solution to make this better.

Following that idea (and this was alluded to earlier in this thread) why can't we drag things around to the different docked areas, eg: like in Adobe products? In Audition, I can make any one of those areas show whatever I want, so for example, docking an ARA view on a side tab rather than the Multidock would be handy, or putting Big Time above the Synth Rack View, or Markers View in a side dock rather than down in the Multidock, or that kind of thing. Ideally for me (and I've mentioned this before), I'd like the "everything is a multidock" idea where rather than specific areas like Inspector/Browser/Multidock, we have "area 1" "area 2" "area 3" etc and in each area we can add whatever view we want to see. Then, to keep consistency with how CbB is now, have a "classic" Workspace that puts things like Media/Plugins/Notes in the area where the Browser is, Arranger/Tempo/Clip and Track Properties, etc. in the area where the Inspector is, and that kind of thing. And then allow us to split those views or add tabs as we see fit.

Both of those things stop confusion and stops a bit of the Shell Game with where stuff is going to appear, if someone can set it up to suit their workflow better.

Bonus UI thought: How many people here know we can rearrange the Track Header widgets (ie: the volume control, pan control, R/W/A/* buttons etc, by holding down ALT + dragging them around with the left-mouse button? Really powerful stuff for getting things how you like them (it'd be even better to be able to remove them entirely this way, or move them to the Track Inspector to show/clean up the Track Headers).
 

Menu Diving:  And this is slightly related to the previous point: How deep do you go with menus before it's too much? How much do you simplify them before power users get angry and go to REAPER to get their endless menus fix? (Sorry REAPER fans, but the default config of REAPER before you clean up anything is absolutely NUTS!)  For people using interfaces with a lot of I/O, this is bad enough trying to add a track or assign inputs or outputs, etc. because the list is crazy long. Got a bunch of plugins that expose sidechain? Welcome to Menu Hell. There's got to be some kind of submenu thing going on there (although that takes us back to the menu diving problem again) or have common tasks at level 1 of the menu and then a submenu for other things. Eg: Level 1 could have a simple INPUT > entry and at the top of the list that pops out of there have SIDECHAIN >, but all of the regular interface I/O right underneath it. That way it's really only barely past 1 level of menu to get to the obvious stuff, but any more advanced things need to go down another level.

Kind of related to that, and also calling back to consistency, has anyone here tried to add an Aux track? It's easy to do, just go to an existing track and then choose the output to go to New Aux Track or New Patch Point from a send or the Output. Great. Now try to add one without doing that, like you'd do for an Audio or MIDI track with the context menu. What's that? You can't? How about from the Tracks menu? Nope. OK fine, how about we create it using the way I mentioned before and then change all of the outputs of every other track to this new Aux track. Select them all and go to the Tracks menu and... where is my Aux? I only see busses and hardware outs. Huh??? So what I'd have to do is open up the other tracks, shift+select them all, find the Output of one of them, hold down CTRL and then change the output of that so the multiselect works on all of the other selected tracks. THIS is a great example of unnecessary clunk. It's all certainly possible but there's hoops you need to jump through to do it.

 

I have a bunch more stuff I could probably mention but this is a good start. I will say too that I'm purposely avoiding talking about new features here, but like I mentioned earlier about Ripple Editing and the Arranger, sometimes a couple of new features can entirely remove some of these problem areas just simply by making them redundant. The switch to in-app updates rather than dealing with the weirdness of Bandlab Assistant for updates is another good example there. A new feature was added that entirely took the old problem out of the equation.

I'm *very* familiar with CbB and work very fast in it, so a lot of these things don't affect me personally much on a day to day basis, but if I was looking at this with fresh eyes, or was new to the app, I could see how this would trip a lot of people up. But going back to my OP, in the day to day driving of CbB, I personally find it just as smooth or as few operations to complete a task as any other app I've used for the most part, and not finding it overly clunky myself, but there are most certainly areas that could do with some attention.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Lord Tim

[Chilldanny]

Hello everyone!

This is an interesting thread with some interesting views, so thought I'd throw mine into the pot too.

My work means I am in Apple world using Logic and Ableton Live, but for years I have chosen to use Cakewalk for my client and personal projects.  As a multiple DAW user for 20+ years, the clunkiness of Cakewalk to me means:

• Too many menus/options dotted all over the place.
• Too much screen real-estate wasted under the Skylight paradigm, leading to  project navigation/management annoyances, endless resizing of views and tracks in large projects etc.  I already use two large monitors.
• UI feels sluggish as the years go by, outdated from top to bottom inside and out (hate those system menus & fonts). 
• It is not possible to scroll using the mouse wheel in some menus, e.g. ProChannel module list. I have all of  the ProChannel modules so this has been annoying me for years.
• Managing AUX tracks and PatchPoints is an absolute chore (please can we have a decent manager for this).
• MIDI routing, or lack of.

I personally feel that with an updated UI and a streamlining of menus, most issues regarding clunkiness would be resolved.  Other functions in need of updating or implementing would appear more obvious once the UI looks slicker, feels snappier, is more unified throughout.

Can you tell that I’m looking forward to a future Cakewalk Sonar with an updated UI?  😆

[mettelus]

5 hours ago, msmcleod said:

One other thing... it strikes me that there are ways of doing things very quickly in CbB, but they're just not immediate obvious/intuitive to new users.

I have mentioned this long ago, but the resources to do such are significantly less now. I have taken a new user, sat them down at my machine and watched/asked them what they were thinking or trying to do. Even simple things such as selecting a clip... what do they want (or most likely want) to do with it? Are right-clicks functional throughout the GUI, or a help pane that focuses on options specific to a selection when the user is moving around (and tracks any user-made keyboard shortcut changes)? Some things very much are intuitive, others are most definitely not. Even asking a new user (not us) is going to be hit or miss since you may get only the one thing they remember, but an experienced user watching a truly new user actually use something and struggle with it is an eye opener. The experienced user will know the how/why to things to interpret issues, but the new user will demonstrate what they are.

Years ago I posted a "Hidden costs to owning a DAW" in another forum. The more obvious ones were computer, audio interface, hardware, VST(i)s and the like, but the one that stood out for some was the "time investment," where one may have to invest hundreds of hours to get proficient. Shaving 90% off that time investment would be HUGE for new users, especially when younger generations are going to gravitate to the simplest and cheapest solution that fits the bill for them.

Edited June 11, 2023 by mettelus

[John Vere]

What I’m hearing from everyone else is exactly my feelings on the given topic.
Because we have all learned how to do what we need to do by using the method we came up with by playing the shell game until we found the pebble and we carried on making music. Not paying attention to the fact there’s 6 shells not just 3.  
My workflow was entirely different 2 years ago. I used the synth rack, I used split instruments tracks, I never used the pro channel, I didn’t really use Melodyne. I had no clue what the Arranger track did. I hated the new export dialogue. I didn’t know there was a track pane in the PVR.  The existence of half the features were not on my radar. 
I was happily still  using a Sonar x3 workflow.  
It was only when I decided to try my hand at tutorials that I started poking around with all the options. When I got to demoing inserting a soft synth I noticed the Add Track button. It’s actually not very obvious.  It blends in to the dark graphics. All the tutorials I watched were not demonstrating this. Everyone used the drag and drop or synth rack.  The tutorial was way too long and confusing when I made the attempt to demonstrate all the options for inserting a soft synth.  I redid it and chose what I felt was the easiest method of all of them. The Add Track. It has all the same options and the default is a simple instrument track which is also when you think about it all most people will need.  
But all these options and all the conflicting advice on tutorials makes new users run for cover.  

One of the greatest ideas I’ve seen is the first time you open Movie Maker software a Take the Tour pops up. It walks you step by step through the user interface explaining the options and features.  It’s not a movie it’s just overlaying dialogue boxes that highlight the feature.  

[Andres Medina]

10 minutes ago, mettelus said:

I have mentioned this long ago, but the resources to do such are significantly less now. I have taken a new user, sat them down at my machine and watched/asked them what they were thinking or trying to do. Even simple things such as selecting a clip... what do they want (or most likely want) to do with it? Are right-clicks functional throughout the GUI, or a help pane that focuses on options specific to a selection when the user is moving around (and tracks any user-made keyboard shortcut changes)? Some things very much are intuitive, others are most definitely not. Even asking a new user (not us) is going to be hit or miss since you may get only the one thing they remember, but an experienced user watching a truly new user actually use something and struggle with it is an eye opener. The experienced user will know the how/why to things to interpret issues, but the new user will demonstrate what they are.

Years ago I posted a "Hidden costs to owning a DAW" in another forum. The more obvious ones were computer, audio interface, hardware, VST(i)s and the like, but the one that stood out for some was the "time investment," where one may have to invest hundreds of hours to get proficient. Shaving 90% off that time investment would be HUGE for new users, especially when younger generations are going to gravitate to the simplest and cheapest solution that fits the bill for them.

Besides being a music producer, I'm also a guitar player, and occasionally guitar teacher.

It wouldn't occur to me that a newcomer to the guitar could be able to understand or execute a Ab13 9b chord intuitively or just learn it from seen me play it two times. It takes hours and hours of hard work to master an instrument. And in a way, I think a DAW is also an instrument that has to be learned and practiced. There are no shortcuts to this, I think, no matter the software or the company producing it. 

The natural learning curve to learn and master anything is being regarded as software malfunctioning or bad design. And I would add that any software, at least until now! - is made by humans, are we are imperfect, and it has to be expressed in all we create, including software.

Anyway, the amount of work put in CW over the decades is just amazing.