When I let go of the mouse button, it only gives me the last point and erases the rest?! I have to click each and every single one or disable a nonintuitive "clean up automation" option to leave all the points I want?!
When I want to know the value of an automated knob sweep or something at a certain song position (because the line drawn for that manipulation won't intuitively tell me that by hovering on it), now none of the controls I automate will actually move as expected unless the song is playing?! I have to set an awkward tiny loop at the song position I want to analyze?! WHAT??
Really guys, seriously. Music can be a struggle. Anyone serious about this craft knows it isn't just a sit down and make a great song sort of thing. It takes work and a lot of that work is just finding that melody or that idea, then capturing it. Coming up with that hook, that riff, that rhythm, etc. That is the struggle of music, but not this. This is absurd.
Here's the pitch I guess.
Done"Hey you hip swell kiddy-o's, howsabout a groovy little program. We built it in a way that makes sense to our vague understanding of the finest affordable compute-a-trons, and if you can't figure out why it works the way it does then that's your fault. It's up to you to outsmart how intentionally frustrating and counterproductive it is and manage to accomplish what you want. Like a puzzle that gets in the way of making music, because we just had to get the thing out the door so we could eat this month, alright? Whaddaya want, huh? What's that look for. It's better than nothing, you little brats! Buy! Buy now! C'mon, what are you waiting for, kids? Get back over here and buy, alright? Don't make me come over there!"
On August 31st of this year, I am changing my password to this forum to a random string that I won't write down and retiring completely from the ecosystem. You can feel free to mercy ban me right now. I welcome it. It's been real, and by real I mean a real pain this past year or two. No hard feelings to any of you, just keep on keeping on in your own way how you want to. Nothing wrong with that. I'm done. I am not motivated to post here again, I want to do something else with my time and focus on positive things. The topic this place is built on just generally angers and upsets me now because I am not ignorant to how blindingly easy the work involved in writing all these improvements into this program really is. Seriously, the program is light on code. To mildly exaggerate, it's like a free money machine of a few hard-coded values in a few written lines and mostly graphics to wow the user. Seeing is believing and all that. To some degree all software is like that, but in this case it's just a dirty trick you pay for and I feel insulted I ever got duped into purchasing this thing.
How much time have I wasted in just setting up some nonsense that the next person who opens the project (or me after a couple weeks of not hitting tab) can't make heads or tails of the patch and it just ends up as a giant, unmanageable mangle of make pretend wires? That isn't useful to me. Meanwhile, what about the music. What about efficiently creating my idea and working with a flow from focus to focus.
As clever as I can be, it all comes down to outsmarting the very dumb software. And no matter how clever I am, I can't and shouldn't be required to undo the claustrophobic boundaries of possibility in the program. They have us paying for a product that then forces us to effectively outsource their feature requests. Desperately trying to string things together in vain, trying to do something almost kind of sort of. In the end it costs hundreds more than other programs when you convert time and energy to monetary value. Here's a clue I picked up on years ago: no other DAWs are doing this stuff because it is an unsatisfying mess that prioritizes a slow pace, rigid methods, methodical process, bad practice, and isolationism. These things are contradictory to the way music is made -- quicker pace, flexible methods, macro-based process, best practice, and collaboration.
To me, the difference is other DAWs are actually selling you something and making efforts to increase value, this one is simply "coming up with something" to show you that is visually different every year (flashy ooh wow graphics and sparse amounts of code inside a couple instruments) to stay on life support. That's why a lot of people are leaving and only keeping this thing as a sound maker or nested RE host.
The Company
As for Propellerhead, charging money for this product in any capacity other than voluntary donations should be a crime. The retail MSRP for full version is $129 based on how few changes get included, not over $300 based on what their marketing team came up with. I think everyone who pays to upgrade feels that at some point (what did I pay for). Brand value is not built through endless sales and dirt cheap upgrades, brand value is slashed and gutted by that strategy.
The driving force behind why Subway is tanking as a restaurant chain is because they promoted their sandwiches at $5 for too long when the sandwich was actually worth more than that. Now, they can't get people in the door because their prices are "higher" rather than artificially deflated. It's worth noting that people aren't in the market for bread now, they're into gluten free. The market changed and left their business model behind. This may seem silly comparing sandwiches and DAWs, but this could be another Subway situation, only in the audio world instead.
By the way, point upgrades to Cubase are under $100 and they include a bunch of improvements worth paying for. This whole "it's better because it's free" thing is complete bias in favor of poverty driven motives. Anybody who has little means at their disposal can become very defensive of their decisions, for want of having any choice in the matter. I get that. But therein lies part of the problem: Propellerhead is a poor man's brand; like knock offs in Asia that almost fool the eye. How can they leverage themselves up with no revenue. Where there's a will, there is a way. Maybe.
Want to build a brand Propellerhead? Actually build a product. I dare you. I have absolutely no "reason" to trust you, so I'm not coming back. But for the sake of everyone else, I hope you actually get it together.
Trouble is, I do not believe that you can. You would have by now.