Cakewalk Sonar, the circle is complete

[N i g e l]

Bandlab announced that CBB is to discontinue and their subsidiary company "Cakewalk" will produce "SONAR" & "NEXT", which are paid-for DAWs.

I hope they are not going to be using a subscription system.
Time to do a backup of the last update just in case.

https://www.cakewalk.com/

[James Perrett]

It appears that the free Cakewalk is on a subscription system already - I started it this morning and it had to go online to authorise itself. Once they switch off the authorisation server then Cakewalk users will be stuck. You probably want to export all your projects as stems so that you can access them all in the future.

[N i g e l]

Thanks, Ive got all the audio & MIDI tracks backed up ok.

My last paid for SONAR was X1 and those projects had backward compatibility with CBB but I don't know if, or how much, it would work the otherway round.

I think I have only ever had to reauthorise CBB after a new installation or update.

Its been about 5 years since Gibson let go of cakewalk and it became free, not a bad grace period !

[BillB]

The FAQ is fairly helpful.

https://www.cakewalk.com/sonar

Is Sonar replacing Cakewalk by BandLab?
Sonar builds and improves on Cakewalk by BandLab, offering advanced technology, effortless workflow, and an interface that amplifies inspiration. You can still access Cakewalk by BandLab here, but it will soon be phased out.

We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until both Cakewalk Next and Sonar become publicly available. Existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar. In the meantime, Cakewalk by BandLab continues to be available here.

Will Cakewalk by BandLab be discontinued?
Yes, eventually. We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until Cakewalk Sonar becomes publicly available. At some point after the release of Sonar, Cakewalk by BandLab will no longer be supported. Note that existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar. In the meantime, Cakewalk by BandLab continues to be available here.

Will Next and Sonar be free like Cakewalk by BandLab?
Next and Sonar will be offered at price points designed to meet the needs of different customers. More information will be provided as we approach the launch date for these new products.

What are the differences between Cakewalk Sonar, Cakewalk by BandLab and previous versions of Cakewalk SONAR?
Cakewalk Sonar represents a new brand identity, introducing a significant UI refresh with high DPI display support, feature enhancements and a platform committed to ongoing feature development. The latest capabilities of Cakewalk by BandLab will carry forward into Sonar, along with a continued focus on performance and stability. While hundreds of improvements have been made since SONAR Platinum was discontinued, Cakewalk Sonar will be able to open projects created in SONAR and Cakewalk by BandLab.

Will installing Cakewalk Sonar overwrite Cakewalk by BandLab?
No, the two applications install to different locations on your file system, so they can coexist on your computer.

[BJG145]

Hmm, might be time to move to Reaper.

[l-l1tsb0urg]

Hmm, might be time to move to Reaper.

When Cakewalk discontinued Sonar, I had no choice but to abandoned ship. Spending over a month backing up midi tracks, screenshotting settings and exporting stems from Cakewalk projects left me angry and bitter. After being a loyal user since the Pro Audio 6 days, I swore never to return to Cakewalk again. It was a hard breakup.

I'm happy to hear them developing Sonar again, but I switched over to Reaper and never going back. It's an absolute pleasure working with it; Fast, no hiccups or crashes, and super customizable. If you decide you like it, pay the $60 and support one of the most active maintained DAWs on the market.

[N i g e l]

I looked at Reaper last time Cakewalk changed hands, as I was worried about the longevity of cake being free issue [never a good business model] ; I use to pay £150 {I think} for updates.

I chose Reaper as its well respected on the SOS forum & that made for an easy choice. Having to plow through the other hundreds of DAWs now out there & select one would have been a nightmare.

Anyway, I spent a day on Reaper & got the hang of it.
I worked out what to do, what buttons to press & where they were in the menus. Result ! {also read up on the other functions I might use; they are all there, its very flexible. }

But I didnt know what any of the Reaper gear sounded like. That would be the bulk of the learning I imagine. [I cheated, Reaper sniffed out all my Cakewalk VSTs (& DXIs !) & most of them were compatible , just not the Roland era stuff ]

The whole experience for me was a bit of an eye opener as to how much DAW using I take for granted, which must seem like an infinte learning cliff to a new starter from scratch.

Anyway Bandlab put a lot of effort into CBB. Initially it seemed like an update every week.
I was glad of that when I had a problem;l somthing was being written to a hidden graphics area off screen or in a burried layer.
Any way, after a couple of emails went to & fro it was fixed

Im expecting great things of new SONAR whilst being prepared for the worst.

[tea for two]

I still use Sonar 3 from I think 2004
Just that familiar feel whichever later version of Sonar, had the Bandlab version : fully fledged for a free version.
I think they might bring it to mac.

[adrian_k]

Hmm. I’ve stuck with Sonar/Cakewalk etc since version 1.0. More recently I’ve been really happy with the CBB thing, but don’t feel good about subscriptions. I guess it will depend on price points. I think people should be paid for what they do, but my dinosaur brain wants to pay for a licence and upgrade when I want to, not pay monthly and .. well.. who knows?

[adrian_k]

.. and in the interests of being prepared, just looking at Reaper's licensing model. They say a license gives free upgrades until ver 7.99. So say they are on 7.50 now (it doesn't say on the Purchase page), if I buy today I'd get fewer free upgrades than if I waited till 8.0 and they presumably extend the upgrade window? I'm not sure I care, given my use case it'll only be $60, just trying to understand.....

Also, I guess you are not forced to upgrade when a new version is released?

[Philbo King]

Unless you are impoverished to the point your kids are starving, it's not worth it. Ok, maybe if the current version is 6.8x, as it is presently.

Certainly there's nothing stopping you from using it for free until 7.0 comes out, beyond a 5 second nag screen at startup.

It generally takes 3-4 years or longer for Reaper to go through 2 major version updates (such as 5.x to 7.0) for $60. That is a lot of updates.

Furthermore, nothing stops you from staying at a current version, with no additional fee. So, unlike subscription models, you do actually own the software and can use your current version 'forever'.

[Drew Stephenson]

.. and in the interests of being prepared, just looking at Reaper's licensing model. They say a license gives free upgrades until ver 7.99. So say they are on 7.50 now (it doesn't say on the Purchase page), if I buy today I'd get fewer free upgrades than if I waited till 8.0 and they presumably extend the upgrade window? I'm not sure I care, given my use case it'll only be $60, just trying to understand.....

Also, I guess you are not forced to upgrade when a new version is released?

Yep, you get up to the one-after-next whole number upgrade. I bought in at version 5.XX (about 8 years ago maybe?) and we're now on 6.82 so I've still got a while to go before I have to decide whether to stump up again.
If you bought in now I expect that $60 would end up being about $12 a year until v8.00 comes along.
There's no requirement to keep upgrading when that happens (but I probably will just to keep supporting the company).

[EDIT - Philbo beat me to it!]

[James Perrett]

Just a heads up about Reaper - the current version is 6.82 but there is a pre-release of version 7 being discussed right now so, if you are thinking of registering Reaper, it may be worth waiting for a few weeks until version 7 is officially released. That way you won't need to re-register until version 9 comes out.

Also, I guess you are not forced to upgrade when a new version is released?

No - you can even still use version 0.40 (the first publicly available version) if you so desire.

[adrian_k]

Well that all sounds very satisfactory. I guess I am in the very lucky position of having had a massive, embarrassing, inexplicable brain fart and destroying 20 years of backups, so virtually nothing to migrate to a new DAW.

[ajay_m]

My backup strategy is to use a portable bluray burner. The 25G disks are pretty cheap, works out about 40p a disk and because they are 'write once' you just write the backup date/time in marker pen on the label side, pop them into a plastic disk folder and put them somewhere dark, cool and dry for long-term storage. There's not too much to go wrong with optical storage, barring defective media, and they are obviously immune to magnetic fields as well.
Although the theoretical lifetime of the disks is supposed to be in the region of 10 years, you can of course purchase 'archival grade' media at around £1 per disk (Verbatim sell these) and this is guaranteed for 100 years.

[James Perrett]

While optical media is very attractive because of its write once properties, it is worth keeping an eye on the media as it ages. I had one batch of media that was supposed to be a very high quality brand with a predicted lifetime of well over 100 years. Freshly burned discs showed very low error rates when tested. However, many of the discs were unreadable after about 6 months. Other discs which were stored in the same place as the bad ones are still perfectly readable 20 years later.

[Skyline]

I've enjoyed using Cakewalk free of charge for five years, and it was always regularly updated/enhanced. I assumed that one day the owners would move to a chargeable product and don't have a problem with that. They floated ideas about charging model options on the Cakewalk forum a month or so ago and there was a (very) clear consensus that current users were not interested in a sibscription model. That's my view also. I assume they will bake that finding in when they finalise the impendng rollout.

[N i g e l]

that is interesting. The last {pre CbB} Gibson Sonar Platinum licensing was ok I think {I didnt have that version}-
buy the card board box of CDs & get free updates for one year, then keep what youve got OR subscribe per month and get extra goodies per month & after 12 months you own the software even if you unsubscribe.

_

Ive dug out an old SSD to do a last_time_load with windows & CbB etc which I will use offline. Thats gotta keep me going for at least a year. I suspect the end will come not when I can't live without any of the inevitable new AI tools that will appear but probably due to Windows subtly changing underneath.

Old SONAR Platinum review :
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/ca ... r-platinum

[N i g e l]

CbB {last?} production release 2023.09

https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk/whats-new

"Changes to the activation server require that all earlier versions of Cakewalk by BandLab must be updated to version 2023.09 in order to activate successfully. Earlier versions will cease to activate in the future."

https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php? ... se-202309/

[merlyn]

That tells me online activation is basically bad news. They can pull the rug out at any time. "But, but, but, " you say, "they wouldn't do that." Maybe, maybe not. You just don't know.

I have some proprietary software, and the activation/how they get their money/whatever you want to call it is a text file on my hard drive. I can pull the network cable out and it will still work. That's as far as I'm prepared to go. It's up to you of course, but online activation is an obvious weak spot, which this makes crystal clear.

[N i g e l]

Thats an end of life update. The last update.
Activation is only required on installing the update. Thereafter you can pull the cable and do a disc image for backup.

[tea for two]

I've enjoyed using Cakewalk free of charge for five years, and it was always regularly updated/enhanced. I assumed that one day the owners would move to a chargeable product and don't have a problem with that.

I started with Sonar3 mid 00, thereafter Sonar8, X1 Bandlab Cakewalk. Just that familiarity makes me smile.
I don't mind being charged for Cakewalk as long as it's not ridiculous. Not a fan of subscription still I get that for many it's easier to pay £5 $5 a month than a larger amount upfront.
My X1 is still registered I suppose I could use that.

[N i g e l]

My X1 is still registered I suppose I could use that.

yeah.

the things is, if youve got X1 or CbB safe & frozen in time, the world moves on.
Windows is changing and ulrtimately, X1 or CbB wont work because windows no longer supports it.

Its like the hardware with 32 bit drivers that stopped working because windows went 64 bit only.

If you want to use X1 or CbB in perpituity, you need to set up a disc with win + DAW and pull the plug to stop updates.

That will give you 10 years or until your PC goes "fut".

Of course, in the meantime you will be drooling over reviews of awesome AI gear that enhances your creativity but only runs on Windows 15 with 8T of bio-RAM minimum.

but yeah, SONAR is back, just waiting for the price TBD. As you say the past 5 years of bandlab updates have been awesome - I owe them 1 .

[tea for two]

Dimension Pro is still one of my favourite software. I purchased it separately
Later it was bundled with X1. I got X1 just so that I could use Dimension 1.5.
I like Dimension Pro so much that I keep a 2010 macbookpro running snow leopard from 2009 just so that Dimension will run.
Don't have this issue on wind runs fine on wind11.

[OneWorld]

Dimension Pro is still one of my favourite software. I purchased it separately
Later it was bundled with X1. I got X1 just so that I could use Dimension 1.5.
I like Dimension Pro so much that I keep a 2010 macbookpro running snow leopard from 2009 just so that Dimension will run.
Don't have this issue on wind runs fine on wind11.

Yep, you are right about that. It was/is a nifty bit of software. I used the ZETA VST a lot too, and used them within Cubase. I found ZETA used a lot of CPU though, especially when the arpeggio was running.

I would have liked to have stayed with Cakewalk but always had trouble assigning outputs - it just refused to work.