Wookiee

@Leander the Cakewalk Sonar Professional you refer to was a product by Gibson. There is no financial connection between the new Cakewalk and the Gibson products. Bandlab Technologies purchased the IP to the code not the products or its legacy. They have however very kindly maintained access to the old severs. In answer to your question regarding your key, the simple answer is no, the complete answer is no. As with previous iterations of Cakewalk products installing the New Cakewalk Sonar installs in the Cakewalk directory tree, with the core code in its own directory. Provided you follow the installation instructions you will lose nothing. You say you don't wish to install to the C drive do you the program? If you already have version of Cakewalk ??? Install when you open the new version it will ask if you wish to migrate your settings, i.e. audio, file locations etc. I suggest you use a search engine to search these forums for the rest of your questions, which have all been extensively answered many time recently.

Provided you have installed each variations core in its default location, then the new Sonar will install in a parallel directory in the Cakewalk tree. When it first starts it will ask you if you wish to migrate your settings i.e. project directory, audio settings, etc to the new Sonar. If you agree it will then migrate your custom settings, scan you plugins both VST & VST3. If you use custom plugin list you may need to copy those to the appropriate directory

That is the Workspace I use all the time, all functions are available.

@linkbekka & @Helios.G My error it is not being discontinued something I read elsewhere not on these forums, just shows you shouldn't trust the Internet.

When SONAR was introduced in 2000 there was no theme editor, likewise for 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 & 8.5. Then the X series arrived, X1, X1.5, X2, didn't either, I don't believe X3 did. If the furry brain remembers correctly they did have a light and dark colour schemes. It was only with the last iteration of the SONAR family, Platinum, Professional & Studio did we see the theme editor arrive.

Thank you.

@Dao Allegro try opening in safe mode and reject all plugins, see if it loads that way. If it does it implies a broken core plugin. I suggest if that is the case, complete uninstall, registry clean. Cold boot of your machine and reinstall. Do you have any anitvirus or malware running?

Are you opening it by clicking on a project? If so try opening it in safe mode. Hold down shift the click on the project. Have you tried opening it by just using the shortcut without a project.

If, @John Vere , if you did not use it for a certain period S-Plat and it cousins would phone home. Truth, most software that has a software manager, Arturia, Toontrack, Cherry Audio, The Native Instruments collective, phone home, reasonably regularly. Some without a manger like, Moog, Gforce also do, how do you think you get those, " There is an Update, or new version" alerts that popup, withou getting an email? As for keeping count, which I don't, at the last count, Bandlab has over 100,000,000 registered users. Now I am not naive in thinking they are 1. All active, 2. All Cakewalk Sonar or Next users, but I suspect there are more than 10,000 happy Cakewalk users. Personally I have been a Cakewalk user since 1992, when it could not record Audio and was just a MIDI sequencer. It took over from my Amiga, which used Dr. T's and Bars and Pipes to sequence MIDI, that I recoded on to my Tascam. I have been using their products for the last 33 years. Like many I got bitten by Gibson in the lifetime update "deal". It is apparent though that, unlike some, I have read and groked the press releases and announcements, since the Gibson debacle. (Groked - it means to fully understand something or someone. Robert A. Heinlein introduced the word in his Book Stranger in a Stange land. It is a Martian expression where they literally eat their dead so they could fully understand them.)

You can't even have the common decency to spell my name right and then just to show your total ignorance you miss quote me. But we all know how you like to misslead providing misinformation, or just stir the brown sticky stuff because you have nothing better to do. Your thread got shut down because of these facts. I did not say it would deactivate. As with CbB every 30 days activation has to be refreshed. If you are using it on a near daily basis this refreshment is transparent and happens automatically. If by chance you don't use it for more than 30 days then you will need to manually reactivate, from the help menu. This is done to give Bandlab an idea of how many users are using the Product. Historically even S-Plat used to phone home regularly and would require reactivation if unused for 30 days. With regard to Bandlab changing something in the software, it is their product, they can do what they like, especially when it is being given away for free. This is another example of you stirring the brown sticky stuff with your misinformation. I don't know whether you have noticed but 99.9% producers change their product on a regular basis without discussing it with you. Think about that. One final thought ***********,, no software is owned. You purchase a End User Licence Agreement. EULA, perhaps you should read it, it grants you the right to use the software for as long as the owners say you can. Yes for as long they deem you can, it actually says they can revoke your right at any time.

Currently there are only the company provided themes for Cakewalk Sonar. There is an extremely good reason for there not being a Theme editor at this time. That being, that the whole way the GUI is generated has changed from the old PNG/BMP days of Platinum and CbB. It now uses vector graphics, this requires the theme editor to be rewritten from the ground up. As you noted yourself, you have been away from the forums, consequently you have missed all the other work that has been done to the program. Perhaps, before being critical of the lack of theme editor, you should educate yourself on all of the functional and performance updates that have been done. Like better, more appropriate, use of E & P cores, an ARM64 version of Sonar for RISK CPU's. The person, yes single person, responsible for the GUI has indicated that when time permits there will be a theme editor. Until then there is more pressing work to be done on the GUI.

The program has stalled then, kill it off using Task master. You would be better off starting a new thread, as this is a feedback thread.

@Dao Allegro what do you think is missing looks complete to me.

@norfolkmastering you could try this. 1. Delete your AUD.INI file. 2. Fire up rig one 1, start Sonar. 3. Close Sonar, rename AUD.INI to AUD.INI-Rig1 4. Fire up rig 2. Start Sonar. 5. Close Sonar, rename AUD.INI to AUD.INI-Rig2. 6. Write a small DOS script file, with two option that you use to start Sonar, Option 1 copies AUD.INI-Rig1 to AUD.INI and Starts Sonar, Option 2 copies AUD.INI-Rig2 to AUD.INI and starts Sonar. This means there is only one lot of Audio Hardware Sonar has to think about when starting up.

When load balancing is enabled it can increased latency on underpowered systems.