SuperFreq

Thanks I might do that very soon (post a song snippet for feedback). I've never listened to Devin Townsend but I'm off to do some research. And if you can believe it, I've never really listened to an entire Dream Theater album, only a few songs I may have caught on Youtube. You're right, I think their schtick is the wall of sound, and it works for them. It's interesting to note that DT rose to prominence by contradicting the minimalist "unplugged" sound that would dominate late 80s-90s airplay. So I guess the takeaway is that you can't predict what will work based on generational trends alone. Good point about how sometimes "old becomes new", and a great example of that might be the recent Beatles reissues from master tape. I haven't heard them all, but supposedly they worked hard to preserve the original sound, but just with a cleaner restoration of the mixes. And it seems to be gaining traction with fans both old & young. Then again, they're the freakin Beatles. They've built up their street cred so they can sound like whatever they like. My concern is that a new artist hitting the scene with a debut album will immediately get labeled based on initial impressions. So the debut artist has to be careful not to sound like a cliché right out of the gate.

Suppose you were, say, Eddie Offord producing Yes 1971-1973. Fragile, Close to the Edge, Tales from Topographic Oceans. But the year is 2023. You don't want to alienate young listeners by having a dated sound (more on "dated sound" below); you want to present it in a way that will capture even the average pop fan's ear. At least until you get to that 3 min drum solo on side 4 😅 What would you do differently? Ok let's talk about the "dated sound" aspect. I'm not using that term negatively, I'm personally a huge fan of that 70s sound just like I think all Billie Holiday songs should be lo-fi like that dated 1940s sound. But you gotta admit, the average kid today will scroll past it on the radio dial just because it has that old sound. In other words, how would you do prog music with today's sound? This is where it gets subjective so all thoughts are welcome. But I feel like today's sound has much crisper highs. Today's sound has more compression, and today's sound has instruments that are in your face, as opposed to the 70s prog wall of sound, or dreamscape, where the listener gets lost in the barrage of instrumentation--much like a symphony. So for starters, maybe we'd want to dial down or turn off all reverb, all delay, chorus, and all those 70s-80s effects designed to widen the sound. We would want to keep it tight and crisp. Agree, disagree, alternate suggestions? I'm asking because I'm working on a very 70s-prog-influenced album, but I don't want to just mimic the 70s prog sound. I'd love to come up with something unique that this generation can call its own while retaining all the 70s prog awesomeness that led here.

Thanks man... to you as well as everyone who has commented their similar experiences. Knowing that I wasn't alone in digging my heels into 8.5, yet seeing how you guys made the transition, is making me want to give CbB another effort. HUGE to hear that CbB is backward compatible with files as old as 1.0 (yes I have a bunch of those 😅)! And indeed the sauce is how much CbB's developers are actively engaged in hearing & addressing your issues. I for one am sick of software companies that hide behind a brick wall, only peeking out occasionally to announce the standard "we're working on a few things". So for me right now the biggest roadblock is my Windows 7 machine. Honestly I would love to roll back to even XP, like you mentioned, because that thing was stable. But unfortunately for video production (Adobe) you're forced to update to Windows 7 at minimum. Bottom line, I'm still dragging my heels, but at least my feet are pointed in the right direction.........

Yup you guys know where I'm coming from... I regularly upgraded every edition of Sonar until I hit X1, really didn't like it, and that's how I ended up in my little 8.5 bubble. When I tried CbB I immediately noticed the missing "Every Damn Button Ever" situation 😄 and that's what cooled my jets. Furthermore, I'm a UA hardware user, UAD by association, and their teasing of Luna for Windows made me hold off on any major DAW migrations til I saw what they had to offer. Um... 3 years later they seem to have thrown Windows users under the bus, so CbB is once again my top pick for an upgrade when I'm ready. That's awesome that CbB will do all the 64 bit Sonar plugins I'm used to. That's a major plus. Customizing its theme to look like 8.5 would make things psychologically easier but I guess it's not imperative. But yeah those buttons... and keyboard shortcuts! Years of using Sonar have programmed my muscle memory into a rhythm of using buttons & shortcuts so it would be a major mind shift to learn to dig through menus. Sooner or later I'm sure I'll make the move. Probably after my next catastrophic Sonar crash where I lose an entire project (again lol). Those are the times when I'm most likely to make a radical change. We'll see..........

Hi folks, I'm new here but have been using Cakewalk since the old days. Although I've installed the latest CbB and taken it for a test drive, I think for now I'm sticking with my old buggy Sonar 8.5.3, mainly because the layout is perfect for me (when it works), and it has a couple plugins & tools I'd be dead without. Not to mention my main machine is running Windows 7 😬 don't laugh, I've stripped it down to maximum efficiency and this thing runs like Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics 🔥 Regardless of what version, I'm really thrilled to see Bandlab is keeping Cakewalk alive & strong (and FREE). Correct me if I'm wrong, is it not the oldest active DAW in the world? My biggest question is, if I can manage to import all my fav Sonar plugins into CbB, such as the epic VC64 Compressor, is there a way to customize the GUI of CbB to make it look, feel and smell just like Sonar 8.5.3? Has anyone ever created a template or script to do this? In any case hello! Any other Sonar die hards here?