Noel Borthwick

Refer to my post. Do you really think we haven't considered people not running 4K displays? Why waste your time speculating on what you havent seen yet.

Thanks @Cyanide Lovesong. We have the ability to turn on/off DPI scaling at the app level and also at the individual plugin level so it's all backwards compatible. See below. Also, to the naysayers, we have decades of experience writing Windows software and worked directly with Microsoft engineers with some of this DPI stuff over the years. Rest assured we know what we're doing, probably more than most others in our industry at least for Windows! So far we haven't had any performance issues issues, but as you say dynamically baking bitmaps is a fallback that we discussed a long time ago if it was ever necessary to do.

All the DPI awareness work done was for the Sonar application. Cakewalk Next is already vector based. Cakewalk Sonar is a hybrid DPI aware application. Plugin's need to be independently made DPI aware for them to be scalable. By default, Sonar assumes that plugins are DPI aware and if there are scaling problems noted it can be disabled on a per plugin basis. There is a new "Enhanced Display Scaling" option in the plugin properties settings to control this. However only a few Cakewalk plugins are fully DPI aware - for example the prochannel modules. For the others you may have to disable the per plugin "Enhanced Display Scaling" for them to work. When Enhanced Display Scaling is off we rely on Windows to handle the scaling when running high dpi monitors. In the future we may update some cakewalk plugins to also be DPI aware like we're doing with Sonar but it's not on the roadmap ATM. IOW High DPI support is not available across the board for all plugins. It depends on the specific plugin.

Um no where did you read Sonar mac in what I wrote. Sonar will not be ported to Mac. Cakewalk's Mac solution going forward will be Next. Going forward its just Cakewalk Sonar and Cakewalk Next exclusively.

It already is :-P

Guys I think there is some disconnect about what Sonar is. We aren't changing the core Sonar code from what Cbb is so its not changing the user interface. You can think of it as exactly the same as what you are using but with some new features. i.e. treat it similar to a major point upgrade over CbB. The UI will look nicer and be more modern as well.

backwoods I suggest you contact BandLab support. I don't really have access to all that data. If you have a migrated SSO account they may be able to help you. Old unmigrated accounts are a different story.

Next beta has been active for several months in internal beta. We're now opening it up for limited public access. People who signed up should gradually get invites. We need to load balance it so we aren't overwhelmed initially...

Next is a completely new DAW designed from the ground up by us over the last five years. It was developed to be cross platform and works equally well on Mac and PC with full AU and VST support. The focus so far has been on creation centric features as opposed to the more production centric features that Sonar has. For example, it has very intuitive lyrics entry and song arrangements, a built in sampler and pad controller which is quite powerful, allowing you to set up sampler or instrument pads. While Next might look visually similar to the online web based BandLab Studio that's only because we followed branding guidelines. It has full integration with the BandLab ecosystem with integrated browsing of BandLab loops as well as upload and download to the BandLab library. The product itself is quite deep and includes many of the bells and whistles Cakewalk users have come to expect, like multiprocessor support, background plugin scanning and flexible routing. Routing is very simplified and elegant in Next and can all be done via track folders (unlike Sonar). There are many more exciting features coming in future roadmaps. I'm sure in the upcoming weeks Jesse will post more information about Next. In the interim, interested users are welcome to request beta access if you want hands-on experience with the application.

Cakewalk as a company closed in 2018. My question to you is can you still use SONAR Platinum today? If the answer is yes, then you have your answer for the future. Most ethical companies handle terminating events like that gracefully and we are no exception. When Cakewalk was shut down, we had escrow plans to unlock licenses for users permanently if it came to that. We never needed to, since BandLab acquired the software and keeps the license servers running even though we make no profit off of it.

My car is already subscription (OnStar). If I want remote access to it or to check stats, I have to pay $15 a month I got a few years of free access when I bought it. Actual appliances have already gone this way. The classic 90's software model of paying for a specific version has changed many years ago whether we like it or not. As I mentioned in another thread, back in the day we had a hybrid model where you could do either pay as you go or buy that years version outright. It worked pretty well and satisfied most users needs. While we haven't baked the final details I think Cakewalk's offering will be a pretty compelling value even compared to other DAW's. Obviously not free...

If it runs on cbb today there is a very good chance it will be fine. The main difference would be the new vector based UI but we don't expect that to require more resources. In fact it could take less since the overall footprint of the app will be smaller.

Won't happen. It's the same base codebase so no functionally changes. It will be 100% compatible with earlier projects

Yes, you do give up some abilities with removal of bitmaps. But the benefits greatly outweigh this IMHO.

Zero changes to compatibility or program function. It will install side by side to Cbb and load all your plugins without needing to even rescan.

Theme editor is highly bitmap based so it won't work as is. There are no longer images to replace. The advantage is color changes are now much simpler with vectors.

>>"Annual" means no expiry / no deactivation after one year, just no further free updates after the year, right? Exactly. We were one of the few companies offering this model even in the SONAR days. How it works is you either pay for 12 consecutive monthly subs OR you purchase a one year subscription upfront. In both scenarios the last months version is permanently unlocked for you and you own it. This is essentially no different than buying an annual version of the software outright. Many people who dislike subscription are unaware that we always did this. Also, an advantage of monthly subscription was that once you crossed the 12 month boundary you could continue consecutive monthly subs for however long as you want and you would always own the last version you paid for. All subs are not bad and are actually better for some people who prefer paying in smaller increments. So definitely read the fine print. Disclaimer: To be clear I'm not saying that this is going to be our model. We're still very much working out the details here. I was quoting how it was done in the SONAR days and saying not all subscription schemes are the same.

Sonar itself will run as demo for a 15 day trial period.

@Sal Sorice this is not intentional. It's likely due to some domain changes with the new website. I'll notify the back end team. Can you access your products from your account page on the legacy website? EDIT: It turns out that Command Center is relying on the old cakewalk website which is actually now legacy.cakewalk.com. Unfortunately the only way to restore it to working is to update the command center app itself since the URL's are built into the code. That might take awhile to do since that hasn't been changed in many years. In the interim please use the account management at https://legacy.cakewalk.com/My-Account to update your old software if you need to get to it.

We're still hashing out the details of pricing/payment models. What bothers you most about subscription? It's essentially a pay as you go lease model and is beneficial for those who can't justify putting down a lumpsum of cash at one time... For those afraid of the software deactivating, there are models that allow you to purchase an annual (non-expiring) license. This is what we did in the SONAR days. An annual license is no different from buying the software outright.

Sonar is built from the identical codebase of CbB so no change there. What's new at least to start with is some new features and a massive revamp of the UI to make it DPI aware so it can run on higher resolution monitors without pixelation. Note that this doesn't change the UX in anyway other than new vector-based graphics and a crisper look. It will be supported and added to in the future unlike CbB which will not get all the latest developments that have gone in since the start of this year.

Pricing details are still being baked but it will most likely be a bundle.

No Next is a full desktop based cross platform app that integrates with BandLab. The web browser based daw is BandLab studio that already exists.

There will be another final CbB release with bug fixes. We're wrapping up the details on that...

Why can't you just click Quit in the plugin message? It appears to be asking for user input there. If you skip the project should continue loading but the plugin will be not active which shouldn't affect anything. You can then delete the plugin from the project.