Peter Morgan

Lifelong user of Cakewalk through ProAudio to Sonar to CbB and anxiously awaiting the return of rebranded Sonar...   

I downloaded the preview/demo and ...  after a year in development, it seems indistinguishable from Cakewalk by Bandlab.  Same apparent engine, settings, UI, feature set.  Maybe a few small tweaks but I expected something fairly revolutionary.  Not getting it...   did I miss something major?   I'm not trying to be provocative or negative, but I am honestly looking for what has changed that would make me want to buy the new Sonar product?   So far it seems like it's 99% the same, and I'm not sure that makes me want to plunk down for it, instead of moving over to some other paid product at this point.

If it is going to become a paid product, it has to compete on even footing with what else is out there, and I was expecting some major overhauls of features or usability / workflow, or UI or ....  something.

I want to stick with the DAW I have used for many decades by now, but I think I need a little convincing from those who have spent more time with the new version that it's really moving forward in some ways that I haven't appreciated before I'd be willing to invest into this path going forward.

Can someone please help me understand what's happening?   I'll admit I haven't had much time to keep up with the ins and outs, so I am hopeful there is a lot there I've simply missed.

Best regards,

peter

As a long-time user since Cakewalk Pro Audio, through Sonar and Gibson, and into CbB...   I welcome the news with some trepidation.  Hopefully Cakewalk by Bandlab team and leadership have done some market research and understand their customer base well.  If not, I have concerns for the future of development.  Once you start charging it really matters where the development focus goes.  Just my point zero two dollars.  Here are some development wishlist ideas - this is an off-the-cuff and very incomplete list of thoughts:

• Update the workflow in several areas where things haven't moved in years.  Other DAWs have much easier ways to do various things.  Cakewalk does it the multi-click/multi-step way "just 'cause" - this doesn't scale well into the future.
• Provide some sort of well-supported/hooked API/scripting support.  This would enable a whole cottage industry of supporting tooling or processing options.  CAL was visionary back in the day, but it's abandoned ideologically.  Bringing back support for a simple scripting toolkit(python or javascript api?) would enable all kinds of workflows that could really move things forward.
• Enhancing the MIDI generation/editing tools (see Cubase)
• Machine/learning or AI support for mixing/tracking/mastering or midi generation...
• Give some service to the scoring engine - or leave it behind and let it go to waste.  I don't use it, but for those who do and would, it's (afaict) a huge drawback that it's archaic.  To have a well-developed scoring engine with client support (look forward another comment) would kick Sonar into next-gen territory
• Develop a mobile app that can talk to a session and be delegated certain views or layouts.  For example:  lyrics to a tablet device (this could be web-based so it doesn't require so much bespoke/multiplatform code).  Music score parts to instruments in an orchestra that would move along in sync to the clock so singers or players could read their parts in time during a tracking session.
• About the mobile app idea: even to provide support for a local network discovery so client apps could be web-based and have limited but critical functionality like transport control or score/lyrics views would be, IMHO, very useful.

As I said, I fully recognize this opinionated list depends on the customer base for the product.  Who is that base?  Does Bandlab know?  Let's hope so...  otherwise I worry that things could spiral downward in a hurry.  Lots of competition in the paid space.

Bandlab:  I wish you well, and I'll most likely stay with you unless the pricing is whacked.  But really, if you're going paid, you have to at least keep up with the competitors, and in many ways you're not there.  It was easy to paper over while you were free.

Peter

On 4/30/2023 at 11:03 PM, Starship Krupa said:

Definitely a consideration. I chose arp patches that produced the same notes when they are triggered. I may have got that wrong, though. It's all a big experiment.

How about making two passes at each DAW and then compare pass 1 and 2 of each DAW to be sure they are the same as each other.  If they aren't you aren't really comparing the DAWs so much as the takes.

Are you Ctrl-dragging in a non-selected track?   For whatever reason when you quick group edit, you have to ctrl-click on a non-selected track in the group.  To be honest, though, I'm finding this buggy in Pro Channel console emulation.  I've been doing it myself the past few days and I'm finding that sometimes only a few modules respond, or sometimes nothing responds and when I let go of the mouse button, the channel I am on sees the console emulator enable (if it was disabled).  If I reset things manually, usually the second time around things start responding as expected, but it does seem like there's a bug lurking in there, somewhere.