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The Great Shutdown - What have we learned?


mumpfucious

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26 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

Wow, I don't think it was always that way...thanks very much for the heads-up!!! I've alerted inSync's editor, so the article can be fixed. I thought Reason Intro was just a re-branding of Reason Essentials, but I guess not.

The CbB forums - not just forums, but a collection of world-class proofreaders :)

 

Well I recently installed Reason Lite 10 that came bundled with a new controller, and looked into the upgrade options. I assume that they are holding back because of the new Europa synth that is bundled with Reason 10 Intro and Light.  Cool synth , by the way!

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What I learned is that there are other fish in the sea, so to speak.  The loss of Cakewalk in 2017 caused me to examine other options without any knowledge of the revival coming from Bandlab.  I'm glad I did, as I found and have really enjoyed working in Studio One 3 and 4.  There are still things that I prefer about Cakewalk as a whole:

1. The drum map is better

2. The community is better, I think.  Even if there are some things here that are a little difficult sometimes, the general sense is more community and less "program".  The Presonus forums are not as active and definitely not as "community" oriented.

There are features (many of them) that I prefer in Studio One (the immediacy of everything, GUI specifically).

There are features (some) that I prefer in Cakewalk (Sound on Sound recording, for example).

The reality is that I keep getting pulled back to Cakewalk for some reason.  Even though there are a lot of things I prefer about S1 and the fact that I'm currently working on several projects in there, I keep coming back to Cakewalk to see what's going on, and keeping in touch with this forum for all of its value, even as is extends beyond just the application.

The stronger integrations with Bandlab as a collaborative platform are certainly appealing and something I am looking at.  Even if that's the only aspect of Cakewalk I continue to use, it might be something that holds me here.

In a perfect world, I'd have all of the features of both DAWs.  I tried to stay very dedicated to Cakewalk/Sonar over the years and had it not been for the untimely breakup of Gibson/Cakewalk, I'd have never looked elsewhere.  I even went to all of the Cakewalk Tours in the local Guitar Centers each year as a matter of course with a friend of mine as a traditional yearly outing.  But that was lost with the demise of the Gibson situation and I looked elsewhere and found a reliable and affordable alternative.  Now I know and can use both and I'm a bit torn with the revival of Cakewalk.  I will likely continue to keep tabs on what is happening in Cakewalk land, might finish out some old projects over here, and will likely continue to build new ones in Studio One. 

But it is with near certainty that I will continue to follow both and will likely use both for different reasons.

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 Only Larry has more DAWs than I so it's time to cut down.   I basically stopped using Sonar after v5.  The GUI was getting so cluttered.  I kept buying licenses because I like to support developers who have the "I trust you" attitude towards end users.  Part of that was also I started getting more interested in dance genres and went to FL Studio because of the licensing and great support.

 I deleted my Gibson Sonar and keep Bandlab. 

The DAWs I will keep for the future are FL Studio, Live, Reason, and Reaper.   I wish I were an expert in Reaper.  Some have ditched their pricey DAWs for Reaper.  Reason is so unique and stable using it in it's proprietary format. I also keep Acid Pro 7. I may bite on the Magix version someday.

 Studio One was on my cut list but it's hard to say no to a $70 upgrade. So I'm making a Trance project in it and is a little more challenging than FL or Live.

 As for Live there will be no more upgrading to Suite.

I'm stuck with Bandlab and FL Studio for life. Not too bad.   Imagine if you started out today. There is no free DAW like Cakewalk,

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4 hours ago, Blades said:

2. The community is better, I think.  Even if there are some things here that are a little difficult sometimes, the general sense is more community and less "program".  The Presonus forums are not as active and definitely not as "community" oriented.

The sad thing is that the original Presonus forums were actually great. But Presonus decided to go the ultra PC route and created new forums with heavy handed moderation, deleted posts, deleted threads and banning sprees. They have really hampered themselves because ever since then some of the most interesting people that were on the now archived forum, don't bother to post anymore. I can't really blame them, as too often I see something like this:

1st Poster: "I have this opinion."

2nd Poster: "I have a different opinion."

1st Poster: "I can see what you are saying, but here is a link to a site that shows why I hold my opinion."

2nd Poster: "That is interesting but I am still sticking with my opinion."

(At this point neither poster has attacked the other and there isn't even a hint of snide remarks, nor sarcasm)

Moderator: "This is a place for civil discussion. If all you two are going to do is argue, I will lock this thread."

Everyone else who was reading the thread: "WTF???????????"

 

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During the Great Exodus with Gibson sinking I jumped over to Samplitude  for their ProX3 Suite deal and have been using it ever since. I like how you hover mouse over any parameter and scroll adjusts, much better than working a mouse pointer to change paremeters. 

I have kept Cakewalk updated and often do a project on it but I find Samplitude a little easier, lots of VSTis and Independence Library. I don't plan to update to ProX4 until a better deal to be had and I have Cakewalk if it ever gets stale.

I like that you can float a tuner and analytics it is easy to do a mix on but cakewalk ProChannel goodies Curve EQ are just great!

I can use both these for recording automation and mixing no probs, but never been good at editing.

Also, have had Reaper for years but rarely use it. It is the new Pro Tools. Basic versions!

Also bought that Mixbus but never used it.

I have been on Sonar 7  and eventually to X3 so it is what I know the most but nice to get a new bunch of toys just that DAWs dont support each other.

Just need to make a template with a tuner docked in there.

 

Edited by Bart Nettle
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23 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

I don't see why anyone would think they need anything beyond what Cakewalk offers (assuming you had Platinum with pluings and instruments included).  

Because there are some gaping holes and workflow issues which are important for producers that need to be productive and have looming deadlines, one guy I know made 500 music cues in 2017 ....not in Sonar !

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I was never overly worried because I was fine with the thought of using Platinum offline until it simply wouldn't work, which I judged to have been many years.  I am glad to not having to do that though. Never bothered with another DAW either as I have all I need in Cakewalk and the bandland version have been great so far. To echo someone earlier in the thread ... if it aint broke ... 

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Demoed Studio One, Cubase, Reaper, Samplitude.

Ended up buying Samplitude Pro X3 because of the price, but found it to be a resource hog on my machine. Ended up sticking with Reaper. I still use Cakewalk at work and probably always will, but for studio and band use, Reaper has taken over. It was not an easy transition, Reaper is HARD to learn, but it runs incredibly smooth on my system under heavy load. Can't say that about Samplitude or even Cakewalk.......I'm running Windows 95 on an Intel Pentium II with 64 MBs of RAM.....Ok that was a bad joke.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Tobias said:

I was never overly worried because I was fine with the thought of using Platinum offline until it simply wouldn't work, which I judged to have been many years.  I am glad to not having to do that though. Never bothered with another DAW either as I have all I need in Cakewalk and the bandland version have been great so far. To echo someone earlier in the thread ... if it aint broke ... 

This has been my experience also.

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2 hours ago, abacab said:

680665744_Doorstotheinfinite.jpg.566725a82336872e6f76cbc611aa5a51.jpg

Are you sure. The really far one looks like the door is closing with no more DAW's to choose..........................................
Samplitude I'm glad I got in the deal because I got Spectral Layers and that has come in handy for me.

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On 1/30/2019 at 11:16 AM, Kevin Walsh said:

To me Reaper's UI is like watching a 1970's cheap action movie.

Wow, that's vivid. I, too, have tried and been put off by Reaper, but for me, it was just the basic difficulty of getting started with it. It took me over 45 minutes to figure out how to arm a track for a recording.

I think it's too powerful for me. The people who like it say it's really powerful and I think it has too much power for me.

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Yes the default UI for Reaper is UGLY. No way to sugar coat that. But there are plenty of free themes on their website that look great. The one I use looks like a cross between SONAR & Pro Tools. It took me a solid week to get to where I could record and edit, but once you "get" how the program works things speed up with workflow. I will never completely drop Cakewalk, this June will mark 20 years of use since Pro Audio 8 for me. But for my studio and bigger projects, Reaper is now my DAW of choice.

 

 

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I used Reaper for a year before coming back to Sonar 8.5, and then to CbB. It basically took me a year to complete a 16 minute classical full orchestra work in Reaper. I spent a solid two weeks working constantly with another user to figure out the midi routing. Reaper is for geeks, basically. People who can code, work in UNIX, etc. The rest of us need a program that is more intuitive.

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I jumped ship, (which surprised me, being a Twelve Tone Systems fan boy for many years) to Studio One. Then when I bought a laptop with a hi res monitor, and Studio One couldn't handle that I jumped to REAPER, which I had purchased a license for about four or five years ago.

But I am having trouble with sync'ing my hardware and software now and so am on the move again.

Hence my visits to this forum...

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