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Is Cakewalk development still ongoing? Just checking... [Yes it is indeed! :) ]


GreenLight

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1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Jon, ...

Starship, what a wonderful response from you, amidst me probably irritating so many with my thoughts (and not by intention). 

Yes, my particular system may be quite vulnerable to performance weaknesses, and I appreciate your interest and have a very positive faith that you would help to the end in solving particular problems that I and others may have.  That is core human spirit.

But I'll work with my systems, if you'll accept my praise! 

As you know, my point is that Sonar is a bit more vulnerable in general to many little things, in my opinion.  I just left two really tough weeks in a professional recording studio (I'm a very humble bassist, and am hard on myself -- thus the "tough" part), and in the moments of control-room review of material I had some great discussions with the lead engineer (studio owner).  I bragged-up Sonar for four or five reasons that he totally agreed with, and then, very peacefully, he placed it in perspective for me with the question "How stable is it?" and the position "You do a great deal of recording in your own studio, so I would ask you to consider whether you'd use Sonar for paying clients on a deadline, amidst a studio that has overhead costs (rent, loans)."  I felt like he knew about Sonar. I'm pretty sure he did.  He even said that he was captive to a dated ProTools workflow under the attributes of its familiarity and stabiilty.

It was not more than the whisp of time between his last words and them hitting my ears that I sadly said "No, I would struggle to stay even."

Now, that being said, I COULD possibly have experts come in (maybe they'd have to be Cake dev teammates) and solve my PARTICULAR idiosyncratic setup issues (like this wonderful forum does for so many), but that's not the point.  Cake, a KILLER software platform for music production, has one more level to conquer.  

I'm an executive technical director type, by trade.  If I were with Cake, I'd joyfully drive the team to match the needs of at least close-to studio reliability.  Close-to.  I'd proudly say that we have one of the best human/PC interfaces ever made, and spur organizational pride in getting the core tech to kick major boodie.

And I'd definitely engage the bright minds at Cake/Bandlab to truly investigate why I might mistakenly belived that Sequoia has a sheen and comprehensive wholeness in its audio that other DAWs lack.

Are you a musician, Star?  Bless your engagement here.

Jonas

 

And let me add that Cake, being "free" of charge, is the complete Godzilla of a software DAW offering in the world.  Reaper is great, but can't hold a birthday cake candle to "Sonar".

Edited by Jon White
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19 hours ago, Jon White said:

Hmmm, well, not correct if you broaden what he may really mean: that adding anything complex (plugins) to an already-unstable (at times) Sonar/Cakewalk just tips the scale to overload and flaky behavior.  Funny, 'cause just this afternoon I created a simple three-channel Kontakt setup and the audio started segmenting like a machine gun when I started the second instrument.  I saved the file, restarted and it worked for a bit.  It just adds up to frustration.  I went to Nuendo and setup a 16-channel Kontakt project, loaded big pianos, orchestrals and whatnot into ten of the channels, added busses for group effects and even put Izotope 9 in the master bus and not one single glitch or hesitation, as usual.  I don't like ProTools (but have to use it at times for group work), but it never fails, either, but for once every four months just closing abruptly.  

C'mon Bandlab, let's see why this softwawe is touchy for some.  And posters, don't feel that it it logical to claim that it doesn't happen to you, because that's not the point.  It has to be how Cake coordinates with ASIO drivers and hardware flow/logic.  To really tickle a tough topic, I also believe that Sequoia/Samplitude SOUNDS better.  I've tried to deny it, but time after time I believe I hear it, and I don't want to, believe me. I want Cake to be everything it can be, because I love the layout and workflow.

Isn’t Nuendo a MAC only DAW?

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19 hours ago, GreenLight said:

Exactly, those were some of my thoughts. And it also seemed that there was unusually low participation from staff during a couple of months (although it just goes to show we are in fact very spoiled with that normally)... 🤗 Anyway, I'm at ease now that Bandlab showed some signs of life. 😉

Yeah that is true but I think that is mainly due to the pandemic situation and maybe they were preparing some event for the 2-year anniversary thing that was delayed for a reason. 

I really like the Cakewalk layout and workflow, and I don't care about things like the audio engine sounding better on Samplitude or in other DAWs. All DAWs some good enough to me and most of them have the features that I need implemented in a different way so is just a matter of workflow and stability. Is just my opinon, take it with a grain of salt.

Edit: I am sorry Jon but I have to disagree with you. REAPER can actually compete with Cakewalk and with the previous SONAR, there is nothing inferior in it. You should dive in it to realise it by yourself. Is also cross-platform, which is a must for many professional studios.

Edited by Feral State Sound
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19 hours ago, Jon White said:

And I'd definitely engage the bright minds at Cake/Bandlab to truly investigate why I might mistakenly belived that Sequoia has a sheen and comprehensive wholeness in its audio that other DAWs lack.

Are you a musician, Star?  Bless your engagement here.

Yes, I am, and lest ye be of the perception that I speak for the company, I do not, I am merely sympathetic to their position and like to think that the many years I spent in the trenches at various multimedia software companies (Adobe/Macromedia, Learning Company, etc.) gives me some insight.

What I meant to say was that it is entirely possible that Sequoia/Samplitude/Music Creator has a really good-sounding playback engine in comparison to other DAW's including Cakewalk.

Fun hypothetical time, if I were setting up a professional studio, the kind with clients and deadlines and outside engineers and all that, I would have a different set of criteria for it than I would for my personal home studio.

First thing I would do would be to ask around and see if Pro Tools was still the most popular tool for professional recording engineers, and necessary to be the primary DAW to build the studio around.

Once I had that bit of information, I would order a couple of proper A/V computers from a system integrator such as Jim Roseberry. At that point I'd do the survey I do every few years by obtaining the free starter versions of the full-featured DAW's, Studio One, Cubase, etc. and trying them out to see how they stacked up against Cakewalk. At that point I would choose two DAW's to build the studio around, one of them probably still Pro Tools, the other likely Cakewalk because I'm familiar with it, but maybe not.

I run Cakewalk here at home because the BandLab announcement came just as I was outgrowing Mixcraft and I checked it out and liked the feature set and the sound and saw that it had potential. I was and am very interested to see what happens under the BandLab stewardship. I predicted good things and am happy that so far I was right. I trolled the naysayers relentlessly and with great fury on the old forum, so I would have been kinda red-faced if things had turned to poo.😄

Even the forum is better and getting better all the time. I especially enjoy the relative lack of defensiveness, which may be down to the fact that there's not so much to be defensive about with CbB!

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3 hours ago, Feral State Sound said:

Yeah that is true but I think that is mainly due to the pandemic situation and maybe they were preparing some event for the 2-year anniversary thing that was delayed for a reason.

I'm hoping you're right. :)

To be honest, in this modern way of releasing small/incremental software updates often I've been bit by more bugs than ever before, and I'm not talking about Cakewalk here. And I also believe the constant releases encourage developing low hanging fruits in general, at least to some extent... so I am thrilled that Bandlab is creating something that takes a long time!  😁

I've been a bit worried that we've not seen any really big updates since the Bandlab phase started.  Don't get me wrong, I love the updates we've been getting and am very grateful indeed, but I've started to become a bit nervous that we'd not be treated with "big new features", like stuff you see in releases such as Cubase 10. That would risk making Cakewalk dated in the long run. So again, I am thrilled that Bandlab is creating something that takes a long time! I'll gladly wait, even though I started this thread...  ☺️

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I really have to hand it to the devs, though, for so far spending two full years polishing and tuning, smashing bugs, adding long-requested "featurettes" as I found out they used to call them.

And I think we've seen some fairly big updates, it's just that they were ones that expanded upon existing features rather than being new features of their own.

There was that thing with adding colors to tracks that happened in one of the first releases that sure helped make the program more visually attractive.

How many people were clamoring for the Ripple Edit Indicator and now take it for granted, because of course it should have been there from the start? How about the brilliant changes to the Smart Tool and Take Lanes workflow to open the way for another type of comping workflow? Note names on MIDI notes? Fab!

Those are a few things that I consider "big" updates that have a huge impact on the ease of use and the way I use the program.

Ah, how about for the new users (like me) the release of the Cakewalk Reference Guide?

I think we kind of take these for granted because they were such good ideas, they fit right in. Well of course we have the names of the notes in the Piano Roll. But a couple of releases ago they were just blank rectangles. Well, sure, I can change the behavior of the Smart Tool, but I remember when I couldn't and it would just choose a tool that I didn't want to use.

That's why I just don't get the "still using SONAR" crew. There's so much good stuff in the new program.

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2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Even the forum is better and getting better all the time. I especially enjoy the relative lack of defensiveness, which may be down to the fact that there's not so much to be defensive about with CbB!

Who could be defensive with intelligent, considerate folks like you and the others in this thread all sharing ideas and being resilient enough to not let it go south with personal preferences dominating the discussion.  Bravo to you and all here!

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11 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

That's why I just don't get the "still using SONAR" crew.

Me either. But I have been around long enough to remember the 8.5 crew!! : )

Starship Krupa makes some valid points. With all the updates, to some it may not seem like a big deal, but from where Sonar was to where CbB is today is like night and day to me and my workflow. If nothing else the major reworking and getting it right with Take Lanes was like a dream come true for me! I could live with just that update to an existing feature. But it's not the only one. 

I have no idea what they devs have in store for the upcoming months, but I will bet it will be a useful new feature, or a much improved existing feature!!

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