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How does CbB stack up against other "Pay to Play" DAWS?


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Specific DAWs (including Cakewalk) have specialized features that other DAWs don't have. Unless you need a feature that can be found only in one DAW, Cakewalk will do pretty much anything you want it to do, and do it well.

Of course, the biggest advantage is the money you would normally spend on a DAW, you can spend on plug-ins to supplement what comes with the program. 

 

 

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17 hours ago, mettelus said:

I think you answered your own question and spent the rest of your post confirming it 😃 If the internet exploded and you never got another update ever again, CbB as it is now will exceed your needs. As with most complex programs, focus on what you want to do and learn that; it is easy to get overwhelmed/frustrated to try to learn too much at once.

Wait, the Internet is going to explode?  I have mixed feelings about that 😀

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

There's no call for forcing yourself to warp your head around any piece of software when there are so many great alternatives. You have a powerful enough computer to run any DAW on the market.

Of the other two, Cakewalk will surely satisfy the needs of a singer/songwriter and then some. For that kind of thing, you want something with good tools for comping and mixing. I can record in anything, but give me Cakewalk when it comes to mixing time. As far as comping, Cakewalk has a full set of tools. It has a learning curve for comping, to be sure, but I don't know of a DAW that doesn't. I've never run into a comping task that I couldn't accomplish with Cakewalk's tools and workflow, but I still from time to time get into "flurry of Ctrl-Z's" trouble when using the Smart Tool and turned out it wasn't in the mode I thought it was. My more confident workflow with editing is to switch to the Edit or Draw Tool I need rather than relying on my memorization of what the Smart Tool is supposed to do in a given situation.

That's my caveat: Cakewalk is great for comping if you remember to loosen your grip on the Smart Tool.

Although I have a license for Reason Lite, I'm much less familiar with it because I couldn't get my head around it. I never even got as far as recording anything, so I don't know about their comping tools.

No software, regardless of licensing model, is immune to abandonment. Sonar was payware up until 5 years ago, Cakewalk, Inc. had been around for 30 years and was owned by a much larger company. Then, poof. You're old enough to remember when WordStar, then Word Perfect absolutely owned the word processing market. The mighty may fall. A program like Cakewalk or Chrome that's not expected to earn its parent company revenue in the form of license fees isn't necessarily less "safe" than one that must constantly keep its user base updating in order to earn a profit and justify its existence.

For that reason, I encourage people to remain at least familiar with one DAW other than their primary. At least familiar enough that if DAW A breaks for whatever reason, you can at least get tracks down with DAW B when inspiration hits rather than struggling to get it into record mode.

There's some FUD about "will Cakewalk keep working if BandLab and its validation server goes away?" I have faith in both the Cakewalk devs, and then if there are legal issues, the world of hackers, that if that ever happens, a solution will be found.

Well, I know Reason pretty well and yes it has comping tools.  Their focus in this last few years is using it as a plug-in with other DAWs.  You can still use it stand alone, but I sense the majority of people have gone to Ableton, Studio One or whatever using their Reason investment as a super duper VST.  The more I spend my time perusing how-to videos by a some of the fine YouTubers out there, the more I like it.

37 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

Specific DAWs (including Cakewalk) have specialized features that other DAWs don't have. Unless you need a feature that can be found only in one DAW, Cakewalk will do pretty much anything you want it to do, and do it well.

Of course, the biggest advantage is the money you would normally spend on a DAW, you can spend on plug-ins to supplement what comes with the program. 

 

 

Hi Craig, glad to see you're here.

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18 hours ago, mettelus said:

If the internet exploded and you never got another update ever again, CbB as it is now will exceed your needs.

Yes, and after maximum 6 month you can't use it anymore, because the re-authorization cannot be done. 😄

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12 minutes ago, Stephen Rybacki said:

Hi Craig, glad to see you're here.

I still use Cakewalk. And I still use Studio One, Ableton Live, and Pro Tools :)  I also do occasional forays into Cubase and DP. Right tool for the right job, and all that. 

I used to participate in this forum more when I'd look at the topics, and see a question that didn't have a response. If I could answer it, I would. These days, questions get answered fast and comprehensively by other people so I don't really need to add anything. 

It's good to see that Cakewalk continues to thrive. Props to Meng, Noel, and the rest of the team.

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On 10/2/2022 at 3:40 AM, SVSX said:

Not that i'm questioning your experience, but on my PC  Cakewalk is running pretty stable/smooth. Can't imagine how its running even better. But my brother is using Reaper for his Apple PC and its a good software.

 

Thanks for using Cakewalk software. It has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 4 years and is more stable and performant than it has ever been.
In general, if any DAW meets your workflow and needs there is no need to keep endlessly looking elsewhere because you will waste more time learning new tools. And believe me when I say this - every product has flaws and bugs despite what you might hear from anyone else ;) 
We're also working on something exciting that will be announced relatively soon so at minimum hold out until then 😛

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1 hour ago, Craig Anderton said:

Specific DAWs (including Cakewalk) have specialized features that other DAWs don't have. Unless you need a feature that can be found only in one DAW, Cakewalk will do pretty much anything you want it to do, and do it well.

Of course, the biggest advantage is the money you would normally spend on a DAW, you can spend on plug-ins to supplement what comes with the program. 

 

 

For me any product its actually more than the sum of its features, but its workflow. If a product has a million features but the workflow doesn't suit me, I don't use it.
Time is too short to waste on things that aren't intuitive to you.

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2 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

For me any product its actually more than the sum of its features, but its workflow. If a product has a million features but the workflow doesn't suit me, I don't use it.
Time is too short to waste on things that aren't intuitive to you.

That's what I really like of CbB (and Sonar), it's the workflow and the interface! 😉

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If the internet is gone permanently, I think you will have far worse problems than not being able to use your DAW ;)
You can authorize cakewalk via the offline auth mechanism but yes that requires at least a remote internet connection somewhere.
Pretty much most software today is tied to some sort of activation mechanism, its just how the industry has evolved.

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2 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

If the internet is gone permanently, I think you will have far worse problems than not being able to use your DAW ;)
You can authorize cakewalk via the offline auth mechanism but yes that requires at least a remote internet connection somewhere.
Pretty much most software today is tied to some sort of activation mechanism, its just how the industry has evolved.

I just referred to the comment of @Mettelus! 😄 But you have to admit that there is some software (also DAWs) that would still be running (also Sonar)! 😉  Some software only on already installed systems, but some also on new systems (but I agree this kind gets rarer and rarer).

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15 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

If the internet is gone permanently, I think you will have far worse problems than not being able to use your DAW ;)
You can authorize cakewalk via the offline auth mechanism but yes that requires at least a remote internet connection somewhere.
Pretty much most software today is tied to some sort of activation mechanism, its just how the industry has evolved.

I had never thought that way.

If an apocalypse happens and I survive, will I not be able to make music with Cakewalk anymore?

That would be boring.

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3 hours ago, murat k. said:

IIf an apocalypse happens and I survive, will I not be able to make music with Cakewalk anymore?

That would be boring.

In the event of a sudden apocalypse that somehow nukes the internet but leaves the power grid intact, CbB will work as it always has for 6 months.

At which point, all you need to do to continue working with it is set your computer's clock back a year. And you can even leave it that way, because, remember no internet, therefore no internet time servers for Windows to contact.

@scook would probably create a script to set the system clock back, start Cakewalk, then upon exiting, set the system clock forward again. Assuming phone lines still work, we could get this script via the revived Cakewalk dial-up BBS.

Not to worry!

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4 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

We're also working on something exciting that will be announced relatively soon so at minimum hold out until then 😛

Oh, i can't wait 🤩

THX @ the team for your continuous work!

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54 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

In the event of a sudden apocalypse that somehow nukes the internet but leaves the power grid intact, CbB will work as it always has for 6 months.

At which point, all you need to do to continue working with it is set your computer's clock back a year. And you can even leave it that way, because, remember no internet, therefore no internet time servers for Windows to contact.

@scook would probably create a script to set the system clock back, start Cakewalk, then upon exiting, set the system clock forward again. Assuming phone lines still work, we could get this script via the revived Cakewalk dial-up BBS.

Not to worry!

That would probably screw up some other software properly authorized on such systems.

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I also am a hobbyist. I began with buying a Yamaha keyboard with drum sounds included, a 4-track TASCAM cassette recorder and some guitars so I could record some of my songs.
Then my brother the programmer suggested I try a computer program. He thought it would be easier. So, I bought Cakewalk's Music Creator 2003, which was MC 2 with a MIDI-to-MPU 401 game port cable.
The TASCAM has been in a box ever since then, except for a couple remote recordings I needed to do.
I use almost no plug-ins, EQ, et cetera (although I've been told a few times some more mastering would be helpful) since my hearing is so bad I can't tell the difference and all I want to do is get my music arranged and recorded.
I have a simple layout for my starting template, I try to keep things simple for my simple mind. 

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20 hours ago, rsinger said:

Ran across this video today. Pros say: THIS is the best DAW for music production 2022. Cakewalk places #5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPeCu7Yl4QU

The guy asked 2246 music producers ...

pretty limited scope...

"🎵 GENRES 🎵 • Electronic Music • EDM • Electro House • Big Room • Dance Music • Techno • Tech House • Beats"

but hey, it's YT, where click bait titles are typically the sum total of their creativity. didn't bother to do any fact checking on who the "pros" were... 

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21 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

We're also working on something exciting that will be announced relatively soon so at minimum hold out until then

Thanks for the continued development of this great DAW!    Now you have me checking here everyday for the announcement :)

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21 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

If the internet is gone permanently, I think you will have far worse problems than not being able to use your DAW ;)
You can authorize cakewalk via the offline auth mechanism but yes that requires at least a remote internet connection somewhere.
Pretty much most software today is tied to some sort of activation mechanism, its just how the industry has evolved.

All it takes to do that is a Kessler Syndrome scenario and we're there.  It could happen too.

Anyway, IF that does happen, I'll be too busy hunting and gathering to give much of a crap about pop music anymore 😂

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