Introducing Cakewalk Next and our new brand identity

[Johnbee58]

9 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

OK, that's fair

But let me ask you this, did you get any updates past X3? Like, did you get any of the stuff that came in with SONAR Platinum?

This is no different to buying Sonar 2024 outright for that year (and getting those 12 months of updates) and staying on it. Then in 2027 you think "you know, that new feature actually looks pretty good, I'll grab that!" and you buy Sonar 2027 and associated updates.  It's pretty much exactly what you did with X3.

Let's put it this way.  I'll never say never.  If I  see something I want and it's affordable for me  I'll consider buying it.  If the following year offers something I want I'll probably upgrade but a monthly sub is out of the question entirely for me.

😀

Oh, answering you first question: No, I  never got anything past x3. When the CbB freebie came out I didn't want to upgrade because I  thought there would eventually be a catch to it so I used the extra things that came with it very cautiously.  Now I'm glad I  did. 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Johnbee58

[Lord Tim]

Just to be clear, I'm not knocking you at all for wanting to stay on a version, John  

I just think that there's a bit of confusion in general about how this model could work. People hear "subscription" and go "NO FREAKIN' WAY!!!!" and don't dig in any further, and that's fair too - most subscriptions are rubbish. I hate them too. But if they do use the Gibson model, I think it's probably the fairest way to do anything like this.

[Johnbee58]

4 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

Just to be clear, I'm not knocking you at all for wanting to stay on a version, John  

I just think that there's a bit of confusion in general about how this model could work. People hear "subscription" and go "NO FREAKIN' WAY!!!!" and don't dig in any further, and that's fair too - most subscriptions are rubbish. I hate them too. But if they do use the Gibson model, I think it's probably the fairest way to do anything like this.

LT- I was typing as your last post came in.  You might want to check out my revisions.😀

[Lord Tim]

HAHA! Aren't forums great sometimes?

[Johnbee58]

2 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

HAHA! Aren't forums great sometimes?

Yeah. They're a riot! The way I'll go as far as any plan is: if I  pay 2 3 or $400.00 for something the first year I'll expect to be able to use it to that point indefinitely without paying more.  If I want more the second year or beyond I will pay for it but I'd better be able to use forever what I  have at that point.

😀jb

[Grebz]

What about the track icons in the upcoming Sonar? As the UI will be vector-based, will we still be able to use our own custom images as track icons, or will we be limited to a default selection?
If the possibility still exists, will the custom icons need to be in BMP format, as of now, or will it accept resizable vector formats? Or other bitmap formats such as jpg, png (for transparency)... ?

[Johnbee58]

26 minutes ago, Grebz said:

What about the track icons in the upcoming Sonar? As the UI will be vector-based, will we still be able to use our own custom images as track icons, or will we be limited to a default selection?
If the possibility still exists, will the custom icons need to be in BMP format, as of now, or will it accept resizable vector formats? Or other bitmap formats such as jpg, png (for transparency)... ?

I think I heard from somewhere that there isn't going to be much choice in the UI at least initially.  I take that to mean there will be one non changeable UI.

🙂JB

[Johnbee58]

Last night I went onto the Sweetwater site to buy a T-Shirt.  Five minutes after I hit the "purchase" button I got a call from Mark Bruhn, who is the sales engineer I usually deal with to thank me for my purchase and how it will be coming.  I said to him "Did you hear the latest about Cakewalk?"  He said he did not.  I said "It looks like you guys will be selling Cakewalk again at some time in the future.  They're going from free to a pay model again."  He said, "Well, if they make a deal with us and it's acceptable I guess we will".

🙂John B

 

[Larioso]

33 minutes ago, Johnbee58 said:

Last night I went onto the Sweetwater site to buy a T-Shirt.  Five minutes after I hit the "purchase" button I got a call from Mark Bruhn, who is the sales engineer I usually deal with to thank me for my purchase and how it will be coming.  I said to him "Did you hear the latest about Cakewalk?"  He said he did not.  I said "It looks like you guys will be selling Cakewalk again at some time in the future.  They're going from free to a pay model again."  He said, "Well, if they make a deal with us and it's acceptable I guess we will".

🙂John B

 

Is there a good reason to use retailers these days, just bring up MRSP quite a bit, and limit how they can sell not to make retailers mad?

 

I am concerned Cakewalk succeed on it's own merits.

Roland did not think it was a good enough business, and Gibson neither.

 

I'm just stumped over some reactions on internet over this new Sonar as paid version. People has countless gear listed in their signature - but NO THE DAW MUST BE FREE!

- what other free daws are there to swap to?

 

Strange priorities some have IMO. Disrespectful even....

 

I remember some poll at Cockos forum about Reaper if they should drop eternal free trial

- as I recall over 80% said no

- my conclusion, vast majority never paid for Reaper

 

Long ago I had some monitors for sale and a prospect buyer were insisting on discount on price

- if it was from $115 to $100 or something

- and signature from email said "sent from my iPhone"

 

He had an iPhone and still was gready enough, that was his priority, the most exclusive smartphone at the time.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Larioso

[Al Kal]

Been a long-time user since Cpw3.0! Always paid for the perpetual license every time it was offered. I appreciate it’s been kept alive these past 5 years. Of course, I’d love consideration for my previous investment, but I understand the situation, re: different company. I don’t mind paying for future developments, new features and maintenance. I would prefer the non-subscription option.

How do I get the executable for the full-blown latest version, in case I need to re-install this from scratch on a new computer? The current CakewalkSetup wants to update my existing setup. The executables in my cakewalk\download folder all seem to be incremental updates.

[Johnbee58]

22 minutes ago, Larioso said:

Is there a good reason to use retailers these days, just bring up MRSP quite a bit, and limit how they can sell not to make retailers mad?

 

I am concerned Cakewalk succeed on it's own merits.

Roland did not think it was a good enough business, and Gibson neither.

 

I'm just stumped over some reactions on internet over this new Sonar as paid version. People has countless gear listed in their signature - but NO THE DAW MUST BE FREE!

- what other free daws are there to swap to?

 

Strange priorities some have IMO. Disrespectful even....

 

I remember some poll at Cockos forum about Reaper if they should drop eternal free trial

- as I recall over 80% said no

- my conclusion, vast majority never paid for Reaper

 

Long ago I had some monitors for sale and a prospect buyer were insisting on discount on price

- if it was from $115 to $100 or something

- and signature from email said "sent from my iPhone"

 

He had an iPhone and still was gready enough, that was his priority, the most exclusive smartphone at the time.

You obviously weren't around when most of the guys here paid $500.00 for Sonar Platinum before 2018.  Yes, some got a freebie over the years but I can assure you most on this thread "paid their dues" and have the right to post their equipment on their sigs.

🙂John B

[jackson white]

19 hours ago, Greg Wynn said:

Cakewalk (Sonar) and Reaper are known as the two DAWS that handle AA plugs the best.

my sense as well. been looking into Reaper for x-platform projects but gonna hold off to see how Next stacks up.  would rather spend my bandwidth on music than a learning curve. 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

37 minutes ago, Larioso said:

I remember some poll at Cockos forum about Reaper if they should drop eternal free trial

- as I recall over 80% said no

- my conclusion, vast majority never paid for Reaper

Would you also agree that water is a deadly poison because every single people who drank it happened to eventually die?

[Alan Tubbs]

Yea those were the days when people paid $500 for a DAW with a goodly collection of synths ( Dimension pro, Rapture and Zeta 2 ) and fx.  Most of it good if not great.  If you used the provided apps you were covered.

most DAWs cost less than that now and come with a good synth.

maybe Sonar should come in a 16bit version like bigwig for $100?  Save your money and bandwidth.

[Larioso]

9 hours ago, Johnbee58 said:

You obviously weren't around when most of the guys here paid $500.00 for Sonar Platinum before 2018.  Yes, some got a freebie over the years but I can assure you most on this thread "paid their dues" and have the right to post their equipment on their sigs.

🙂John B

I did not read any whining in this thread as much as relevant questions what price policy will be.

So not talking about Cake forum at all.

Other places where people does not hold back on disappointment rather and what signature listed as gear.

- strange priorities some have, daw must be free

I hope new Sonar and Next is a cakewalk to success.

 

I read through my 64 page pdf with release notes, and think the three most important bugs were fixed

- solo override, if that now might work as in other daws, not actually soloing anything by itself, only when soloing something else

- solo overall had some strange features if soloing a bus and tracks

- some punch in loop recording that did not mute previous take

- something about set measure/beat at if that might be fixed, I got some strange stretching and tempo at some points

 

I suspect Next will get the most attention, being completely new daw and all. But looking forward to new Sonar myself. Guessing authorization will be different and some hi dpi stuff.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

We are extremely lucky to have had access to such a professional tool for the past 5yrs free of charge.  

Whatever they decide to charge going forward, the value proposition will differ greatly between users. Cakewalk projects record how many hours and minutes are spent working on them. I wonder if that stat is fed back to Bandlab and they can see who uses it the most ?  You would probably find a massive disparity betwen casual, pro and semi pro users. Does anyone know how many tracks they've completed over 5yrs of using the free CBB ? 

[tulamide]

13 hours ago, Larioso said:

I'm just stumped over some reactions on internet over this new Sonar as paid version. People has countless gear listed in their signature - but NO THE DAW MUST BE FREE!

- what other free daws are there to swap to?

Interesting. I come from another perspective. I chose Cakewalk, when it became free software. The reason was simple: It was the most versatile free DAW. Ardour? LMMS? SoundBridge? The other two, often titled "free DAW", while they are actually not, Reaper and Waveform, are as versatile, but for me personally too difficult to handle smoothly.

Why I chose a free DAW at all? Because for 10 or so years, I was using Cubase. It became unbearable for me to pay for a DAW, then for any update and, of course, any upgrade. All that money (in the thousands) for just one DAW. I had enough, and went the radical other route.

Now that Cakewalk in the form of Sonar will become a paid DAW again, the game changes. If I have to pay for a DAW anyway, I will carefully check my options. Because on the paid market, Cakewalk simply isn't the most versatile DAW. Bitwig, the full version of Waveform, Studio One - they all are more versatile. Currently the only pro argument is that I know Cakewalk so well. In the end, it's therefore simply the price, that will decide it for me. If Cakewalk is cheaper, I will buy it, because I then know my DAW. If it is on par with the likes of Bitwig or Studio One, I will buy one of the latter.

You see, there are no feelings involved. I'm not a fanboy, wether Cakewalk or any other DAW. It's just a tool. And if I think that a price for a tool is adequate, I'll buy it. But only then.

I also keep an eye on the free market. Anthem looks promising. They use the Tracktion Engine (the audio engine, Waveform uses), which is open source, but design their own UI, tailored for modern producing needs. I don't expect it being released any time soon, but when they do, I'll just see, if it is versatile enough to suit my needs.

Wether paid software or not, is unimportant for me.

[Larioso]

2 hours ago, tulamide said:

Cakewalk simply isn't the most versatile DAW. Bitwig, the full version of Waveform, Studio One - they all are more versatile.

Different strokes for different folks, if that is the english expresssion.

- I left StudioOne for good old Sonar Artist 2015

- showstopper issues in how all midi is transformed into automation, so first occurance of a midi CC will be used as start value for clip too and not sent where it occured.

- no sysex support

- found that 5-6 feature requests I had for StudioOne was already in Sonar.

- to get access to StudioOne script language you need to be Illuminati, kind of, just fragments revealed to public

- CAL is open to anybody

- to get something like Dim on solo in StudioOne, you had to use a separate out(Anderton had a tip for that)

 

I use daw as close as possible to tape recorder, no fancy stretching audio and stuff. Record all in realtime, program nothing.

Since 10 years moved everything just about to external midi gear, synths, piano, hammond, drums apart from bass and guitars as lifelong companions.

 

Before StudioOne I ran Cubase Pro 9.5, and least resistance was to go to StudioOne since Cubase track templates could be imported directly. So one thing for Cakewalk to think about, making people transition - low threshold.

- Cubase support OMF, but then no midi included. Their xml files for track template works fine over to StudioOne.

- StudioOne support AAF, also no midi. I actually moved most projects from Cubase over to Sonar instead.

- I used EDL to move from Reaper to Samplitude, everything included if making midi clip a file on disk first

 

Lowering threshold to switch daw....cost is irrelevant to what gear I invested in....

Edited June 14, 2023 by Larioso

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

6 hours ago, tulamide said:

Whether paid software or not, is unimportant for me.

Yeah same here, what matters to me is that I can crank out music quickly on it and because I've not seriously entertained any other DAW for the past 27yrs there's no competition really - it would probably take me many months to get up to speed on another DAW which although it may have a few more useful features it might not have some of the features I'm used to using in CBB.  

I used the pinnacle of the pre-skylight era Sonar 8.5 for almost a decade, completely skipping over the X series and the Gibson debacle until CBB - Even that was a bit of wrench losing my old Sonar workflow , I still miss being able to add an EQ filter without opening the Pro Channel like you could with the old Per Channel EQ. That was a time saver that we lost along the road.    

Edited June 14, 2023 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[Noel Borthwick]

5 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

We are extremely lucky to have had access to such a professional tool for the past 5yrs free of charge.  

Whatever they decide to charge going forward, the value proposition will differ greatly between users. Cakewalk projects record how many hours and minutes are spent working on them. I wonder if that stat is fed back to Bandlab and they can see who uses it the most ?  You would probably find a massive disparity betwen casual, pro and semi pro users. Does anyone know how many tracks they've completed over 5yrs of using the free CBB ? 

Analytics data is anonymized so we can’t see individual usage. However our overall user engagement is very high indeed. Average session times are quite high and we have tons of active users per day.