Clunky?

[Lord Tim]

Hopefully this won't descend into a free-for-all mess like some threads do! Please try to keep on topic and post respectfully.

So, we've all seen the announcement by now that going forward the new Cakewalk products are switching to a paid model. Whether you agree or disagree with that isn't really the point of this thread (by all means, continue to duke it out in the Announcement Thread).

This thread is in relation to seeing the mention on several Cakewalk-centric YouTube channels, and a few posts around here and social media saying that now that Cakewalk is a paid product, it should be treated as such, and not get a free pass for its "clunky" areas.

Now, I'm going to state up front that I 100% agree with the "it should not be given any free passes now that it's becoming a paid product" statement, but I'll go further to say that even as a free product, I don't think anyone should have been looking at it as such. This was the formerly full flagship commercial product during the pre-Bandlab days, with countless bug fixes and extra features. No matter what it cost, it should be judged on its own merits. Nothing should be different now.

But one thing has stuck with me from these sentiments: "Clunky."  The notion that other DAWs are doing something different/better than what CbB (and presumably Sonar going forward) is doing.

Some base qualifications here:

1. I'm not starting this thread to blindly defend CbB, this is a genuine attempt at getting other perspectives. It's also not the opposite, I'm not starting this to invite CbB bashing either. It's also not here to crap on any of the YouTube channels either - they're good people with their own valid opinions on things.
    
2. I'm particularly talking about other traditional recording style DAWs, so things like Ableton Live and Tracktion Waveform, etc. that use an entirely different paradigm is beyond the scope of what I'm talking about here. There's a reason most of us are using CbB here, rather than any of those other ways to record, so my comparisons would be things like Cubase, Studio One, REAPER, ProTools, etc. that share a similar workflow.
    
3. This is NOT a discussion about features or OS ports. So while saying "there's no Mac version" or "where is the Sampler" etc. are fair questions, they're better suited for the Feedback Loop forum. I'm definitely not talking about missing effects or anything like that.

So with that all said, for those of you familiar (and especially very fluent) with other DAWs, what are they doing that's making CbB look clunky in comparison?

Is it part of the UX (I don't mean the design, I mean how it works - the User Experience) that's easier to use on a competing product? Creating tracks? Editing? Multiple open project work?

What stuff do you do in your other DAW that feels like it's not as intuitive or takes longer in CbB?

Why am I asking? Am I a paid Bandlab shill? No (although if someone wants to give me money.... 🤔)  I'm just a user like the rest of you guys, who has been around quite a long while and uses Cakewalk stuff professionally in my day to day job.

I'm seeing these comments and... honestly, with all the playing around with other DAWs I've done over the years, I can't see where a lot of the criticism is coming from (some, yes, but the amount of "this is better in other DAWs" comments I've seen over the last few days with absolutely nobody expanding on exactly what, is making me go "am I missing something here, or is this all just a lot of subjective opinions triggered by the payment model announcement?")

Again, please take this as a genuine question in good faith, I'm keen to know what everyone thinks! 

A final disclaimer: as I said, I'm just a user like everyone else, and nothing I'm saying here is in any way connected to Bandlab or any decision making they do, but I'd like to think they'll have a good look through the thread here and take on board any good suggestions or comparisons.

 

So, people, what (if anything) specifically is making CbB seem clunky in comparison to the other similar commercial DAWs? Let's hear it  

Edited June 11, 2023 by Lord Tim

[charles kasler]

Sounds like you're referring to Mike in creative sauce 😃 he seems like a genuine good guy so I respect his opinions. As a long time Cakewalk user there's no way I'm going to change daws even if I wanted to because of the learning curve with the new daw and also as far as I know I would have to export every single track of every project and that's out of the question. My limited experience with other daws is that they each have their strong and weak points, maybe AI makes a difference now but I'm starting to think izotopes AI for example, isn't getting me any better results than I could do by hand. And I like izotope products. One more thing, I do some midi work in traction waveform and I find that to be a pretty cool daw, maybe not so much for audio but pretty nice for being free. The interesting thing is it's all in one view, no separate console and track views.

[Glenn Stanton]

sadly, i have little to add. i have my process for using templates across the record-mix-master lifecycle and for things like MIDI creation and sheet music i use other tools i use for composition and publication (so staff view has little use for me personally) and some things like the arranger is nice to have. i think some things other DAW have would be nice additions, but for me, rock solid stability and support for plugins is the main desire and it's generally there (for me). maybe being old (and 45 years in the software business) i just don't spend a lot of time trying to work around a given software product limitation, and just find the tool that meets my needs and integrate them. having a mac port would be nice (although i'm a non-mac person, i know people who are and would like to have what i have on their mac).

[hsmx]

17 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

So, people, what (if anything) specifically is making CbB seem clunky in comparison to the other similar commercial DAWs? Let's hear it  

For myself it's the audio engine, not so much clunky but sluggish. It also is the only daw I use that experiences dropouts. Also more  crashes using the same plugins or VI's.

Using CW since 1994.

[scook]

MIDI routing beyond the basics is clunky and CbB is the only software I regularly use that has tabbed sections that does not allow me to recorder the tabs.

[Lord Tim]

14 minutes ago, charles kasler said:

Sounds like you're referring to Mike in creative sauce 😃 he seems like a genuine good guy so I respect his opinions.

Mike is one, but there's been a couple of others. Just to be clear, I have nothing against Mike or his opinions in any way whatsoever - his videos are great and he seems like a genuine guy who knows what he's talking about.   But rather than saying "better in other DAWs",  explaining how and why. That was probably beyond the scope of his livestream, to be fair, but like I said it wasn't just Mike's one that I saw people mentioning it. That got me wondering what I'm actually missing, thus the question.  

[Will.]

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

"Clunky"

From a personal point of view: For a very long time CbB felt clunky to me. This also depends on what you take as "Clunky." 

Clunky to me was - it felt overly "Cluttered" too many modules for a long time and I had a good reason to have felt that way. So this depends on what others see "Clunky" as.  

A few months ago all that changed in a day when I bought a 27inch 1920x1080 resolution monitor. All that "Clunkiness" disappeared. Cakewalk looked different. Theres enough real estate available. I can expand all my modules and still have enough space open. It doesnt look heavy or like theres too many things on a display - you know . . . look and feel "clunky." I was running a 20inch before. 

Instead, it looks sexy since i got the  monitor. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Will.

[marcL]

IMO CbB/Sonar is very rich in functionality and there are many things that can be done in so many ways! If you are new to it you maybe overwhelmed and irritated. But after some years you like this unboundedness. This is also the reason why I was/am missing things in all the other DAWs that I have been looking at (6 major daws).

On the other hand I feel that many things in CbB/Sonar have been added at a certain point, but the functions/modules have not been completed really. For example I like CbB's comping that allows that the comping clips can be edited and can have different split positions and so on. In other DAWs this is missing, comping is much simpler and limited. But the way it is in CbB is very complex and thus regrettably there are still bugs and incongruities!

[Craig Anderton]

Take any DAW, and different people will find aspects of it they find more or less convenient than other DAWs. "Clunky" gets into very subjective territory, very fast. 

 

 

 

[Lord Tim]

See, this is my reasoning for a lot of the complaints too. REAPER is a great example for me - it's a fantastic DAW but man, do I ever plod in it because it just doesn't agree with me at all as far as workflow goes. I do marginally better in Studio One, but I keep returning to Cakewalk because I'm super fast in it and nothing (for me at least) gets between my brain and recording the idea (questionable talent notwithstanding 😒).

There's definitely areas where CbB can be improved, of course, and I have a few thoughts about that also, but it really seemed like there was suddenly a bunch of people who have been biting their tongue about them because of the free thing, and now it's a problem.  Are those things more than preferences? What am I missing?  That's the question!

[John Vere]

As I said just the other day in the thread about workflow ideas. I used to do a lot of cursing and hating of how Cakewalk worked. But then I really got deep into it's workings as I was making the tutorials and all of a sudden Cakewalk is truly a Cakewalk.  Example the way I could open a Gain tool in Wave lab and it would tell me the max peak level and the tool would remain open as I worked. Cakewalk caused me to do these same actions using multiple repeated mouse moves etc. Now I have a workflow that is just as good as Wave Lab, it's just different. And this is one reason I will not even think about changing DAW because it would involve repeating the whole process again which would take me yet another 2 years..I'm pretty confident they will do the right thing and we will carry on like nothing much happened. 

So I can't really answer you question because I have used a lot of other DAWs over the last decade and the only one I actually liked was Pro Tools. It's different but makes logical sense to me. It does have a few things Cakewalk doesn't have but they are not tools I actually need. Cakewalk seems to have everything I need just the way it is with the addition of 3rd party tools like Melodyne. 

[Lord Tim]

Could this just be an education issue for a lot of complaints then? Learning the DAW through decent tutorials and digging into the manual, etc.?

One could argue that it should feel more intuitive without needing to do that- which is a fair comment - but this is a pretty deep product, so there's bound to be a learning curve to get the most out of it.

And again, what may feel intuitive to one person could also feel like an impenetrable black box to someone else. This was me with Adobe After Effects the first few times attempting to use it - I'm pretty  savvy with picking up most NLEs, design apps, audio apps, etc. but that damn thing entirely threw me! I eventually made the decision to dig in properly and now I'd call myself quite proficient in it, and how it's laid out makes perfect sense as to why the devs chose to make it how it is.

[reginaldStjohn]

I have used both Cakewalk, for many many years, and Studio One once Cakewalk by Gibson went under. I think that Cakewalk/Sonar if very full featured and has an easy work flow to me. However, the two areas I think Studio One has over it for me are Take(s) Lanes and the Audio Engine.

I use take lanes all the time when tracking but always get in a state where they are all messed up. Overlapping areas, gaps that I can't get rid of etc.  Studio One's takes are not as sophisticated but I have not had issues with them.

Other areas I think Cakewalk could do better at:

- Plugins not taking down the whole app

- Showing the percent of processing that each Plugin is taking (Studio One's Process monitor like feature)

- Chord Track

Edited June 10, 2023 by reginaldStjohn

[chris.r]

We all love to work in Cakewalk because we feel almost at home. That doesn't mean we can't see things that work better in other DAWs. Off hand example would be how clip gain works in Studio One, you just grab it, that's it. In Cakewalk many of us were so happy to see dynamic waveforms coming to it, so there was a big hope we could get closer to clip editing nirvana but actually not there yet, because we have to either use a modifier key or change focus in track properties first. So we can't do both - editing clips and their gain envelopes - at the same time. There's more that you can do easier or quicker in Studio One, that's probably what Mike meant, pure workflow. SO is also great in how it handles plugins.

And oh, should I really come back again to how lasso selecting feels like today after all the years now 😱 back in the years I used to be extremely efficient in editing in PRV with the combination of just the left mouse button and key modifiers/shortcuts (right click was typically for the note properties-thus very important on it's own). Even now after years of practice all I can say is it didn't become second nature, I'm still not that fluent I used to be back then, let alone someone coming from another DAW. I don't know how it works in MacOs but if you're windows guy then left click for you is always for lasso-select, and right click is for context menu . Have you ever tried to clear selection with right-click lasso on an empty space in windows explorer😂?

Another thing coming to mind is that there was someone trying Sonar and comparing it with all the most popular DAWs and noticing how difficult it was sometimes for him hitting some functions with the mouse, he's called it a sweet-spot or something like that, for mouse areas of operation. Indeed, there's some exercise when trying to grab the end of a note or clip, I'm also aware of it when working in the browser, wish it could get slightly easier (read: quicker). Those little things are often unnoticeable until someone actually points it out and then you go and try it yourself in other places.

Of course Cakewalk has it's own strengths, that's why we're still here right?

edit: absolutely with scook on routing.

edit2: forgot to add how having busses after the separator can be inconvenient for those on hardware MIDI consoles/controllers

Edited June 11, 2023 by chris.r

[OutrageProductions]

The only times that I find things "clunky" are when I commit pilot error at high speed, like trying to do operations faster than the application can respond. Which happens occasionally. All my fault. 

And when I wish there was a sampler track like my Cubase, but I've gotten really fast at just setting up a Kontakt instance and throwing a sample in across the keyboard (in less than 10 seconds), so... no complaints here.

As to routing, having spent the vast majority of my adult life behind large format consoles (SSL, Neve, Harrison Series 10/12) and huge patchbays, that is as comfortable as my house slippers.

Edited June 11, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[Andres Medina]

I'm a huge fan of Cakewalk/Sonar, as paid products or free ones.

The workflow is spectacular, and you can do almost anything you want. I keep discovering features or new/better ways of doing things.

My worst times were when it became unstable, That is a nightmare when in the middle of a project. But it was worked out and now in the rare occasions that I get crashes almost all the time are plugin related, no CW related ones. And the customer service has been beyond fantastic in helping solve problems, both for CW related errors, or external plugins errors.

I remember an audio engineer friend of mine trying to export a OMF file from Pro Tools, and being forced to pay a lot of money for that functionality, that Sonar had for free (and still has as free CW/Bandlab, btw)

I use Steinberg Dorico a lot for notation and it's really great at that, but it's really hard for me to use the VST section (that is in reality a bonus for a notation program).

I tried Cubase for a while and it was not a good experience, although not necessary their fault, but the learning curve thing. And I was never able to run a video at all!

I guess nowadays there is a tendency to assume that the software that makes the work for you is "user friendly", skipping completely the training that any complex task using software requires. Music production is complex. Recording is complex and difficult. So is mixing, mastering, singing, playing drums, you name it.

Cakewalk is really a HUGE software and it has taken me years to master it to some degree. 

Finally, I personally think that this software was rooted in a particular moment of time and technological advance - perhaps filling the gap between analog recording and digital recording- that inspired certain design that has further developed across decades. But the roots seems to be in a transfer from the analog paradigm into the digital world, which I think was very successful.

I wonder how it would look and work a completely new DAW, designed from scratch (as Next seems to be) nowadays.

Dorico changed the notation game by designing their software from the point of view of the musician and their needs and workflow, not the software developer, and the result is great.  Seems like they put the talent of the software designers to service the talent of the musicians, and that I appreciate a lot.

 

 

[John Nelson]

The forced assignment of ins and outs as stereo pairs, with "friendly names" workaround is clunky.

The explanation given IIRC was that the code "evolved" a certain way and that was that.

There are other things I could probably come up with but again, the code hasn't been written from scratch in eons.

Edited June 11, 2023 by John Nelson

[Base 57]

3 hours ago, Andres Medina said:

Finally, I personally think that this software was rooted in a particular moment of time and technological advance - perhaps filling the gap between analog recording and digital recording- that inspired certain design that has further developed across decades. But the roots seems to be in a transfer from the analog paradigm into the digital world, which I think was very successful.

Yeah, that.

 

FWIW, I don't find CbB to be clunky at all.

I should add that I like all of the DAWs I've tried. Multi-million dollar studios packed into a $2500 box. 

Amazing 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Base 57

[Craig Anderton]

6 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

One could argue that it should feel more intuitive without needing to do that- which is a fair comment - but this is a pretty deep product, so there's bound to be a learning curve to get the most out of it.

Zoom out for a second. With today's DAWs, you have the equivalent of a quarter million dollar studio of not all that long ago, and a totally amazing backline. 

Think of it this way...you visit Abbey Road in 1985 and talk to the studio manager. The good news: Sessions are only 50 cents an hour! The bad news: There's no engineer, no one to maintain the machines, no tape operator, and good luck figuring out the patch bay. That's the position people are in when they buy a DAW. No studio is intuitive, and that includes software ones.

Those were also the days with the nastiest subscription plan in history: Sure, you owned your 2-inch, 24-track multitrack recorder. But you had to shell out around $150 to $250 every time you wanted to record 44 minutes of audio at 15 ips.

[chris.r]

19 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

Zoom out for a second. With today's DAWs, you have the equivalent of a quarter million dollar studio of not all that long ago, and a totally amazing backline. 

Think of it this way...you visit Abbey Road in 1985 and talk to the studio manager. The good news: Sessions are only 50 cents an hour! The bad news: There's no engineer, no one to maintain the machines, no tape operator, and good luck figuring out the patch bay. That's the position people are in when they buy a DAW. No studio is intuitive, and that includes software ones.

Those were also the days with the nastiest subscription plan in history: Sure, you owned your 2-inch, 24-track multitrack recorder. But you had to shell out around $150 to $250 every time you wanted to record 44 minutes of audio at 15 ips.

Is this part of the reason why I am getting the impression that songs that make a way to radio stations today are nowhere near as good as songs from those days?