3rd-party bundling for the new Sonar?

[Starship Krupa]

Although the promo page for Cakewalk Sonar shows at least the LP EQ's in use, no mention has been made of possible 3rd-party bundling relationships. This is understandable due to the confidential nature of such negotiations.

I was thinking of which ones might be valuable to include, and my frugal mind goes to ones that are already being distributed for free by their manufacturers as loss leaders.

My number one suggestion is Kilohearts' Essentials. Over 30 FX, from bread-and-butter things like the simple Limiter, Compressor, and Transient Shaper to more exotic and advanced things like Tape Stop, Reverser, Pitch Shift, Ring Modulator, Comb Filter, Ensemble, etc.

This would, in one swoop, take care of a huge swath of FX categories that are currently missing from CbB. They are sonically excellent, simple to use, have scalable UI's, and don't beat the user over the head with Kilohearts branding.

This would give Sonar multiple effect categories that its competition (Studio One, Mixcraft, Waveform) don't have.

From Kilohearts' perspective, since the package is a loss-leader freebie to begin with, they'd probably be happy to have such a relationship. It could even come with a demo license for Snap Heap, which is their effect chainer that these plug-ins are designed to work within.

After that, Plugin Alliance's bx_masterdesk Classic is another loss-leader freebie. Mastering plug-in that sounds great, good for slapping on rough mixes as well as finished projects.

As far as instruments go, unless plans for Sonar include resurrecting the old Cakewalk synths, CbB's collection of instruments is pretty sparse. I'd like to see a return to bundling the A|A|S Sessions package. Including A|A|S' (free) Swatches would sweeten things even further.

What plug-ins do you think would go well with Sonar?

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

IDK , I mean if they are free then why not just let people that want want them go downlod them directly.

I've got hundreds of plugins both free and paid , I don't really want a bunch of extras  - I hardly ever use any of the bundled stuff. 

 

[Starship Krupa]

On 1/9/2024 at 12:35 PM, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

IDK , I mean if they are free then why not just let people that want want them go downlod them directly.

I've got hundreds of plugins both free and paid , I don't really want a bunch of extras  - I hardly ever use any of the bundled stuff.

The issues with this is that new users, especially ones who are new to music production in general, won't know about freebies and how to find them, and won't have "hundreds of plug-ins."

Think back to when you started working with a DAW. I'll guess that you used the FX and instruments that shipped with the DAW and little else.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

The issues with this is that new users, especially ones who are new to music production in general, won't know about freebies and how to find them, and won't have "hundreds of plug-ins."

They will because kids now have grown up with Google and Youtube and social media, they can easily find free stuff . Trust me I have 3 kids aged 15 -22 . This stuff comes naturally to them. When I started out the only way you found out stuff was by reading Sound On Sound magazine as there was no internet. There is more funtionality in the Pro-Channel alone than I had in my first studio,  plus there are hundreds of free plugins literally. I don't think we need to bloat the installer with even more. 

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Think back to when you started working with a DAW. I'll guess that you used the FX and instruments that shipped with the DAW and little else.

Nope.  When I started out I had hardware synths and FX units and Cakewalk was just a sequencer which I slaved to my ADAT.

Then I got Waves once I got a PC that was fast enough to handle audio plugins, so I never really used anything bundled as it was not very good compared to other stuff I had at the time.   Z3ta was pretty good when it came out but other than that I've not really used any bundled stuff.

Edited January 12 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[Quinellipe Zorn]

I do think the vast majority who know enough to think about plugins will be looking around for them and find out info, etc..  

But bundled plugins are nice, especially, of course, if they are great plugins.  I regret a bit that I never spent time on much that came with Sonar/Cakewalk as I also discovered plugins independently of the tool, and some of the bundled ones can be their own enticements.  But the real enticements, IMHO, are not the freebies or "good" stock ones, but the big-name ones (as people look those up and get impressed, plus it is, usually, a real value - I once bought a software just for the discounted plugin as the bundle was a ridiculously great deal) and any "amazing little secrets."  Otherwise, it's just noise.

[mettelus]

1 hour ago, Quinellipe Zorn said:

I once bought a software just for the discounted plugin as the bundle was a ridiculously great deal)

There were actually quite a few posts in the old forums of people looking at SONAR and asking if the bundled software was locked to it. Some admitted quite frankly that they had no interest in SONAR, but wanted the included plugins specifically for another DAW.

Another item to consider with bundling is that such would most likely also increase the price of the bundle. For newbies, that can be enticing, but for folks who already own them they could be paying more for a DAW for things they already own. The MAGIX Samplitude Suite is a good example of this, for a first-time buyer that can be an awesome deal, but some of the included apps in the last go-round were the same as when I got X5 (and you don't get an "extra" copy that can be resold with that). MAGIX does have the advantage that they include the latest version of SpectraLayers Pro (and older versions of their other software), but $199 each year (when it is on sale), is a bit excessive for a DAW upgrade. It would be more effective to split out the DAW from other apps, but there is definitely an interest for folks to pick up things that vanished when SONAR became CbB (Z3TA+2, Dimension Pro, et al.), and nothing precludes having 3rd-party deals for current SONAR owners rather than them being bundled.

Even iZotope gets comments in this regard a lot. So many of their bundles overlap that people comment things like, "Only two applications are upgrades for me, the rest I already own."

[Starship Krupa]

On 1/11/2024 at 4:17 PM, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

I have 3 kids aged 15 -22 . This stuff comes naturally to them.

I'll venture that looking for free plug-ins comes "naturally" to the children of professional composers who were DAW users before the kids were even born. 🥰

You're a pro, you've been at this forever, your opinions come from that viewpoint, which is valuable. You don't want or need a pile of bundled plug-ins. But I think a lot of people do.

I'm trying to put myself in the place of someone who's new to DAW's and maybe even recording in general. I'm 62 and have musician friends around my age who just never got into it. Sometimes they ask me to help them set up a recording rig. I start with Cakewalk of course, provided they have a Windows computer. Then I spend hours loading up the latest versions of my favorite freeware fx and instruments because otherwise, they won't know what's possible.

In order to look for a plug-in, you first need to know that that type of plug-in even exists in the first place. When I myself first got Mixcraft 9 years ago, I was dazzled by the bundled plug-ins, about half of which were available as freeware. In my initial explorations with the DAW, I used only the bundled plug-ins because even they were far past my abilities.

There are people who come to this very forum asking about where to get free or inexpensive FX and instruments because they want more than comes with CbB. And this is a forum with huge lists of freeware instruments and FX that are tested and known to work with Cakewalk.

There are also the mixing purists who swear that they use only the plug-ins that come with their DAW. That ain't you, and it sure ain't me, but they exist.

As for clutter, I've gotten a look at the Sonar installer, and the add-ons are separate checkboxes. So nobody is forced to install anything but the core DAW.

[pwal³]

fwiw, previously stuff came bundled with versions, but without versioning - subscription has taken over - how does that affect whatever was bundled? also, the bundled stuff was always/usually a lite/demo version and just a marketing opportunity for the company doing the bundling (i'm sure there were genuine full versions occasionally, but mostly lite/demo), i also agree that people will find the free stuff easily, but also that people want everything done for them/hand-holding

/fwiw

eta: don't buy a daw for the bundled stuff

Edited January 16 by pwal