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Doomsday Cakewalk scenario


Misha

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On 10/22/2019 at 5:58 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

 
Its pretty rare to see mature products completely go extinct. Most products that made it this far are still around in some incarnation.

There are some...Gigastudio is the biggest one that comes to mind (especially since I lost a lot of $ on it!)

 

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6 hours ago, InstrEd said:

I'm glad I didn't buy it. I almost did the year before they closed it down.

 

6 hours ago, Beagle said:

I've got a full version 3 I'll sell you! :D

 

And, since you can't get it yourself anymore, it's probably worth three times as much (at least) than what he paid for it!  Better buy it now Ed before the price goes even higher!  😆

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Something important that nobody mentioned is that Cakewalk projects are both forwards and backwards compatible. This is another plus that Cakewalk DAW's have always had. 
Not only can you open an old cakewalk file in the latest version, but you can open a newly created project in even a 10 year old version of SONAR and it will get most of the project data. New features added after that version would be lost obviously - for example if you loaded a melodyne project in SONAR X1 it wouldn't know how to read region effect data. 

So if you own a fully paid for version of a prior product you can always open files there in a pinch. It should be an easy experiment to check that your files open in an old version such as X3 or 8.5

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Yep as Noel just said Cakewalk is one of the best DAW's for opening up projects.  Price we have to pay with this technology we use. I had  interfaces that didn't get driver updates and are useless. Moral of the story if your music is important back it up as WAV files.

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18 hours ago, InstrEd said:

I'm glad I didn't buy it. I almost did the year before they closed it down.

 I bought it 2 months before it shut down.

I could be worse if you are a Mac user and would have to buy new versions of software like Live and Finale to use Catalina.

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I was pleasantly surprised that old X1 opened recent project.  I switched to Bandlab version in a week, after it came out. I do not regret a bit.  I do not plan to use pre 2018 versions, unless there is no other choice. But  I still believe it would be reasonable to permanently unlock paid things prior 2018,  purely for backup purposes.

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Agreed... Maybe I'm not life in the modern fast lane enough to go with the new wave of nothing in your hands to show for a purchase. Permanent unlock would be a good thing for the legacy stuff. Otherwise in the progression of things, the new kids are getting slowly imprinted on the subscription model as normal. Wave of the future. Don't know how many of you remember when you bought a software, there was a hard copy and a simple serial number activation.

For what it may or may not be worth, fired up Sonar Home Studio free and tried to online activate it. Only as of this day, the old Cakewalk server blasted thru the activation process, checked for updates and activated the product. Still alive and well. Can only trust that they are honest that when the second coming is about to take the servers down, Cake in whatever form will issue a permanent unlock for legacy software.

Also appreciate as Noel said that forward and backward thinking were incorporated into the Cake line so that an ancient project is patent in a new version as much as tech advance and change allow.

Hope all are well, safe, happy, healthy, secure, at peace, and all that other swami guru new age stuff.

John

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19 hours ago, John K said:

Don't know how many of you remember when you bought a software, there was a hard copy and a simple serial number activation.

Those were the days. All the hoop jumping required just to use what you paid for now is a complete PITA as far as I'm concerned, not to mention the associated risk of the supplying company going out of business and leaving you high and dry. Fortunately that didn't happen with CW, but if it had then reverting to X3 Producer was my worst case scenario back up plan.

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Some software titles adopted a user manageable license, where you can authorize software online each time you run the program ( by having your licence online), or transfer your licence by attaching it  to the Hard Drive or Flashdrive ID and move it back and forth from online to PC, as you see fit.  I guess, one of my biggest concerns is not of Cakewalk closing doors, I am optimistic about that. I am mainly concerned if a pushed update will change workflow to undesirable direction, there is no  "going back a version" mechanism. 

I am only a human, it is nearly impossible to predict where Cakewalk is going, but I wonder, what percentage of current users would pay to have a permanent,  non expiring licence of current version?  Perhaps  Bandlab can develop a cool plugin, that they would sell... and as a bonus will include unlocked offline version of Cakewalk, that will share same licence as plugin  :)

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On 10/29/2019 at 9:18 PM, Misha said:

one of my biggest concerns is not of Cakewalk closing doors, I am optimistic about that. I am mainly concerned if a pushed update will change workflow to undesirable direction, there is no  "going back a version" mechanism

There's not an official mechanism for doing that, but it's quite easy. @scook even has a utility for doing it. All you need to do is copy your Cakewalk Core folder, as many versions back as you wish to archive.

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Starship Krupa,

Thank you for reply! interesting! So lets say if I upgrade and do not like what I see, I can replace Core folder and it will run the version that I copied last?  

That seems like a very simple solution.  I wonder, if it will de-authorize at some point if left on same machine without updating?   Here is the thing.  Right now Cakewalk is near perfect for what I am doing (and was doing for many years).  My biggest issue was take lane behavior and HUGE thanks to Noel and crew that was addressed.  I have seen in the past with some software titles "updates" screwed up workflow and even reduced useful features, so having the "previous" version could be very useful. 

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