John Vere

Well old pal ‘fraid knot. You are definitely not alone in that! You might have missed the first round of grumbling back when they first released it. Welcome to the second round of grumbling!

What it means for you is that yes you now have to make sure you are ready for the day your version of Cakewalk will cease saving and exporting your projects. You have 3 choices. 1-Purchase a Bandlab Membership which might still be available for $49 via the Sonar nag screen. 2- Switch to Sonar and use the free version. 3- Switch Daw’s

And if you have one, use a decibel meter. Louder always sounds better.

No need to shout we hear you! This is possibly due to the fact New Sonar has a whole new graphic engine. A lot of stuff looks different. I see various posts regarding graphic glitches in the Feedback thread. Possibly you can fix one project, save and name that as a new workspace and then all other projects should open the same. That's how it works for me.

You might want to submit this to support. This is just a user forum and the staff doesn’t always check everything. Submitting crashes and the dump files will help them help you. Your screenshot shows where the dump file is located and the blue link takes you to the report page.

And also as I just said in another thread. It shows support for the software.

That’s not as likely as the possibility of the board of directors getting together and asking for a financial report. They look at what they have put into the development of Sonar and Next vs the returns. It seems to me they are only making money from all those other things the membership supplies. If we had access to the data we would be observing a sudden increase in Sonar based memberships. This as Noel even mentioned is how you might support the future of Sonar. It’s been the weirdest release of any software possibly in history. What’s next? Cakewalk users generally seem upset about this transition but as I said in other posts, you were told 2 years ago this would happen. You should actually be happy that there’s still the free option available to you. How long that will last is pure speculation and it’s not something I want to invest in. Free is never going to be forever. So the best thing people who don’t want to switch Daw’s can do is invest in Sonar by purchasing the membership like it or not. It will show Bandlab there’s an actual financial incentive to keep it alive. Otherwise? Don’t complain when the Board of Directors decides that it is not a good investment because it seems like these people only want it for Free! They won’t even buy a membership for $50??

Sonar even the free version is a much updated version of Cakewalk. You are taking no risk at all by installing it along side of CbB. You will find out that your projects will open and should be identical to what you have in Cakewalk. It is not different other than the Graphics and a few new tools. Just make sure and set the plug ins paths and possibly your Workspace the same. I would recommend this over waking up tomorrow morning and Cakewalk can no longer save or export your project. You might have a month left which to answer your questions is found in the Help menu under About. We have had 2 years of warning that this would happen. I guess if you don’t visit the forums you might have not been aware. Bandlabs web site is not very helpful or easy to navigate. This video explains how to get started.

Be warned. I followed those instructions last fall and there obviously were still files hidden elsewhere because it didn’t resolve my issue. I ended up just re installing W11 which was pretty easy to do. Took a few hours to reinstall the software I use and my plug ins. You just have to make sure you deactivate some plug is first. I think it’s only Air that was a problem. But it was worth it as it really zapped all the cobwebs out of the corners and perked up my machine. Lots of issues were now solved. Im still bumping into missing plug is sometimes but most are easily substituted.

I have no sympathy for people who continued to use Cakewalk. We were told 2 years ago the day would come so smart people either moved to the supported version or switched Daw's. You have at least a month now to do what you should have done at least a year ago. Back up all your important work using Midi and Stems. Using Free software is not the same as using software you pay for and especially software you own.

This video I started the thread with. I made it to help people understand how to install it. and it also explains the Nag screen which is the only big difference to most people. I don’t think Cakewalk has a nag screen. I haven’t used Cakewalk for almost a year so not sure. 1.5k views as of today. I see one of the Cakewalk Facebook pages has lit up with and everyone has grabbed both the free and some the $49 deal. I guess they will have to change their names. So overall as I said- Good move Sonar team or whoever thought of this. Only criticism is you should have done this first thing 2 years ago. It would have eliminated all the confusion and chaos and negativity. Instead we got when we asked “Great a new Sonar! How much will it cost”. We got “ We don’t know yet!” But all is well that ends well.

That’s why I said by default. I always think of the pro channel as the Channel Insert like when we used the TRS -Y cable to your hardware. Generally a patch bay was involved. The bin is sort of a second Insert point. Most Daw’s don’t have 2 inserts. Only the bin. Anyone coming from using a hardware studio mixing desk “gets it”. But it must be pretty confusing to the rest.

Yes - watching the video which explains all this.

@Jeremy Oakes If you read most of my posts you will see that my point of view is one shared by others. I support Sonar development team and feel strongly that they are not the issue. They have updated Sonar to the best version yet. We just don’t like the Bandlab Membership deal. I want to have my money go to the developers not to a corporate entity that is focused on making music into a joke for people who are too lazy to actually learn the art form. They don’t care about Sonar because it is way over that crowds heads. Just open your Bandlab Membership page if you want to see what I am talking about. @msmcleodI still have around 20 disks including 5 that are brand new but yes I doubt you can even buy them anymore because they are very obscure. Regular mini disks work but that’s only 2 tracks. I was going to fire it up one day out of curiosity because I still think my best sounding mixes were made with it. I also have my Zoom L8 which is also a digital recording device. But as they say, it will all end up in a computer anyway. I love Sonar I don’t love Bandlab. Only thing that will change my mind is the day they allow me to own Sonar. It’s not about the cost of a membership, it’s all about what will happen 3 or more years from now? You purchase a daw, turn off the internet and keep making music for 3 , 4 ? Years with no interruptions.

Use Replace Effect. It’s pretty normal that any changes to your plugs ins will result in a missing plug in message.