Canopus

3 hours ago, devakes said:

I'm a Cakewalk SONAR user, and I legally purchased a full version before BandLab bought it. After the forced migration to BandLab, everything was working fine. However, now that BandLab is ending support on August 1, 2025, I'm facing critical issues:

SONAR doesn't detect essential plugins (EZdrummer, EZkeys, EZmix), but it does detect their sibling, EZbass.

BandLab doesn't recognize them either (they appear in parentheses and don't work).

My projects are stuck and can't load properly.

I've reinstalled the plugins correctly, and they're activated, but SONAR won't load them.

I'm requesting a clear and urgent solution, as I'm a legitimate paying user, and my projects are stuck due to errors that didn't exist before.

Tengo EZdrummer, EZkeys, EZbass y EZmix funcionando perfectamente en Sonar. Lo más probable es que tus rutas de búsqueda en Preferencias > Archivo > Ajustes VST | Rutas de exploración VST no sean correctas. Asegúrate de que las rutas en Sonar coincidan con las de Cakewalk SONAR. Sonar no podrá encontrar los plugins instalados en las rutas que faltan.

Además, si te refieres a ser el propietario legal de Cakewalk SONAR, ese producto nunca ha sido propiedad de BandLab. Que yo sepa, Cakewalk SONAR sigue siendo propiedad de Gibson.

Traducido automáticamente al español por Google, así que disculpen cualquier inexactitud.

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

I think the only ones that are missing are  Workspaces and the new  Backup/Restore Settings (i.e. multiple config profiles) in Preferences.

... and the Export > Run Tasks function.

1 hour ago, saxon1066 said:

And use them separately?  Or is having a membership (I have a membership) going to override the free tier?  

To use both versions, you need two separate BandLab accounts. I do have a paid membership, but to be able to test both versions I also have a separate user account to be used with the free tier. The currently logged on user determines which verson of Sonar will open. In fact, there's only one binary version of Sonar; the features available will be determined at runtime by the logged on user's credentials.

Orders of magnitude advances in GPU power since then, on all types of devices, might be the very reason why Apple makes these changes. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Considering that Microsoft always follows Apple design-wise, the recent presentation of Apple’s Liquid Glass, coming to all their platforms this autumn, will most likely mean that Microsoft soon will make similar changes to Windows. This leads me to believe that there is a GUI paradigm shift ahead, and that the current simplistic, flat look of so many DAWs and plugins will have to adapt, or otherwise soon look very dated.

Let’s hope that the architecture of Sonar’s vector-based design is flexible enough to meet the new modern.

4 minutes ago, pedwal wally wally wha said:

I guess they don't want us seeing what's missing from cbb, maybe they could've just updated the chart 

It's still there. Just scroll down a few pages in this post and you'll see it.

4 hours ago, sjoens said:

Is it in the Sonar menu?

No. In both CbB and Sonar, the only way to do it is in the Synth Rack drop-down menu.

I just updated Cakewalk Product Center to the most recent version. When doing so, I had to sign in to BandLab, which I did. But only five minutes later, when starting Sonar, I get a 'Session Expired' toaster. Is the BandLab backend server slowly developing dementia? If the server can't remember my log-on status for five minutes, it sounds pretty alarming.

At the same time, I did get a toaster stating there was a Sonar update available. Could it be that you are automatically thrown out whenever there’s an update? If so, is that really necessary? To me, this 'Session Expired' toaster usually occurs several times each day, so it's becoming a nuisance.

Persistence is futile?

25 minutes ago, tecknot said:

Do I need to pay for a Bandlab membership in order to obtain the Free Tier version of Sonar?

Now that would really be something! 

No, you should be able to just download the most recent version of Sonar. Sonar Premium and Sonar Free Tier is the exact same product. Whether it will block certain features, or not, simply depends on the user account you're logged in to. If a user hasn’t got a paid membership, those features will be blocked.

If you can’t find a download link anywhere else, you will find one at the bottom of this page: https://www.cakewalk.com/sonar?default.asp

2 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Fair enough, but if we can't gain their attention here, where do we go?

I have no idea. If it's not a support issue, then maybe there's no place to go.

6 hours ago, Anthony Smith said:

Is this not the appropriate forum to get an answer to the question? Is there another forum we should go find or something?

This is basically a peer-to-peer forum. One can never expect developers and/or support staff attending to every question raised. In fact, sometimes they do, by their own free will, but that's the exception and not the rule.

10 minutes ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

All radio buttons work as expected here

Okay, so it seems to be a Color Scheme thing. When using a scheme with brightly colored control backgrounds, like Light or Light Gray, everything looks okay. Using a color scheme with dark control background, the controls are colored in such a way that it's not visible. However, they are selected. Sounds like a pretty easy fix.

57 minutes ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

This makes no mention of Workspaces, Pro Channel, Exporting

That chart needs to be updated. Workspaces has a Crown symbol next to it in the last version of the Free Tier, and so has the Run Tasks button in the Export dialog.

Additionally, Offline Help is not mentioned in the chart, but is currently blocked in the Free Tier. However, BandLab marketing seems to have changed their minds about that one. 

5 hours ago, UCG Musician said:

I'm working on an orchestral score that utilizes trills (primarily in the violins) and/or grace notes.  How can the notes be entered so they don't sound mechanical and — ideally IF POSSIBLE — don't take up vast amounts of notes in a measure so all the other longer duration notes (quarters, half notes, whole notes) are spread out?  I hope this question makes sense.  Specifically I want a trill over two tied whole notes to sound like it does when a violin section plays them, not like alternating 16th or 32nd notes.

As I don’t know your background, I may say things you already know very well. If so, bear with me.

You don’t mention what plugin you’re using, but I must assume that it’s a string library with a number of articulations. If it’s only got legato, then I don’t think it’s possible to get realistically sounding trills out of it. Simply put, look for a plugin library with a Trills articulation. Here’s one example from Native Instruments:

As for human feel, any orchestral library, worthy of its name, would use round-robins. Basically, they record a number of samples that contain the same note, but as it’s recordings of human performers, each sound will differ slightly. The plugin will then switch between different versions of that sound, so that it feels more human.

21 minutes ago, tdehan said:

Where is the THEMES folder located in the old Sonar X3 Studio?

I don't think SONAR X3 ever had support for themes. It first appeared with SONAR Platinum.

19 minutes ago, Dan Van Schindel said:

After reading this I realized my new Cakewalk Sonar did not have the local documentation. I went to Preferences and checked Always Use Local Help and hit apply. When I did some toast messages came up with things I could download to be up to date. One of them was the local Documentation thing. I downloaded and installed it. I closed Sonar and reopened it. I hit F1 and there was the local help documentation. I don't know if it matters but I have the paid version.   Dan

I think that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work, as one of the staff once told me so. But given all the people above who doesn’t have got it to work, as well as my own experience, I suspect there’s some glitch in the code. Maybe if that push notification isn’t immediately attended to, and the supplied download link isn’t clicked while still visible, Sonar won’t give you a second chance to download? I have no idea, but I definitely think someone should look into it.

As none of the proposed solutions above have managed to solve the problem, I'd suggest both of you contact Cakewalk support.

17 minutes ago, Krister Fruberg said:

There are six different Add-ons listed but not the Local Help file. 

Check if you’ve got a file called SonarHelp_Documentation_1.0.0.21.exe in your Downloads or possibly Downloads\Cakewalk, folder. If so, just double-click it.

That’s how I solved the problem on my computer. The file had been downloaded, but never installed, and that's why it never turned up among the product update links.

2 hours ago, Krister Fruberg said:

However, I am using the Local Help functional (F1) a lot and even If I have checked the tic box "Always use Local Help" under "Preferences", the F1 key still open the web-versions of help dokumentation. What could be the reason? 

Hej Krister. Tråkigt att du har problem. 

To start with, Local Help works for me in Sonar, so it's not a general problem. I know from my own experience that Sonar might think local help is installed, when in fact it isn't. In my case, I had downloaded the file, but not installed it (i.e. put it in the correct location). However, the download itself apparently triggered Sonar to believe it was in place.

So, do you have the file Sonar.chm in the Sonar root folder C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Sonar? As you have selected Always Use Local Help in Preferences, that really should be all that's needed. If you haven't got the help file in that location, go to Help > Check for Updates > Product Updates, to see if you have a Help download link waiting.

There have been some changes to CbB that makes later versions of themes have display issues in SONAR. The most important one was probably that CbB 2020.04 added Arrangement Tracks, and with the addition of one more tab in the Inspector, they all needed to be more narrow. Thus, user themes updated to CbB 2020.04 and later will not look that great in SONAR.  

I actually had to recreate an old version of my theme Lead recently, with the old tabs, to be able to use it in SONAR Platinum: 

25 minutes ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

From the link I supplied, it says oversampling:

Ah, you're right. I mistakenly looked at the 2022 version, not the 2024 version.

 And after downloading, search for "upsampling", and not "oversampling". I think they've changed the naming since that PDF was written.

It would probably increase the number of subscribers. Also, keeping a non-maintained version of BandLab available for subscribers, would hardly result in any significant cost to BandLab. When tools are made available to make more adjustments to the Sonar GUI, the need for a such a work-around would probably disappear.

What's not to like?

1 hour ago, pwalpwal said:

25 minutes ago, John Vere said:

So I then logged in to my proper user account and I clicked on the purchase membership and it is now $99 again. I opened Sonar and that link is also to the $99 price. I guess the deal has ended. They must of met some sort of quota very quickly. Long live the free version. 

The $49 offer is still there. However, you need to use this this link: https://www.bandlab.com/membership/get-membership?productAttribution=cw-cbb-offer

Notice the parameter productAttribution=cw-cbb-offer at the end of the url. I guess BandLab wants to keep track of how many CbB users are willing to pay for the membership.