Noel Borthwick

It works perfectly here. How are you doing it. You have to CTRL-double click to open a plugin if you want it pinned. After that opening other plugin windows will leave that window open.

No that was said before BandLab acquired Cakewalk. It was only said that if there was no choice available to users that was a potential option. It hasn't been needed since 2018. I cant solve your trust issues. If 7 years of using the product with zero payment and now a free tier isn't enough, there isn't anything me or anyone can do.

Read this: http://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=CakewalkSonar&language=3&help=Mixing.07.html

No, the transition is completely seamless if you choose to migrate settings.

Im not sure what you mean by pre bandlab version. If you mean the Gibson Sonar - that is a complete different product that Bandlab has graciously continued to leave intact. As long as the back end exists and isnt made obsolete by some toolset changes it will continue to work but its not our responsibility to guarantee anything beyond that. RE EOL of CbB, it was announced more than a year ago that it would transition to Sonar ultimately! Why anyone wouldn't use the freemium tier instead of CbB beats me. You are getting a major improved product to use for free.

If you get there membership version of Sonar, it includes THU which is backwards compatible with th3. Any projects containing th3 will be automatically migrated to thu

The fix is to contact izotope to fix their dpi bugs

No difference between membership tiers. The same frequency applies.

Hi Rob, this implies to me that your windows install is somehow compromised. What driver mode are you using in Sonar? The kernel streaming components are typically loaded when the audio device is loaded in WDM mode (and perhaps WASAPI) but I dont believe its used in ASIO mode. I’ve not seen this component crash ever.

This is expected behavior and is how it works from the prior version. The browser now auto focuses the currently selected tab and minimizes the other docked views. This is to make better use of the limited real estate available in the vertical docked section. You can now double click the header of the synth rack to restore it.

Post August Cbb will cease to activate which means you will no longer be able to save projects from there which is the normal behavior when the app is not activated. It will probably continue to load projects and playback.

We do plan on improving user customization for colors in the future. It wont be the same as what theme editor does since that was bitmap based. Its not as simple as you think - the entire UI backend has been replaced in Sonar.

All cakewalk projects are backwards compatible down to versions of our software from 2003. Of course if you are utilizing newer features in the software those parts of the project wont be visible but the basics should still load. Re CbB its moot since there will be only a single version of Sonar maintained going forward.

Its not a new piece of software but compared to Cbb there are vast areas of the code that have been optimized and reworked to be more modern. Cakewalk Next on the other hand was built from the ground up over the last 7 years.

It has vastly improved multi-core support and optimizations. Many users have reported vastly improved performance with Sonar compared to Cbb when running large workloads. Here are some notes about multi-core low latency improvements and Plugin load balancing improvements. You are mistaken about newer runtimes making things worse. We use lots of tools and they are being frequently updated with bug fixes. We stay on top of it when we can to support current versions of the OS and also resolve known issues.

As noted in the FAQ on our updated website, we have now officially announced free tiers for both Sonar and Next. This allows anyone who has a BandLab account to use the latest versions of both Sonar and Next at no cost. The primary purpose of CbB was to provide core application features at no cost to users. At this point however, CbB has not been in development for nearly 3 years and is built from a much older version of the codebase that uses a different toolset. As a result, we can no longer maintain it anymore to provide compatibility updates and other services for a good user experience. Sonar on the other hand, is vastly improved over CbB, with hundreds of fug fixes, many new features, optimizations, workflow improvements as well as support for the latest processors. If you wish to use Sonar without purchasing annual/monthly membership, you can use the free tier which provides the core features at no cost. (a lot more than most other DAW's provide in their free versions). If you are a frequent user of Sonar and wish to support us, we encourage you to purchase a membership. There are promos for membership which are incredibly affordable and we're constantly adding new features and improving the products. Some exciting new add-ons coming in the next month or so for members as well!

We can add the ability to view set lists in a future update.

Are you signed in to BandLab? BandLab sounds require an account to work. Also if you don't have a membership you currently can only preview sounds and not use then in your project.

Can you share a project that exhibits this?

This is initially a soft launch. More formal launch will follow with website updates etc.

ARM64 support is now available in Sonar 2025.06. If you have an ARM PC Sonar will automatically install an ARM optimized version rather than an X64 version. Read more about it here.

As mentioned it is sign in that requires the Internet connection. For normal use whether online or offline do not sign out, since that unlinks the machine from your license and you will have to sign in again to claim it. Only do that when you wish to use a different use account or intentionally want to remove your license from that machine. Certain alert notifications are forced, such as being signed out. Again, don't do that

Yes you can - thank Meng, it's not too good to be true indeed. Today, the core application itself is free to use with no track or effects limits whatsoever. Some new features, plugins and BandLab membership exclusives are behind the membership paywall. We do appreciate it however if you support future development by paying for a licence There are some great deals coming so keep your eyes out.

Well yes read my post again. Don't sign out

Sign in has absolutely nothing to do with being online, besides the online requirement during the sign in process itself. Signing in authenticates you. You are free to disconnect from the internet after that. Sonar now supports multiple licence tiers that can differ from user to user, so signing out removes the active license. TLDR don't sign out and you will be fine even if you go offline.