Jesse Jost

Just a heads up, we have introduced the Early Access program for Sonar. EA builds and related information can be found on Sonar’s Early Access sub-forum. When an Early Access build is available, you’ll see it in Cakewalk Product Center (v1.1 and above). You may also get in-app notifications in Sonar as well. We encourage you to check out the latest EA and provide any feedback you may have — thanks in advance!

2025.11 Early Access Release Notes Build 31.11.0.065 This build introduces the new Cakewalk Assist feature and includes numerous stability, performance, and workflow improvements. New Feature: Cakewalk Assist Stop diving into menus. Cakewalk Assist is your new unified command palette, designed for speed and productivity. Assist instantly puts the entire DAW at your fingertips, accelerating feature discovery and eliminating workflow friction. Access it anytime by pressing: Ctrl + / Shortcut is reassignable in Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts Core Capabilities Instant Command Execution: Type any command (e.g., "Insert Audio Track," "Group Tracks into Folder") and run it instantly, without touching the menu bar. Quick Navigation: Search and jump directly to any setting, preference screen, or view. Unified Discovery: Find application commands, settings, views, and help documentation simultaneously from one place. Installation and Rollback You can use the following links or (preferably) try it in the latest version of Cakewalk Product Center. Get the full installer here. Or get it through the latest version of Cakewalk Product Center: To see Early Access builds, click the Early Access toggle switch Then click Download/Install button on the Early Access version item. Need to roll back? Get the current stable release installer here, or find it in the latest version of Cakewalk Product Center. Feedback Please! Assist's core capabilities are included in the Free Tier to ensure everyone can work faster. Use it often and let us know what works for you and what improvements you'd like to see! Performance & Stability Fixes This update resolves several issues that could cause instability or sluggish performance, ensuring a smoother user experience. ASIO Hang Fix: Resolved an issue where Sonar could hang indefinitely if the ASIO driver was in use by another application at a different sample rate. Project Save Issue: Fixed a rare bug where saving certain projects could fail with a "Cannot write file - disk may be full" error. Clip Editing Performance: Optimized performance to prevent sluggishness during slip editing when playback is underway. Lasso Selection Performance: Resolved an issue where lasso selection could be sluggish while playback was running. System Idle Crash: Implemented a fix to prevent Sonar crashes during system idle or power state changes by properly suspending and resuming hardware and control surfaces. Crash Fix: Resolved a crash that occurred when clicking between tabs in the Start Screen. Workflow & Bug Fixes Arranger Track Sync: Fixed an issue where the Arrangement Loop Enable/Disable command was not correctly updating the Arranger Inspector UI. Undo History: Fixed an incorrect Undo History entry; executing a Tempo Offset operation now shows as 'Offset Tempo Map' instead of 'Commit Arrangement.' Audio File Location: Added the "Open File Location" option to the context menu for Associated Audio Files. Double-clicking a file in this view also opens the file location in Windows Explorer. Articulation Fix: Resolved a critical issue where Articulations could be deleted when using the Transform tool in the Piano Roll View (PRV). FX Rack DPI: Resolved an issue where the initial FX Rack window size was incorrect, particularly on high-DPI scaled displays. Loop Browser Drag & Drop: Fixed issues where the mouse cursor would flicker when dragging BandLab sounds and prevented dragging past time zero.

Welcome to the Sonar Early Access Program! This program is your chance to test drive the latest features before they go live to the general public. Your participation provides us with critical real-world test coverage and helps ensure our official releases are rock solid. Is Early Access right for me? Early Access builds are released after beta testing is complete, but before the final seal of approval. You get new features roughly a week before everyone else. Note: Active testing is still underway. If you are working on a project with a strict production deadline, we recommend sticking to the stable release to avoid any potential workflow interruptions. How to Install All Early Access builds are delivered via the Cakewalk Product Center. Open Cakewalk Product Center. Flip the Early Access switch to On. Look for the Sonar (Early Access) entry in the list and click Download/Install. How to Roll Back Need to return to the stable version? No problem - simply use the Rollbacks toggle within the Cakewalk Product Center to download and reinstall the current stable release. How to Provide Feedback We love feedback! If you find a bug or have a suggestion: Navigate to the specific forum topic for the version you are using. Reply directly to that topic with your feedback. Please Note: Do not submit tickets to standard Customer Support for Early Access builds. Please keep all discussion within this forum so the development team can see it immediately. Happy testing! The Bakers

Azure service health is good, all BandLabs services have been operational for 12+ hours. Update 4:55 PM ET: Azure services affecting BandLab functionality appear to have been restored in East US. Sign-in and other API services are operational. Hopefully clients in Europe, Asias and other territories will be seeing the same shortly, if not already. Update 3:25 PM ET: Azure service restoration in progress. Some services are restored, but auth requests may still be failing depending on where you are. Microsoft Azure services are experiencing a critical outage, affecting cloud service companies around the world, which unfortunately includes BandLab and sign-in authorization. You can monitor Azure service status here. I'll update this post when we see services are restored. Hopefully not too much longer!

Microsoft Azure services are down, which is affecting BandLab services. You can monitor Azure service status here. Unfortunately this is affecting companies around the world. Hopefully it will come around shortly.

@Angus Sites We have a couple of these in the backlog already, but we're always happy to consider more. Thanks for the requests!

Thanks for the feedback. While the plugins are designed for resizability, we're currently limiting which plugins can resize, until we have implemented optimal constraints for various sizes.

We're excited to share that both Cakewalk Sonar and Cakewalk Next now have free tiers, bringing world class music production tools to creators everywhere. With Cakewalk Sonar, we've worked diligently to bring extensive improvements and enhanced performance to our legendary DAW, trusted by pros for band recording, songwriting, film and game scoring, full album production and more. If you've been using Cakewalk by BandLab, transitioning to the improved and actively supported Sonar platform is now seamless. Rest assured, projects created in CbB are fully compatible with Sonar. Cakewalk Next is now free for all creators seeking a fast, intuitive way to make and share music. Its clean, easy-to-use interface keeps you focused on creating with minimal distractions. But don't be fooled by its approachable design. Next is built on a forward-thinking, high-performance audio engine to meet the demands of modern music production, with more exciting innovations to come. Both DAWs provide a solid foundation for serious music production, with no cost and no trial limits. For those who want more, BandLab Membership unlocks premium plugins, exclusive tools and growing content libraries across both platforms. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. We're excited to continue bringing you the best in music production as we look toward the future. Learn more in our FAQs: Cakewalk Sonar FAQ Cakewalk Next FAQ

Correct - this refers only to Sonar's upsampling tool. Any processing behavior within the plugin itself would be unaffected by this restriction.

@Aaron Doss A hotfix has been released that hopefully resolves your issue. As Ben stated, please test with GPU acceleration enabled to verify, and let us know the result. Update installer Full installer Thanks! Jesse

@Shaan FWIW a new version of Next will drop today that fixes the issue.

Indeed, a countdown to the flash sale. Thanks for the feedback @reginaldStjohn, I passed it on to marketing.

Thanks for the request @Jaime Ramírez! Let's see if I got this right: you want to restore some notes of a MIDI clip, usually from a MIDI recording pass, to their original, natural version. Would you also find it useful to select a region of notes and apply a "humanize" command to softly randomize start times and duration? Which of the two is preferable?

Thanks for the report. ASIO4ALL rarely bodes well for anything. We should pop a warning when it's detected! Glad you're back in action.

Nope! It's been a while since our last update, but development is in full stride in order to support some critical, bigger feature releases throughout 2025. Look for an interim release within a week. Next is for anyone who wants to minimize the time it takes to create. Less experience and familiarity is required to get up and running than with a traditional DAW. For more experienced users, it's just another way to create. We built project interchange with .cxf to make it easy to move between the Next and Sonar, as an ecosystem perk. Many new CbB and Sonar users who discover Next prefer its simpler UI, so we felt strongly about supporting project migration into Next too.

It was only a matter of time before we would introduce Cakewalk Next to the Cakewalk forums! The purpose here is to provide a discussion compliment to the Discord discussion group that has been in place for a while now. A recurring Cakewalk theme is that of project continuity, allowing users to migrate work between Cakewalk Sonar, Cakewalk Next and BandLab Studio, so it makes sense to nurture discussions of all Cakewalk products under a single umbrella. We don't view Cakewalk Next as being a mutually exclusive to other DAWs and invite you to try it out, even if you're a dyed in the wool classic DAW user. There are times when you may be more focused on creation than engineering, in which case you may find it well suited for the job at hand. While there's a lot to like about Cakewalk Next UX, it has a performant audio system and a sophisticated mixing elegance that could make it a lot of fun for the mix engineering mindset as well! Obviously you'll find updates and news about Cakewalk Next here, but we also look forward to the great discussions that lie ahead! ~The Bakers

The time has come to introduce new product forums for our newest products, Cakewalk Next and Cakewalk Sonar. The purpose of the Cakewalk Sonar forum is to improve the clarity and quality of our product discussions by properly delineating between the two lines. Cakewalk by BandLab has been, and will continue to be, a trusted tool for many. The team has worked incredibly hard over the past 5 years to make the software the best it can be. Cakewalk Sonar, as the latest lineage that builds on the excellence of CbB, and SONAR Platinum before it, aims to break new ground in performance and usability the landscape of the modern DAW. As Cakewalk Sonar represents the lion's share of our new development focus, this forum is where you'll first see news about new features and other improvements. Even though CbB will see less frequent updates, the CbB forums will continue to serve as it otherwise has done over years, and any information for CbB updates will be posted to that forum accordingly. We appreciate everyone's support to date and look forward to ongoing discussions as we continue to improve products we love! ~The Bakers

Hey John, you're on the right track here. More products will be made available through CPC over time, but there are no plans for this to become a legacy product utility or a 1:1 replacement of Command Center. There is a possibility we may reprise from some components from the past to make them available to customers through CPC, but I can't commit to specifics at this time.

? thx for the clarification!

Just so I'm clear, when you "touch" do you mean finger + touchscreen or with a mouse? You're referring to this view's scrollbars by window sliders, right?

@paulo would you be able to post a screen shot of this?

Any additional info you can provide about the hang would be useful. Any chance you can post an image of what this looks like? Yep, I totally get wanting to operate offline. And of course you can, but currently if you're restarting often then of course you'll get the screen. But as I said, I'm sure we can make refinements to improve this use case. Any plans that will would affect CbB's future availability would be clearly communicated well in advance on these forums and Sonar home page. CbB will never just "stop working" without plenty of advance notice and a viable alternative.

@tdehan Thanks for sharing and apologies for the inconvenience. As others have mentioned, we'll be introducing Sonar licensing soon, and while CbB will remain available for some time, the app will present this screen at launch if you're offline as we're hoping to spread awareness of the new Sonar. That said, the app certainly shouldn't hang. You'll notice a timer in the window, which counts down from 20 seconds. During the countdown, the window cannot be closed, but again it should not hang. DM if that's indeed the case and we'll try to find the root cause. FWIW we plan to drop a maintenance update to CbB fairly soon, we may be able to refine the experience so it's less problematic for gig use. Thanks for your understanding!

Indeed, the distinction is intended! As others have noted in the context of the brand update, we're consistently not using all caps for our our product names, and that's intentional. "SONAR" was introduced as all caps due to trademark constraints. We now refer to our products as "Cakewalk xxx" which is easier to trademark and clearly identifies product and brand. The use of normal casing also offers additional referential distinction between old and new. Hope that helps!

The main takeaway right now, as far as the community is concerned, is that this change just better substantiates our operational reality. The Cakewalk brand, though it is part of BLT, is 100% committed to desktop-domain software products with a roadmap minimally entangled with other non-Cakewalk product roadmaps.