Jesse Jost

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

As you may have read in our recent press release, Cakewalk Next and Cakewalk Sonar are now available exclusively through BandLab Membership. We’re enthusiastic because this transition from the preroll testing phase to early access in Membership underscores the robustness and customer readiness of the software.

We’re excited about this significant milestone and look forward to ongoing improvements and new feature development in the months ahead.

CbB will remain free and won’t require a subscription. It will continue to receive essential maintenance updates, but no new feature updates as our main focus will be on the ongoing development of Cakewalk Next and Cakewalk Sonar.

Stay tuned to our website for more product updates and information!

On 2/17/2024 at 12:54 PM, John Vere said:

It would be very very cool if they also add our legacy products here as well

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.

Just now, paulo said:

the position of the scrollbar (as per the OP pic)  suggests that there is something else below the currently visible area (why else would there be scrollbars ?)

? thx for the clarification!

42 minutes ago, paulo said:

if I have touched the window sliders at any point either before or after

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?

36 minutes ago, paulo said:

What I have found is that it hangs every time if I try to move the window sliders to see the rest of the window

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

30 minutes ago, tdehan said:

it indeed has hung Cakewalk twice!  Also, as stated the splash screen positioning on my Surface tablet sits below the taskbar and the count down is not in view as well as the CLOSE button.

Any additional info you can provide about the hang would be useful. Any chance you can post an image of what this looks like?

31 minutes ago, tdehan said:

I am sure you must see how nerve racking that was as we were starting our live performance!  However, as also mentioned, when my band is performing live many times we are performing outside where there is no internet connection

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. 

36 minutes ago, tdehan said:

Are you stating that it will stop working at some point?

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!

8 hours ago, Larry Jones said:

I've been reading this thread for days and you're the first to note that "Sonar" is not the same as "SONAR." Thanks for saving me from having to write a pedantic post taking note of this (probably meaningless) distinction. Or is it meaningless? Perhaps we need clarification from @Meng...

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!

9 minutes ago, GreenLight said:

What kind of effects do you foresee this corporate change to have on your operation and business, going forward?

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. 

1 minute ago, GreenLight said:

Ah, that you now operate independently under Bandlab is a brand-new reorganization thing?

Yes. We are "Cakewalk" as an independent brand within the BandLab Technologies group. As Cakewalk, we have just announced two products: Next and Sonar. ?

Just now, Will. said:

Where can one signup for some panic? ?

Surely you can find panic gummies sold in various smoke shops  

4 minutes ago, Einstein R said:

Sorry to chime in here. Something I have not seen mentioned; when is the approximate date when the official announcement will go out????

is it going to be September????

 

Thanks for chiming in! No date set as yet, but later this year.

3 hours ago, Jesse Jost said:

There's need for panic or wild speculation in the interim.

By which I mean there's NO need...  ? 

@Bruno de Souza Lino you could have had fun with that! ?

2 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Except the question you're responding to was not about pricing.

3 hours ago, Misha said:

However, it shouldn't be hard to understand to why I repeatedly insist  that at least  versions sold under Gibson should be permanently unlocked for those who bought them.

@Bruno de Souza Lino is technically right! @Misha apologies for the indirect response. I conflated pricing and granting permanent  unlocks, viewing the latter as a what-if-I-don't-pay scenario, because we don't see a future in which your old projects wouldn't open in Sonar. We've been solid there for decades. But in a catastrophic future scenario, like the company shutting down yielding no ownership of the software, we'd do our best to provide a means of unlocking the core software. Obviously there would be limitations concerning any 3rd party licenses in that scenario. Hope that helps! 

3 hours ago, Misha said:

However, it shouldn't be hard to understand to why I repeatedly insist  that at least  versions sold under Gibson should be permanently unlocked for those who bought them.   Simply to have a peace of mind that  I would be able to revisit tunes wrote within past 20+ years and not be dependent on a server that might or might not work in the future.  Insurance / security whatever terminology fits better. 

I belong to another forum, where people often re-mix their tunes from decades ago.  Senior folks.  I can totally see myself tinkering with early stuff when I retire. It is unlikely that I will be using 2017 for re-mixing and do other technical things, but that version will give me the ability to export individual stems with their volume automations,  and among a few other things properly. Very likely Sonar will be around and backward compatible .., but things might change.  Those older projects of mine will not. 

I would very much would like to get some kind of input on this. 

Your request is heard! We hold everyone's concerns in mind, but please be patient for pricing announcements, which are to come later this year. There's no need for panic or wild speculation in the interim.

Just understand that we won't be commenting on pricing specifics until the information is made publicly available, on the website, along with additional, enlightening big picture information. In the meantime, focus on making tracks and, as always, keep your feedback coming on the product side of things. ?

Thanks! 

No need to get sidetracked in the details of UI implementation. TLDR; we're making a scalable GUI for Sonar that will present clearly at any resolution and scale. The design itself is also getting a facelift. We'll share previews later when there's something substantial to show. In the meantime, we are acutely focused on oh-so-much-to-do!

2 minutes ago, Magic Russ said:

Since you are describing Next as a creation environment and Sonar as a production environment, it seems that you might have a number of users who decide to do creation work in Next and move production work to another environment, such as Sonar.   Can we expect that Next will include appropriate export options?

Yes, there is a plan for project interchange. 

Suitable for an off-Disney nightmare

Appreciate the vote of confidence! ? You'll just have to trust we know how to implement scalable graphics. Feel free to stick around and see for yourself. You should also note that the forum website and our codebase have about as much in common as pineapple and a motorcycle.

6 minutes ago, Will. said:

Are you guys perhaps creating a video on the new Sonar and Next products? 

Yep, stay tuned!

8 hours ago, Helios.G said:

Just saw a preview of pricing.  Apparently $499 is the price for the top tier level.  It scales down from there.  I've been with cakewalk since music maker, and then sonar 5.  But 500 bucks in this day and age when competitors are available for a quarter of that, and current inflation is obscene.  This is the quoted text I saw in a preview window on google, you can't actually see it when you click through, but you can search for cakewalk pricing on google and see the text preview.

"$49.99/MO. ... Pay for SONAR in monthly installments for 12 months and own SONAR forever. Rent to Own. Other ways to buy SONAR Platinum. Top Dealers Buy ...

$499.00"

On a link further down I saw this too.

"SONAR - Compare Versions

Price, $49, $99, $199, $499 ; Updated, Periodically, Monthly, Monthly, Monthly."

And this one.

"$9.99/MO. ... Pay for SONAR in monthly installments for 12 months and own SONAR forever. Rent to Own. Other ways to buy SONAR Artist. Top Dealers Buy ...

$99.00"

 

I was hoping for a competitive monthly and yearly option, but I can't plunk down 500 or 50 a month right now, as much as a I love the platform 

 

 

We haven't released pricing information yet for any of our new products.

Your source is a reference to obsolete information for discontinued products from the Gibson-era.   

9 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

My only concern with vector based UI is that it will introduce extra overhead in the DAW. Dorico uses a vector based interface and the sofware is very unresponsive even on high end machines, as controls only respond a few seconds after you clicked them and the program becomes slower as you start actually doing stuff.

What may hold for one application has no bearing on what holds true for another. We  habitually do performance profiling to ensure our changes don't add unexpected overhead.

I see some folks are making assumptions about what "vector" means. In our case, vector guarantees that our nominal control sizes, text, background elements and everything else will render crisp and clear at any DPI and scale. I promise the app won't present absurdly scaled images or text and leave you with a wonky look. Rather it'll look "just right," on any display.

Just a note about "the new Sonar"... Sonar will provide exactly the same control layout, menus, commands and workflow as CbB has today. However, the UI will be dramatically improved: clearer text, scalable views, support for high DPI resolutions and multi monitor configurations.

The net experience for most should be massively improved over CbB. As we move from bitmaps to scalable vector images and dynamically colored backgrounds, the notion of customizing the UI becomes infinitely simpler, while the current notion of heavy handed theming quickly becomes irrelevant.