Michael Vogel

Cakewalk Sonar Reference Guide

A quick search of the Cakewalk Sonar Reference Guide for Big Time shows 34 results. The one you want is to select View/Big Time from the menu bar. Best I can recollect is that it’s always been available from the View menu. As previously mentioned you can set it to always display by selecting appropriate options in Workspaces.

There’s also a comprehensive user reference guide that contains a few important tutorials that cover Cakewalks basic operations. Theres a post in the Cakewalk forum Here Theres also a newly released guide for Sonar just a few posts up in this area of the Sonar forum.

You could try VAC. Virtual Audio Cable. VAC there’s also VoiceMeeter

I feel the pain too. Not instability, but sometimes I think I need a full time software engineer working for me to just keep on top of updates, interoperability mismatches and the complexity of a modern OS, namely Windows 11 Pro. I use a lot of apps on phones and tablets and they just seem to work (he says, generally while touching a very large chunk of wood). Then I want to use my DAW (any one of several) and let the games begin. I seem to be gradually doing more and more computer software management to keep on top of everything. I guess I want it all; something about cake and eating it too. Tell me what would be the point of cake if you couldn’t eat it too?

Nothing like a reference guide when you want to curl up with a good book.

It’s a shame the Bandlab app can’t tell you’re already a member with a subscription. Wait, it can because it knows to send an email to the one associated with my registered account. i received the email offering 60% ($100) discount on a years membership and thought, great, I’ll extend my Sonar sub for another year. Terrific some added value for people who support the sub model. No deal unfortunately. When I go to claim the offer I’m told I already have a sub so ineligible. So why send me an offer I can’t take advantage of. infuriatingly annoying.

There are likely many Mac users who subscribe to Bandlab who obviously can’t use Sonar but can use Next and all the other Bandlab products, files etc. Bandlab members far exceed numbers who buy dedicated DAWs. The community using online and collaborative tools is much larger than you probably credit.

Congratulations. Best wishes for your success.

After much internal debate I decided to pay for the annual Bandlab subscription. Using Australian micro pesos it came to about AUD$178. It saved me about 2 months compared to paying the sub monthly. That’s about what an annual update used to cost back in the Gibson days. At least US$ converted to AUD$. I’ll try it for this first year to see if a perpetual license becomes an offering and to see how development on a paid for product continues. I’ve got a 30 year investment in having bought every update/upgrade along the way from the Twelve Tone days to protect. If no perpetual license, I’ll probably leave for another permanent DAW that I can use fixed at what ever upgrade level I stop at. I’ve always used numerous DAWs for compatibility with clients when I was pro but now retired and on a pension I’m skipping update cycles to save money. Even Waves I can opt out of the WUP but still have full access to my licensed products. If a perpetual license isn’t offered, when I don’t pay my annual Bandlab sub, I will lose access to my Sonar software around this time next year. I seriously doubt that CbB free will still be accessible then. I appreciate Cakewalk having had life breathed into it after the doldrum days under Gibson but with a subscription mad world now the norm reality forces me to make financial not emotional decisions based on sentiment. I’ve had to cut streaming services for music and video to rationalise the spiralling costs. For example I was paying AUD$9.99/month for a video streaming service which then wanted an additional monthly fee for “No ads”. I couldn’t believe it but it’s happening more and more. I’m now paying to watch reruns of programs I used to watch on free to air TV. Unfortunately subs are here to stay. Sadly.

The only thing I can add after many years of using V-Vocal, is to only apply it to small chunks/clips at a time. It never worked for me if I tried it on a whole track or a large part of a track. I still have it installed but tend to use Melodyne more often due to its predictable stability.

And on the other side of the world in oztralia, Covid smacked me down 3 days ago. In my misery I turned to read the Coffee House forum and lo and behold here’s a fellow current sufferer telling his tale of woe. get better soon flipper of bits. The good thing about typing is it doesn’t hurt my throat which feels like it’s been cut.

If we have to purchase Backstage Pass to access Sonar beyond the free (3 day) trial, haven’t we already purchased it? I find the whole thing quite confusing. Not in the sense of not understanding, rather the whole Sonar release process seems unnecessarily convoluted. While I use CbB still and very grateful for the free support provided since the post Gibson debacle, I’m glad I’m no longer reliant on having a stable DAW to earn my living. Stable in the sense of having a clear picture of where the product line is going. Just too long a lag between announcement of its “soon to be released” status to “where the flaming’ ‘ell is it?

Not too long ago I watched one of Mike Enjo’s videos on his Creative Sauce YouTube channel and his new channel, Cakewalk Revealed and was very surprised by the number of enhancements between the last CbB version and new Sonar. Might be worth checking out Mike’s videos. https://youtu.be/_pSYI2hb83E?si=1l_B92j0Qp0937Zv.

Thanks @Jim Roseberry I currently still using my 8700k workstation that you spec’d for me back in 2017. As I’m using Waves DIGIGRID hardware for sound card and off loading plugin processing the dated CPU is still quite usable. In light of your comments I might have to change my focus and get a lighter duty laptop for productivity but will still give me reasonable performance when I’m away from my main rig and need to do a bit of audio/video editing. Wife and I are moving to a retirement village so will need to scale down as I’ll no longer have any dedicated studio space. Everything is now about compromise with no real up sides to be seen.