Old sonar 8.5. pro compatibility and support.

[dasGiddydrummer]

H Folks,

I hope i'm not off topic. I still use Sonar 8.5 Pro. (offline)

i just finished building my new and much more substantial studio  PC.

I'm trying to sort out if I should just load Sonar 8.5 to my new PC, or switch to the new Cakewalk by bandlab.

I have projects in 8.5 that i'd like to keep, even continue work on (if possible),

Can the old project/project audio files be transferred to the new Cakewalk by bandlab? Then be usable, or is 8.5 to old ?

Is there any support for 8.5 pro left anymore, or did i miss the boat?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Rob.

 

[synkrotron]

An easy answer to that would be, install Cakewalk and give it a try. Let us know how you get on

my guess is, yes, the new Cakewalk should open old Cakewalk cwp files.

Not sure about older wrk files...

[scook]

Manufacturer support for SONAR 8.5 was discontinued a little after the release of SONAR X2 in 2012. This forum is one place where you may get questions related to SONAR answered.

Install 64bit SONAR 8.5 before installing CbB to take advantage of the plug-ins bundled with SONAR. With SONAR installed CbB is added as an upgrade. Both SONAR and CbB will be available on the PC. If you used 32bit SONAR, consider installing it too. It will ease the transition to 64bit. CbB is a 64bit programs and runs best on Windows 10.

Projects created in SONAR will open in CbB and vice versa. There are some things to consider. If a project uses 32bit DX plug-ins and the plug-ins were not ported to 64bit, CbB will not be able to load the plug-ins. Project created in  CbB using patch points and aux tracks cannot be opened in SONAR 8.5.

[scook]

One more thing, CbB requires an internet connection to activate. Activation is performed during install using BandLab Assistant.

[bitflipper]

Standard practice when moving to any new DAW is to install old and new side-by-side, wrapping up existing projects in the old DAW and starting new projects in the new one. That is a viable strategy for you because 8.5 and CbB will happily coexist on the same system. You'll want 8.5 there because CbB does not have all the effects and soft synths that were bundled with 8.5 - but can use (most of) them if they're present by virtue of having been installed with 8.5.

That's the cautious approach. In practice you will likely find that CbB handles your 8.5 projects just fine, and you'll just switch over to it. Doing so will give you access to the many features that had been added in X1, X2, X3 and Platinum, as well as to CbB itself.

Your biggest challenge, as noted by Steve above, is that CbB does not have an offline install. Yet. But the internet connection is only needed during installation and you can safely go offline afterward.

[paulo]

Because very few of my projects are ever actually completely finished (serial tweaker) what I did when I moved from 8.5 to X3 in my case was to do a save as called (project title) X3 and leave the previous 8.5  version as was so there was always that to fall back on if any incompatibilities arose or I managed to mess it using features that were not backward compatible.

[mdiemer]

Install 8.5, then the new Cakewalk. 8.5 was the most recent Sonar version I had also, and by keeping it got some great plugins that work in Sonar, like Sonitus Suite, LP 64 EQ and Compressor, etc. You may not be able to port your Cake projects back to 8.5m, but there would be no reason to as CbB is far superior. I even have set mine up to look like 8.5, so I have my exact workflow, but better. More powerful, more stable, and better looking too.

[iRelevant]

With a new system you probably want to go for the x64 bit CbB version, which is maintained. I don't think there is much problems with porting projects from 8.5 over to CbB, what can cause some headache is if your using 32-bit VST or DX plugs, or the 32-bit version of 8.5. 

I had some problem porting 32-bit projects over from Sonar VS to the 64-bit version of both SPlat and CbB. The Bitbridge would often crash the project, I think one remedy for that may be to acquire Jbridge for the 32-64 VST conversion. It's more robust. There is also an option for making older DX plugs run as VST's, something called DX-shell which does a good job of converting DX plugs to VST's. 

I'm had and are still having some problems having 32-bit Sonar versions and the 64-bit  version of CbB installed concurrently on one system. Scook kindly helped me sort things out back then, but that system died recently and I will probably need help to figure it out again unless I'm able to retrieve the info from older posts. 

Regardless, it will be good to install the x64 bit version of 8.5 on the same system, to give you access to older plugs that are no longer included in CbB. Best way of doing it is to install it before CbB. 

[micv]

I'm currently re-do a bunch of my Sonar 8.5 (32-bit) projects with CbB since I now have better plug-ins.  CbB will open the old Sonar 8.5 files just fine.  All the takes will mapped nicely into the Take Lanes, all automation, envelopes mapped.  I haven't ran into any issue.  The only caution is the 32-bits plug-ins, a few may not work with bit- bridge.  Not an issue for me since the reason for me is to use the newer 64-bit plugs that I now have.

Now looking back at that old Sonar 8.5 GUI, I'm glad we have CbB ?

[Starship Krupa]

On 2/24/2019 at 7:37 AM, bitflipper said:

Your biggest challenge, as noted by Steve above, is that CbB does not have an offline install.

I'd say he's in pretty good shape. 10-15 minutes to download, install, and authorize CbB, then he just has to get the system back on again before August to renew the lease.

Either that or set the date on his system clock back.

[david quiros]

Hola a todos ,tengo sonar 8.5 Producer y acabo de comprar una behringer xtouch que conecto por USB al portátil pero cuando voy a la ventana de control / surface no me aparece la opción de Mackie control,alguien sabe porqué?

[Craig Anderton]

On 2/24/2019 at 9:37 AM, bitflipper said:

Standard practice when moving to any new DAW is to install old and new side-by-side, wrapping up existing projects in the old DAW and starting new projects in the new one. That is a viable strategy for you because 8.5 and CbB will happily coexist on the same system. You'll want 8.5 there because CbB does not have all the effects and soft synths that were bundled with 8.5 - but can use (most of) them if they're present by virtue of having been installed with 8.5.

That's the cautious approach. In practice you will likely find that CbB handles your 8.5 projects just fine, and you'll just switch over to it. Doing so will give you access to the many features that had been added in X1, X2, X3 and Platinum, as well as to CbB itself.

I always took the cautious approach, but in practice, found it wasn't really necessary. Cakewalk is remarkably tolerant when it comes to backward compatibility.

[Starship Krupa]

On 5/7/2022 at 5:31 AM, david quiros said:

Hola a todos ,tengo sonar 8.5 Producer y acabo de comprar una behringer xtouch que conecto por USB al portátil pero cuando voy a la ventana de control / surface no me aparece la opción de Mackie control,alguien sabe porqué?

You'll have better luck with Cakewalk by BandLab.

[John Vere]

I wonder if Craig realized he was replying to Dave when he was much younger. 

[Dave Rubin]

How about Cakewalk Pro Audio 7?

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/cakewalk-pro-audio-7

I know it's almost 25 years old, but was far and away the best DAW of its day ?

And it is so great to see familiar names like Morton and Noel still involved in this amazing (now FREE) product.

So, get Cakewalk by Bandlab and install it on top of Sonar 8.5. I personally install every prior version of SONAR on my new computers in order to get all the free plug-ins that came with each one.