Is Cakewalk gaining users/popularity with Bandlab?

[kitekrazy1]

3 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

well i haven't seen any "i'm moving to cakewalk from X" posts in forums, unlike all the "i'm moving from cakewalk to X" posts after the shutdown, possibly due to lack of marketing?

 I guess business wise why would you spend money on marketing something that is free?   We have no idea how many people downloaded Bandlab.

[Craig Anderton]

I'm not sure people are switching to Cakewalk as much as starting with Cakewalk,  or adding Cakewalk to their repertoire. At some seminars, I've talked with Pro Tools users on Windows who are intrigued by Cakewalk, and because it's free, they're going to download it and check it out. Time will tell whether they stop using Pro Tools, use both, or decide to stick with Pro Tools. The biggest issue is that they can't use their Pro Tools plug-ins in Cakewalk, so the cost of getting new plug-ins offsets Cakewalk being free. 

[Starise]

PT plugins no, however the AIR line is now available to all for a pittance. That's basically all the PT plugins is it not?  And many PT users are similar to everyone else. They use a lot of 3rd party.

[Larry Jones]

On 5/12/2019 at 11:47 PM, Craig Anderton said:

This tribal talk about DAWs is silly.

Thanks, Craig. As long as I've been on the internet, this "tribal talk" about software has come and gone. Every so often some guy will get all opinionated and full of himself, and type a bunch of BS that doesn't doesn't really inform, but mainly says "Look how much I think I know, and how smugly I put forth my ideas." It's kind of like the weather, isn't it??

[Sonarman]

To OP's question

Is Cakewalk gaining users/popularity with Bandlab?

Its hard to say unless Bandlab provies some data regarding how many new downloads of CbB happened through Bandlab. Anyway one thing we can do is keep track of the num of youtube views for cakewalk tutorials num of facebook likes for Cakewalk page etc etc.  I once did a count on the fanbase of various DAW's facebook pages. This count I did post Sonar's doom by Gibson on Dec 2017. If someone is curious enough he can check how much of change has happened in the fan count of these pages. I'm curious to know but lazy to check. 


This is the facebook fanbase of these official facebook pages on Dec 3 2017.

Cakewalk Soft 143k
Presonus 218k
Pro Tools 140K
Avid 185K
Steinberg 203K
Ableton 622k
Ableton Live 253k



 

[Tezza]

2 hours ago, Sonarman said:

This is the facebook fanbase of these official facebook pages on Dec 3 2017.

Cakewalk Soft 143k
Presonus 218k
Pro Tools 140K
Avid 185K
Steinberg 203K
Ableton 622k
Ableton Live 253k



 

Interesting, I don't understand the Pro Tools and Avid being separate, they should be the same? since Pro Tools is owned by Avid. Avid don't run any other DAW as far as I know.

These figures are pretty much what I would expect, almost uncannily backs up my argument, EM crew going ballistic, followed by Musicians/Songwriters, followed by Engineers. Definitely would be worth chasing up to find if there is any difference now with CbB. I am not on Facebook so cannot do.

[msmcleod]

Avid have their own overall company Facebook page, and then separate ones for their individual products (e.g. Pro Tools, Media Composer etc)/

[Steev]

On 5/15/2019 at 10:20 AM, Feral State Sound said:

There is nothing like a Marketing campaign for now... I wonder if it's because Bandlab is still preparing a new Cakewalk website or if It's due to Cakewalk not being a priority for them, time will tell. Nevertheless, It is also a reality that some people are switching to Cakewalk from different DAW, here an example:

 

You guys are funny.... Why would anyone put out a massive not to mention expensive marketing blitz for something they are giving away for free? Cakewalk has ALWAYS been HUGELY POPULAR. A Veritable household name ever since Cakewalk DOS started being bundled with Windows for Workgroups 3.1 to Windows 95 computers. And then came the big break thru the bundled trial version of Cakewalk Pro Audio with Windows 98. Well maybe they should have called it Pro MIDI, Pro Audio was a bit exaggerated, more of an oxymoron, being the early Baker's heads where in the right places, me thinks they over estimated the brutal new power standards of the 400 m/Hz Pentium 3 with a whopping 16 megs of RAM could do. Cakewalk Pro Audio was utterly abysmal at handling audio. and while E magic Logic users blew Cakewalk users off as "Cute" Cubase users ridiculed Cakewalk users,  Pro Tools on the Mac was they only real player for audio. But by the time Intel Pentium 4 And AMD released the Athlon CPU came around and SONAR 4 was released, everything changed, the world of affordable reliable DAWs turned upside down and inside out.

SONAR HAS WON SO MANY AWARDS they haven't had to market it for decades, and so popular and reasonably priced it was barely to NEVER mentioned by sales reps working for commission at any music retail stores until it was asked for and requested by a customer.

 And far as I can see, and I've been watching, the only other DAW that has kept up with new cutting edge development and innovation in DAW technology and may have only recently stepped past SONAR since, would be (at least in my opinion) Presonus Studio ONE with their newest release of version 4, has comping features I really wish were added to Cakewalk I really like and am impressed with. But certainly not enough to jump ship.

 And then I happen to stumble upon this post and became rather festinated and mildly confused. The guy seems to know what he's talking about, I noticed he almost instantly recognized the amazingly realistically authentic similarities between ProChannel's PC 76 U-Type Compressor sounds and responds to that of a hardware Neve 1176, A novice would never pick up on that,  proving to me he knows his way around some very fine vintage recording gear and modern plugin tech and has made quite impressive progress in the learning curve for a first time trial of a new unfamiliar DAW.

 And his opinion that Cakewalk sounds better then Studio One while working in it kind of struck me. I always thought sessions I've worked in with Studio One sounded a tad harsh and brittle to my ear, but I always chalked that difference off to working in a different studio room, different monitors using a Presonus audio interface.

 It most certainly didn't sound anything close to bad, just "different" from Cakewalk does thru my Focusrite.

 

[Starship Krupa]

(Yahooie, the return of Steev! Master of hyperbole, and I mean that with all due respect and affection. I'm glad you're back, my man, 'cause a friend of mine is looking to buy a computer for DAW use and I need yer experteez)

As for whether BandLab know how many users of Cakewalk there are, yes they do, rather accurately thanks to BandLab Assistant. Cakewalk isn't just downloaded, people have to register and activate it, and then re-activate it at least once every 6 months. So they know exactly how many people are actually installing it and then continuing to use it.

Months ago during one of our silly discussions about the licensing model, I came to the realization that Cakewalk is really licensed under a free subscription. The subscription requires that the user contact BandLab's licensing servers via the Assistant at least once every 6 months for a re-activation.

As for market share and positioning, the features that we have seen get attention now that the program is known as Cakewalk seem oriented toward audio recording, don't they? With the change in stretching and pitch algorithms, the work on Melodyne integration? BandLab's other DAW's, the iOS, Android, and web-based ones kind of have the loop-y thing covered, so maybe Cakewalk development is going to be focused more on audio features for a while.

This would suit me, as audio recording is where I'm at right now.

Although it might amuse you, @Craig Anderton, to know that I'm 58 and have been doing songwriting, playing, and audio recording for most of my musical career, playing in bands and solo, for 35 years or so. But I've been getting more and more interested in composing and producing electronic music, whether introducing elements of it into my other stuff a la LCD Soundsystem, Postal Service, and Air, or going full on a la Daft Punk and Perfume. So I'm heading the opposite direction from the kids you know, learning how to sidechain my kick drum and set up TAL Vocoder.

Fortunately, my other DAW is Mixcraft Pro Studio. The only problem is that Cakewalk's playback engine has spoiled me. It just sounds so. Freaking. Good.

And the console view in Mixcraft is....well, I won't say it because I like those guys, but I will say I find it mostly unusable and leave it at that.

[Starise]

11 hours ago, Tezza said:

Interesting, I don't understand the Pro Tools and Avid being separate, they should be the same? since Pro Tools is owned by Avid. Avid don't run any other DAW as far as I know.

These figures are pretty much what I would expect, almost uncannily backs up my argument, EM crew going ballistic, followed by Musicians/Songwriters, followed by Engineers. Definitely would be worth chasing up to find if there is any difference now with CbB. I am not on Facebook so cannot do.

I believe this has changed some since this info was collected. In addition, How many DAWS have reinvented their name so often? I think this has served to fork off some of the feeds on social media meaning we aren't seeing all Cakewalk users. Meng was wise to keep "Cakewalk" since this is probably the most common denominator between the different itinerations of the program. Since I've been using the software we've had different versions of Pro i.e. Pro 8, pro 9 etc.Then we went to  Sonar  and  the "X" designations. After that Gibson came up with "Platinum". Changing things up this often means search engines don't necessarily give an accurate history of the program popularity in numbers. 

[Larry Jones]

@Steev I see you haven't lost your touch.?

[Tezza]

13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

The only problem is that Cakewalk's playback engine has spoiled me. It just sounds so. Freaking. Good.

This is what I found also, Studio One sounded digital to me whereas Cakewalk sounds clearer, beefier, deeper and more analog and that's before you even start using the stock plugins. When I use the plugins it gets even better whereas the Studio One plugins for me didn't sound as good, they added an almost plastiky sound to my stuff. My VST instruments and the amp sims sound better too, again, clearer, more depth and presence.

I have 100% confidence that if what I am creating in Cakewalk doesn't sound good, then the fault lies elsewhere. This is important because you can put a link in the audio creation chain to rest and then move on. Since getting Cakewalk I've upgraded my electric guitar from a Fender Squire to a MIM standard. Now it sits in nicely quality wise with the other instruments, so nice that I can also put that little annoying problem to bed. On the weekend I am upgrading my Acoustic to a better model with a B-Band system. I notice these upgrades in quality easily in Cakewalk.

Shouldn't really talk too much about this though, it only results in DAW wars, the "it's all in your mind" brigade and the null police coming after you. So I will just say that for me, I really like the Cakewalk sound engine a lot for my music. Perhaps other DAW's might suit other peoples needs.

On another thread, someone asked me why I switched from Studio One to Cakewalk, that is a really long topic to answer, don't know when I will reply to that one but I think there are lessons in there for Cakewalks marketing department because they seem to miss a lot of unique features that Cakewalk has on the Cakewalk advertising splash page.

[Starship Krupa]

37 minutes ago, Tezza said:

Shouldn't really talk too much about this though, it only results in DAW wars, the "it's all in your mind" brigade and the null police coming after you. So I will just say that for me, I really like the Cakewalk sound engine a lot for my music.

Oh, right, you mean those who believe that for some reason it's inherently not possible for the software methods that two different programs use to mix together multiple streams of digital audio and deliver them to the ear to make an audible difference? Because, "digital?"

I should think the challenge would be to get multiple programs all doing that to sound reasonably similar, that is to sound like a good hardware mixing board doing the same thing.

[Sonarman]

I do think marketing had never been top notch even when Gibson or others had us.  Bandlab can sure gear up the marketing now coz its easy to sell "A superior DAW thats free!" But do they really care abt it? coz they are not actually selling it just giving away for free. Gosh! 

Regarding CbB sounding superior to studio one. I had the same experience. Yet all null tests indicates they are same. One thing to notice is that S1 uses different pan law which can influence your mixes. The null tests indicate that the data remains the same inside both daws but either they  do sound different or its all abt the GUI that makes people think so(and thats totally possible!).  To me studio one's interface although great, feels too digital and binary unlike CbB interface which keeps me all inspired while working. 
 

[Base 57]

2 hours ago, Tezza said:

the null police

This is going into my running list of band names (song/album titles).

[Feral State Sound]

I don't know nothing about Bandlab or Cakewalk but this thread is becoming very popular for sure ?

Edited May 17, 2019 by Feral State Sound

[Craig Anderton]

2 hours ago, Sonarman said:

Regarding CbB sounding superior to studio one. I had the same experience. Yet all null tests indicates they are same. One thing to notice is that S1 uses different pan law which can influence your mixes. The null tests indicate that the data remains the same inside both daws but either they  do sound different or its all abt the GUI that makes people think so(and thats totally possible!).  To me studio one's interface although great, feels too digital and binary unlike CbB interface which keeps me all inspired while working. 
 

All valid points, and yes, pan laws do make a difference. My last album project had a mix of songs done in Studio One and in Cakewalk. I don't think anyone could tell definitively which was recorded in which. 

But your point about the GUI is spot-on. There have been many studies about how look influences perception. Wine experts were given identical wines to taste, and they invariably said the more expensive ones in the bottles with nicer graphics tasted better. Another good study is when people saw the identical movie, but the sound quality was better in one than the other. People said the video quality was better in the one with better sound! I have no doubt that particular GUIs resonate better with particular musical approaches.

As I always say, right tool for the right job. When I did the Simplicity album (2017), Cakewalk was mostly the right choice. For Joie de Vivre (2018), it was mostly Studio One. It's like being a painter, and deciding whether you're going to start with acrylics or oils. It depends on the type of painting you want to create...and how you feel that day  

 

[Tezza]

Something I don't understand about null tests, what are they actually doing? They are saying that the wave forms are the same? So if I record something in 2 different DAW's, we look at the frequecies contained within the wave files and they are the same therefore the sound is the same. What does that have to do with the actual sound you hear as a result of that information leaving the wave file and going through the DAW's audio engine?

I can have a digital photograph or video, put it in 2 different applications, so it is the same in all applications, therefore what I see should be the same? It isn't.

Different applications process that image file differently in Photoshop the image will look different to say Photoimpact. The same video looks different in Vegas video than say Davinci Resolve. Same file information but different images.

[scook]

7 minutes ago, Tezza said:

Something I don't understand about null tests, what are they actually doing? They are saying that the wave forms are the same? So if I record something in 2 different DAW's, we look at the frequecies contained within the wave files and they are the same therefore the sound is the same. What does that have to do with the actual sound you hear as a result of that information leaving the wave file and going through the DAW's audio engine?

The tests may be performed on the exported audio files.

[Craig Anderton]

6 minutes ago, Tezza said:

Something I don't understand about null tests, what are they actually doing? They are saying that the wave forms are the same? So if I record something in 2 different DAW's, we look at the frequecies contained within the wave files and they are the same therefore the sound is the same. What does that have to do with the actual sound you hear as a result of that information leaving the wave file and going through the DAW's audio engine?

I think any null test is supposed to be post-master fader, i.e., what goes to the D/A converter. At that point, the only remaining variable is the converter.