Would you buy Cakewalk By Bandlab?

[Shane_B.]

11 hours ago, Bapu said:

It was participation level, not cost. One less plugin per month covered the cost.

I'm sorry to hear that. My laptop died and I never replaced it and at the time my DAW was in my basement. Your site didn't work on any Android device I had or I would have been there a lot more not that 1 guy would have made a difference. Now I've moved my gear out of the dungeon in to the dining room so I'm on more regularly again. Lucky you guys eh? ?

I like it here and I'm very grateful that we have access to this forum. It's easy to forget where I'm at and go off topic though. It's not intentional I just get used to being here and let my guard down because I feel at home so to speak. I need to be more mindful and respectful of the policies here and all will be just swell.

Back on topic, I've been thinking about this a lot since I started this thread. I can't decide what I would do. If they updated a few things, one being make it look better on a 4K monitor, I have to admit I would have a really hard time deciding. IRT the 4K thing, I'm running 4K on a budget so maybe the scaling on my end isn't right. It would be interesting to know how CbB looks on other people's 4K setups.

[Mánibranðr Studios]

I paid for Sonar X1 Producer and a few upgrades, like sample packs for Session Drummer 3, and world instruments for Dimension pro.

I'd say IF and only IF they include an update to Dimension Pro to bring it in line with more modern systems and workflows, and also include Rapture and Z3ta 2, then I would. Something like Roland SCVA but with multi-timbral outputs would be nice too, as would porting the DXis like Roland GrooveSynth, Psyn II, Triangle, Square, Pentagon, Beatscape, Cyclone and Hexagon to a more modern 64-bit format. (Why? Nostalgia, of course!) I think overall, they did a good job of de-Gibsonifiying the DAW and made it useful as a workhorse DAW once again.

Edited March 12, 2021 by Freyja Grimaude-Valens

[Starship Krupa]

On 3/10/2021 at 7:39 AM, Shane_B. said:

If CbB ever went back to the Sonar days with an initial purchase and then paid upgrades, would you jump on board?

My reply is based on my belief that in order for this to happen, the software would have to either have been sold again to another company or released as open source.

It would depend on what they were asking for it, what other options there were in the market at that time, and my level of faith in the ability of the new owners to keep it working properly. Since it would likely be a lower cost option than other comparable software made by companies with larger staffs and marketing budgets, I'd consider it. I imagine it being priced similarly to REAPER and Mixbus  and Waveform, and I like it better than REAPER and Mixbus and Waveform, so yeah. If it were priced like it used to be in the SONAR days, up there with comparable versions of Studio One Artist, Cubase, etc. in the multiple hundreds, likely not. I don't have that kind of pocket money to spend on any DAW. This is a hobby.

I'd be keeping a close eye on their development practices, though, because I believe that the free subscription allows the developers to focus on quality of code as much as or more than quantity of features. Much as I'm a CbB fanboy, that first version of it, unimproved from SONAR, was too buggy and crashy for me to consider it usable on my system. I was used to Mixcraft, and Acoustica put out a very stable bug-free product. I can't be sitting there watching the screen go white and panicking about when my last save was. Noel and company got on that stuff impressively fast, though.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

On 3/10/2021 at 9:27 PM, User 905133 said:

That being said, I disagree with your interpretation and analysis of what I wrote.  But quite honestly, it is not worth debating.

What you are really evaluating here is the value of a CbB license, rather than the software itself. Software by itself is useless. It stops being supported, it gets out of date quickly. It's the license that's worth something. Are you willing to pay $1200 for a license of a software when there are competitors in the market that cost less and offer more features?

[User 905133]

59 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

What you are really evaluating here is the value of a CbB license, rather than the software itself. Software by itself is useless. It stops being supported, it gets out of date quickly. It's the license that's worth something. Are you willing to pay $1200 for a license of a software when there are competitors in the market that cost less and offer more features?

You missed the forest the first time.  You are missing it here, too. 

On 3/10/2021 at 7:27 PM, User 905133 said:

But quite honestly, it is not worth debating.

 

 

[Wibbles]

22 hours ago, craigb said:

I do miss several that used to post there though!  It's becoming rare that they ever visit here (or, with some, not at all)... ?

Where's Pedro?

[Wibbles]

29 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

You missed the forest the first time.

Burn it down and plant some cows. We need beef.

[craigb]

1 hour ago, Wibbles said:

Burn it down and plant some cows. We need beef.

I especially liked the "planting" part. ?

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

On 3/12/2021 at 12:20 PM, User 905133 said:

You missed the forest the first time.  You are missing it here, too. 

Then you don't know how to explain it.

[User 905133]

8 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Then you don't know how to explain it.

On 3/10/2021 at 7:27 PM, User 905133 said:

. . . quite honestly, it is not worth debating.

On 3/12/2021 at 10:20 AM, User 905133 said:

You missed the forest the first time.  You are missing it here, too. 

I have no desire to enter into a picayune debate asinine discussion with you. 

Edited March 13, 2021 by User 905133

[Clovis Ramsay]

Let's face it, Cakewalk has always been kicked from one company to another mega brand company 4 to 5 times over the last 20 years.  Something wasn't working and it baffles me as to why that is, considering that Cakewalk was actually pretty innovative and has several claims to being the first to develop or implement new features. 

In the beginning there was Pro Tools, Logic, and Cakewalk.   Nobody could afford Pro Tools because it would only work exclusively with AVID hardware, and Logic at the time was purely MIDI before Apple acquired it.  So that left Cakewalk which implemented both audio production and midi and worked on everyone's family pc (that got hijacked by me and never left the garage for years).

[Glenn Stanton]

worldwide- how many are actually using a DAW? when you factor that in to the total number of people with computers and phones, it's tiny. it's probably why many people are using 2-3-4 DAW products in their personal and professional work, not including related stuff like audio/video editors, movie/video creation tools, and not mentioning effects even... i use CbB pretty much exclusively (and SPLAT before) but i have PT, Cubase, Audacity, and Live and a bunch of ancillary software to allow me to handle projects originated in other DAW where i cannot simply import and export the track audio/MIDI (which i can probably 80% of the time and only need the "real" software for the 20% when a project must remain in their preferred software).

[Blades]

I doubt it.  Once bitten and all that.  For a few reasons:

1. I already have fully adopted Studio One because of the Grand Screwing Gibson did with the Sonar product.  If you all remember me from those days, I was quite involved in these forums, in helping others, in keeping up with Sonar versions, and in buying into the "Lifetime updates" that lasted about 6 months (?) for me.

2. Bandlab has already said "we will never charge for this".  The day they say "we are going to charge for this", they will have signed their "you can't believe me" note and I'll not be interested in paying - though I still have to wonder how the heck they are paying the developers to continue to improve and advance this now-free DAW.  Got to make money somewhere, and if they are smart they will start finding a way, whether through in app purchases or whatever - just not a charge for the base product.

3.  I'm still not using it as my primary DAW.  It's unfortunate because had Gibson not done what they did, I'd have never looked elsewhere and wouldn't know any better.

I still think that Cakewalk is a quite useful DAW and if I hadn't looked around I would still be using and promoting it to this day.  Too bad Gibson screwed it up for them the way they did.  I've really actually enjoyed getting to know Studio One and all of its features.  I DO wish the community here would migrate over though.  The PreSonus forums are "ok" but nothing compared to what happens here.

[Starship Krupa]

20 hours ago, Clovis Ramsay said:

Something wasn't working and it baffles me as to why that is, considering that Cakewalk was actually pretty innovative and has several claims to being the first to develop or implement new features. 

In the beginning there was Pro Tools, Logic, and Cakewalk.

Actually, there was Cubase, too.

Cakewalk/SONAR suffered from being Windows-only and from getting kinda buggy. I don't know how it compared to all other DAW's in the crashing sweepstakes, but I started with Mixcraft, which is solid as a rock, and the first version of CbB (which was also sort of the last version of SONAR) didn't work very well on my system. Crashes, freezes, etc. I felt like I was on thin ice with it, saving way more often than I was used to. And I found the comping workflow to be confusing before they made the changes to it.

I think it's great now, after 3 years of repair and renovation, but I don't think I would have been comfortable with it if it had stayed as it was. They could innovate all they wanted, but what gets and keeps an important tool in my place is basic usability and dependability. SONAR, IMO, had issues with both (which, happily, were and are being addressed).

[Clovis Ramsay]

I was referring to the Cakewalk brand undr TwoTones, then Roland, then Gibson and such.  My Sonar 5, 7, 8.5 were excellent to me and the very first music production custom computer shop that was all the rage back then always featured their best builds around Sonar.  

[Wibbles]

1 hour ago, Clovis Ramsay said:

I was referring to the Cakewalk brand undr TwoTones,

I suspect you mean Twelve Tone. 

This is Two Tone:

 

[Blades]

7 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

it was the x1 disaster that made me look

Yeah - coming from Sonar 8.5 I wasn't a big fan of X1.  I skipped X2 and only got to Platinum (X3+) after the lifetime updates offer.  I didn't really use X1 a lot.  I got used to it.  It was a step in the right direction at the time, I think, but lacked so much polish and lost features from 8.5 (layers for me).  At the time, I still didn't look elsewhere.   I am loyal to a fault, I guess!  Now, the new Cakewalk is an evolution of that Skylight interface.  It's definitely better, but I think some of the sluggishness I experience in the program compared to Studio One is because of the legacy of this interface.

[paulo]

8 hours ago, Blades said:

I think some of the sluggishness I experience in the program compared to Studio One is because of the legacy of this interface.

I'd rather watch an artist draw a thing of beauty for an hour than watch a child scribbling with crayons for 5 minutes.

[Fret Flintstone]

But the thing is, the artist rarely finishes his thing of beauty because his equipment keeps letting him down. His easel keeps crashing to the ground, his brushes keep dropping out, and his canvas keeps getting eaten by bugs, and his paint is so old and clunky.

Where as the young one keeps pumping them out relentlessly without much issue.

Edited March 17, 2021 by Fret Flintstone

[craigb]

7 hours ago, paulo said:

I'd rather watch an artist draw a thing of beauty for an hour than watch a child scribbling with crayons for 5 minutes.

And yet you're here. ?