Acknowledge Cakewalk as a pro DAW

[marcL]

7 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Imagine you and a friend each have to walk home along a very dangerous route in the city. You both think it's a good idea to hire security guards to walk with you, each from a different company.

Your friend has a guard from Company W10. After every journey, he sits down and works out what could have been done to keep your friend safe and gets training every few days to fill in the blanks of his knowledge. It's more work for the guard, but ultimately your friend is much safer and the contract is ongoing too.

Meanwhile, you've hired a guard from Company W7. This guard only gets periodic bits of training, so any savvy criminals were able to steal your wallet every now and then until he learned new techniques on how to stop them. Then, the guard stops his training contract so he doesn't learn anything past what he knew a few years ago when the contract expired, while the criminals have moved on to newer and more sophisticated ways of stealing your stuff.

Which guard would you prefer to have walk with you  through the city?

There is one important thing missing in your comparison: The Company W10 leads you on a more dangerous route (you often have to be online and most people do other online stuff on W10), whereas the Company W7 takes a route outside that is almost hazard-free (usually offline). IMO this is a more realistic view of a W7 DAW system, because most of the people still using it for music keep it mostly offline!

[paulo]

20 minutes ago, sadicus said:

I know it's not true, but after paying of Cakewalk/SONAR for so many years it doesn't feel Free

Yeah, for those who were all in, it's more a case of getting what you already paid for from someone else, but long may it continue.

[Lord Tim]

Regardless of how well your DAW is going, if you want a specific plugin that's written to be heavy on the resources because it needs to be (think amp modellers, sample libraries, physical modelling,  etc.) then old hardware is going to be the bottleneck between you and your creative vision. Can you work with ancient hardware? Sure - I was using a laptop with 8GB of RAM on a dual core CPU for ages and doing huge productions on it. Did it suck? Yes. Yes it did. It involved a bunch of extra work that just isn't required from a more powerful machine that may not support an OS anymore. But I got the job done, albeit much more slowly.

It's not a dark future, it's just how it is. Don't be surprised if one day Justin and co. turn around and go "look, this is stupid supporting a 20 year old OS that's been abandoned because we can't run X language to draw the UI efficiently on a modern interface" with REAPER. Every dev needs to make a decision as they go along for their own sanity and the ultimate stability of a product. If you're always looking behind you trying to maintain compatibility with some long dead OS, it's asking for legacy bugs, bloat and problems as it goes onward. Apple is probably the most brutal with this. "Right, here's our new OS, all of this old stuff doesn't work now. Good luck with the new versions if/when they arrive."

Eventually people stopped supporting CP/M, DOS, Win 9x, etc. with their software. You're seeing 32 bit software start to disappear in favour of 64 bit. What I'm saying is you might have choices now, but as systems change, devs will need to keep up or their software will be left behind too, and those choices will diminish. Even if a host might be compatible, your choice of plugins will eventually start to shrink before you're forced to find a host and OS that supports them.

If you're happy with doing basic stuff, with stock plugins, sure - have at it. You can certainly make good music with stock stuff in any current DAW, but if you require certain things to do your job in a professional situation, those limitations can mean the difference between doing it in a week as opposed to months with workarounds.

 

37 minutes ago, marled said:

There is one important thing missing in your comparison: The Company W10 leads you on a more dangerous route (you often have to be online and most people do other online stuff on W10), whereas the Company W7 takes a route outside that is almost hazard-free (usually offline). IMO this is a more realistic view of a W7 DAW system, because most of the people still using it for music keep it mostly offline!

I don't believe this. Win7  is an abandoned OS. If you want to use this for anything online, then the risk is only going to increase as the years go on, vs. a currently updated OS. If you rely on any plugin that uses a company that does online authorisation (and there's many) then you're stuck 'walking that path without a bodyguard" if you use Win7.

The other thing is this is all kind of irrelevant to a point with CbB anyway. You download it and set it up online (like most software), sign up and into your Bandlab account, and you can choose to be online or not. So long as things are kept current to around 6 months - and there's offline auth too - then there's really not a lot of difference between this and SONAR X1, other than the devs wanting to be smart about what bugs they chase.

Additionally, imagine having to write spaghetti code to work around something in a discontinued OS that was already fixed 10 years ago in the currently supported OS? Or finding some obscure bug that's only a thing that appears because of this old OS? Wouldn't you rather they focus their time on making the best CbB they can? And getting people to keep the app current takes the wild goose chases out of the process of tracking down new bugs. Something may have been fixed a year ago which people on an old version may be complaining about "this stupid buggy software has X issue and the devs suck!" whereas it actually may have been fixed since then. Keeping it all current mitigates that.

Bottom line is this: I don't care what you use, ultimately. That's your choice - as it should be. (And I'm aware that's a lot of writing to say "I don't care" ?). All I'm saying is while you may have choices now, things change and if you're able to deal with those limitations that you're giving yourself by sticking with something old, have at it! You can definitely make great music on a Windows 95 machine if you really want to. Or tape machines for that matter.

But speaking as someone who does need fairly powerful hardware to run the specific things I do for the work I'm being paid to do, I'd rather hop on board with the way things are heading and work out a path forward rather than watch the world inevitably shrink around me and have to come up with contingency plans and workarounds. It's just not a good way to run a business.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Lord Tim
On the other hand, my spelling is apparently full of bugs. ?

[Herky Acuff]

I have been using Cakewalk since 2003 and they had a CD burning program for music I liked, too - Pyro. I am sure every Cakewalk and now Bandlab user is well used to people replying, "Huh? What's that?," when you tell them what DAW you use. It's rare to meet a fellow user in real life, in my experience!

[Robert McClellan]

Slowly but surely, we are beginning to change the way people view this DAW. I’ve personally seen the interest generated by some pretty big names in the industry. It’s just up to everyone involved to share the news and show its worth.

I’m personally dedicated to seeing this DAW prosper and get the proper respect it deserves. 

[murat k.]

13 hours ago, Robert McClellan said:

Slowly but surely, we are beginning to change the way people view this DAW. I’ve personally seen the interest generated by some pretty big names in the industry. It’s just up to everyone involved to share the news and show its worth.

I’m personally dedicated to seeing this DAW prosper and get the proper respect it deserves. 

Thank you for all your tutorials @Robert McClellan. I am trying to watch and learn from every one of them. Also Thanks for other people with great content like @Xel Ohh , @Creative Sauce, @AdK Studios  and @John Vere

You're doing an amazing job. I hope you'll get more subscribers, not slowly but surely. ?

Edited May 18, 2021 by murat k.

[glenville Leader]

Slowly but surely, we are beginning to change the way people view this DAW. I’ve personally seen the interest generated by some pretty big names in the industry. It’s just up to everyone involved to share the news and show its worth.

I’m personally dedicated to seeing this DAW prosper and get the proper respect it deserves. 

 

 

Thank you Sir for invaluable contributions in relation to building awareness of the capabilities of cakewalk by Bandlab . Your contributions are surely appreciated by so many persons who you have touched with your teachings. Keep up the good work and continue to do what you do.

Glenville

[Craig Anderton]

There's  a pretty simple solution that at least worked for me.

1. Keep your data (projects and customizations) off of your system drive, which you should be doing anyway.

2. Image your hard drive that contains a Windows 7 OS, program files, and Sonar (or CbB or whatever). Then clone the image so you have two copies.

3. Wipe your hard drive and install Windows 10 OS, your plug-ins, and the latest version of CbB.

4. Try it for 30 days. You will have little, if any, trouble loading your projects into CbB+Windows 10, editing and saving them, and loading them into Sonar+Windows 7 later if needed (assuming you're not doing anything that would be incompatible with Windows 7).

5. If you like it, keep doing what you're doing. If you don't, restore the Windows 7 image.

At least, that's what I did, after waiting about 2 years to move from 7 to 10. I still have the Windows 7 image sitting around somewhere...I ended up finding Windows 10 better in several ways.

As to the constant security updates, unfortunately the people planning attacks are becoming ever more numerous and more persistent. OS companies have to keep on top of things, on a virtually daily basis. This is true of the Mac as well. The only truly safe approach I know is either never to go online after you know for sure your system hasn't been compromised, or not clicking on anything that touches the world outside of your computer (but I'm pretty sure that applies to any OS).

[Craig Anderton]

It might also be worth mentioning that companies cease support not out of disrespect for older customers, but because support resources are limited. With a free DAW, it's unrealistic to assume a company can support multiple operating systems. With paid DAWs, if they're cross-platform, the service nightmare is exponential, which makes it even less likely they'll have the resources to support all types of customers.

Windows systems continue to multiple into different permutations. You can have a rock-solid, 100% stable system but then something as seemingly trivial as a graphics card driver update can wreak havoc. I image my system drive a lot - then no matter what happens, I can at least get back to where I was. 

[Edit] IMHO the biggest danger in never updating is more about hardware than software. If you have a computer that's several years old and the motherboard or the CPU dies, you may not be able to find a replacement. At that point, you're basically going to have to start over from scratch with new hardware and new software. We've de-evolved from component-level repairs, to board-level swaps, to system replacements. 

Edited May 18, 2021 by Craig Anderton
Add info

[marcL]

12 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Regardless of how well your DAW is going, if you want a specific plugin that's written to be heavy on the resources because it needs to be (think amp modellers, sample libraries, physical modelling,  etc.) then old hardware is going to be the bottleneck between you and your creative vision.

It is not only the hardware that can be a bottleneck, there is also the operating system and the DAW that need resources (some a lot!). That's why there can be so much difference in performing the exact same task with the same plugins in 2 different DAWs. Believe it or not, even if the plugin does the same processing in every DAW, there may not remain the same amount of resources for the plugin, because the DAW (or operating system, background process, ...) has eaten up too much.

12 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

It's not a dark future, it's just how it is.

IMO it is a dark future! ?

12 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Don't be surprised if one day Justin and co. turn around and go "look, this is stupid supporting a 20 year old OS that's been abandoned because we can't run X language to draw the UI efficiently on a modern interface" with REAPER. Every dev needs to make a decision as they go along for their own sanity and the ultimate stability of a product.

I am aware of this and there is no bad in this! But there is not only black and white, I mean it is quite a different how long older things are supported by different developers. I just don't like those ones like Apple that throw the past that quickly! Often it would not be required!

12 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Additionally, imagine having to write spaghetti code to work around something in a discontinued OS that was already fixed 10 years ago in the currently supported OS?

Whether a developer writes spaghetti code that is a habit and it has nothing to do with the problem to be solved (e.g. supporting an older version). I am not aware of many old bugs fixed by a new OS, but I am aware of a lot of new issues with a new OS (version). ? No, without joke I am convinced that a new OS or new OS versions introduce more new issues than what they solve. Most of the time they only bring new features that only a handful of people really use!

12 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Or finding some obscure bug that's only a thing that appears because of this old OS? Wouldn't you rather they focus their time on making the best CbB they can?

I don't want to offend the Bakers, but IMO there are some really great features in CbB/Sonar that would need some love (I like this saying, it's copied from you ?). In the last 5 or more years they introduced so many cool features that are not really finished (AudioSnap, Drum Replacer, ...), i.e. where you have to use workarounds from the old gurus to be successful. I am not talking about "obscure" bugs, but of evident behavior issues.

13 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

But speaking as someone who does need fairly powerful hardware to run the specific things I do for the work I'm being paid to do, I'd rather hop on board with the way things are heading and work out a path forward rather than watch the world inevitably shrink around me and have to come up with contingency plans and workarounds. It's just not a good way to run a business.

There is some truth in what you say here and I surely respect your choice!

On the other hand it is my belief that it is also not a good way to run a business with throwing away older resources too soon and follow all the rage! I prefere a good balance of both!

[marcL]

6 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

[Edit] IMHO the biggest danger in never updating is more about hardware than software. If you have a computer that's several years old and the motherboard or the CPU dies, you may not be able to find a replacement.

True.

But in my experience replacement is available for minimum 15 years back.

[Lord Tim]

Just want to say it's nice to have disagreements on here and it still be respectful. This place is pretty cool.

[Steev]

3 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Just want to say it's nice to have disagreements on here and it still be respectful. This place is pretty cool.

So true, and while in any and every forum there are always a few who will debate & argue to the bitter end for the sake of debating and arguing, they has always been a very a small crowd here in the old & new Cakewalk forums which for decades maintained an enormous wealth of support from knowledgeable users more then willing to help in a pinch, as well as great and rapid response from help from CbB Support Staff for technical issues and solutions.

 And THAT in my opinion, are the ingredients  what has kept and made Cakewalk the most solid, innovative, and mature DAW out there.

The facts of the matter the changes and progression the DAW has gone thru are STILL well documented and archived in the original Cakewalk Forums since "12 Tones Inc." early collaboration efforts" with Microsoft & Roland Corp. helped develop and define the language of what we now know as the GM Spec. (general MIDI)  starting in DOS> "upgraded" to Pro Audio v1- v8.5.

 Then Roland's further "updates" and "Upgrades" manipulated, massaged, tweaked and refined SONAR technology in to WORLD'S MOST CUTTING EDGE IN TECHNOLOGIES, And and manipulated, tweaked CHANGED, & rolled them up into  1st. MOST POWERFUL & COMPLETE DAW that can run a SMOOOTH operating  double precision sound engine that could run in x64 bit mode on an x32 bit Windows computer. What's that? Like 10 YEARS before ANY other DAW could to it?  FINALLY Microsoft figured out how to do it with Win 7's first reliable and stable x64 OS build. ?

 And then Gibson Brands took over and, well I have to say that I really, REALLY ?LOVE their guitars!? ??? And while my first choice & love will always be my Fender Stratocaster I can't honesty say I love my Les Paul any less. ? Just differently.. ?

And now, BANDLAB is running the show & doing it differently, and making our recording experience SO MUCH richer, easier, FUN, faster, and rock solid reliable. And actually pushing up the "Bar" to new levels that are literally redefining what is even possible. ?

But it took years of updating & up GRADING to get to the point of "Maturity" where there's no more need to have to "upgrade" the OS or DAW. To where we only "need" to update the OS & DAW for newer, better, and faster hardware & software performance & security reasons. And Microsoft and Bandlab are offering these bone chilling services for free of charge for all that want them and if you don't like them can be all so easily be rolled back to the last known reliable installation.

Microsoft's Win 10 installer is now so good communicating with your computer thru telemetry it will not only REFUSE to install on a computer/system and "Automatically Roll Back" the OS on a computer that doesn't meet requirements, it will also tell you WHY. At which point just sit back, go get something to munch on, watch Netflix, take a shot of whiskey or twist a doobie, and by all means, just don't panic and please "DON'T TOUCH IT!" This totally inappropriate time to pitch a fit and get rebellious.   Just let Windows Installer/Uninstaller do it thing all you wasted was a couple of hours away from your computer.

Of course there are some things that will always slip thru the cracks, like you may have to re register certain software, or drivers for a 20+ old Edirol PCR MIDI controller won't work anymore. In which case you will have to manually find your way to Windows Update in settings and roll it back yourself. Microsoft's Installer has the wisdom and courtesy  to keep an image of your system in a "Temp File" for 30 days. Bandlab allows you to roll back CbB to the last known install should some unforeseen problem should occur as well provide free multi-track storage for ALL music projects on Bandlab.com with the added BONUS of BONUS'S.... The incredible Bandlab Mix Editor. My FAVORITE free backup DAW. ? I for one, never thought I'd live long enough to experience a very functional and powerful  cloud based DAW that works on ANY PLATFORM, let alone a "free" a cloud based DAW that would even work at all.? But Mix Editor does, and thru a near constant and often times annoying "updates" and tweaks, Bandlab's Mix Editor is rapidly becoming the world's best DAW second only to Cakewalk. ??

And these tools are being openly and generously shared with everybody, and puts us all on an equal playing field with nothing standing in the way of our freedom to express ourselves anyway we choose in any style or genre. No matter who we are, where we come from, how experienced we are or inexperienced we choose to or not to be, young or old, rich or poor, nasty or nice (like me), we are all equally free to choose to go anywhere our imaginations can take us.....

 I truly believe both Microsoft and Bandlab get a lot of unfounded negative static oversaturated in "Opinions" "based on "beliefs".

Well for any of those that "care", in my "opinion" neither deserves that. I "believe" they should both be nominated for Nobel Peace Prizes outstanding achievements in both social and technological awards. ?

And for those of you who don't care.... Have fun as long as you can in your basements. It may take a bit of dumpster diving on craigslist, but you can still find the parts and peripherals needed to keep any old computer running. Just be careful out there, lottsa dirty trickster boogiemans and femans on craigslist. ??

 

Oh well, it's 1/2 past high noon on Tuesday, time for me to play and lay down some Les Paul/ Marshall guitar tracks, which I only during the afternoon as a courtesy to my neighbors whilst jamming with the windows open on a beautiful 70℉ day.  due to the Marshal amps relatively LOUD sweet spot for that "just the right amount of feedback" my mojo desires and lusts after for this particular song.?? It is this guitarists opinion that if you really want a nice creamy delicious ever so slightly overdriven Les Paul & Marshall amp to sing as pretty as any bird thru the air without any effects. And even my 50 watt Marshall needs to be cranked up loud enough to make a single 12" Celestion LIGHT UP  and work for  a living, it's still gonna get LOUD up in here?. If I don't want to capture the playful interactions between the guitar pickup and speaker cabinet I don't even bother with the Marshall, I'll just go all 21st century and use my extremely trusty new tech Line 6 and monitor thru headphones which I do 99% of the time. ? And now is the time for me to shut up, play my guitar and  work on (and maybe finish) one of the five music projects I have waiting for me to finish in CbB 2021.04 before even thinking of checking out "What's New" for updating to the latest version 2021.04 #1.

Good Day! ☮

 

 

 

 

 

[GreenLight]

On 5/13/2021 at 10:12 PM, Colin Nicholls said:

Sound On Sound goes out of its way to NOT mention Cakewalk these days. There's no money in Free, I guess

I emailed them about it... and I urge you guys to do so too. Let's show them there is a user base!

I think SOS at least has a Cakewalk review on their radar now... Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Jack Hawk]

On 5/15/2021 at 10:41 PM, Toddskins said:

I'm still using Win 7 and the latest update of CbB is working fine still.  But when the day comes that an update causes havoc for me, is there a way to revert back to the prior version built into CbB software?   I think that was spoken about a year ago on this site, but don't remember.

And then 2nd, when updating can no longer be done by Win 7 users, is that going to cause a problem in some manner with regard to the activation thing?  (Will we be able to maintain using CbB on the latest good Win 7 version that works for us, forever?)

Before updating, go to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk, and copy Cakewalk Core to a location of your choosing. Rename to Cakewalk Core Rev# (ie Cakewalk Core 2021.04). Then run the update. If need be, copy the renamed file back to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk, and you'll be running your old version. I do this for each update, and it's saved my @$$ more than once.

[scook]

32 minutes ago, Jack Hawk said:

On 5/15/2021 at 9:41 PM, Toddskins said:

I'm still using Win 7 and the latest update of CbB is working fine still.  But when the day comes that an update causes havoc for me, is there a way to revert back to the prior version built into CbB software?   I think that was spoken about a year ago on this site, but don't remember.

And then 2nd, when updating can no longer be done by Win 7 users, is that going to cause a problem in some manner with regard to the activation thing?  (Will we be able to maintain using CbB on the latest good Win 7 version that works for us, forever?)

Before updating, go to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk, and copy Cakewalk Core to a location of your choosing. Rename to Cakewalk Core Rev# (ie Cakewalk Core 2021.04). Then run the update. If need be, copy the renamed file back to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk, and you'll be running your old version. I do this for each update, and it's saved my @$$ more than once.

Better to rely on the rollback installers available in the release announcements.

Copying "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core", running a CbB update then copying the old program back into "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core" is not a good idea.

While this was fairly safe a few years ago from CbB 2019.09 onward using this method is dangerous.

In fact, CbB 2021.04 contains logic to detect this and issue a component mismatch warning message.

The warning results from having the program out of sync the the automation library cw130auto.dll in "Shared Utilities". This dll must be the same version as the program file. When they are different it may result in automation failure and program crashes.

[Toddskins]

37 minutes ago, scook said:

Better to rely on the rollback installers available in the release announcements.

 

What is a "rollback installer"?

And apparently available from Cakewalk?  

This is what I was asking about because it seems to be something different from a restore point built within Windows 7.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Toddskins

[scook]

For several releases now, announcements like the one below have a link to an installer providing rollback to the previous release 

 

[Xoo]

1 hour ago, Jack Hawk said:

Before updating, go to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk, and copy Cakewalk Core to a location of your choosing. Rename to Cakewalk Core Rev# (ie Cakewalk Core 2021.04). Then run the update. If need be, copy the renamed file back to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk, and you'll be running your old version. I do this for each update, and it's saved my @$$ more than once.

And Shared Utilities - that's where the cw*auto.dll is stored and if that's out of sync with your version of CbB, bad things (TM) happen.

Ah, I see a certain @scook beat me to this ?

Edited May 18, 2021 by Kevin Perry

[bitman]

I no longer care if it's considered Pro or Schmo.

It's a multi track studio in a box in my house whenever I want one.

Yay.