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Cakewalk by BandLab cited in Computer Music as "perfect workspace" for electronica


Starship Krupa

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On 2/25/2022 at 8:45 AM, Jim Fogle said:

It's about time someone in media had something good to say about Cakewalk. 

More like "anything at all to say about Cakewalk," amirite?

As a subscriber for the past couple of years, I'm going to drop Andy Jones, Computer Music's editor, a note telling him that I appreciate the coverage of....well, the DAW I actually use. And they hit a bullseye with it, most of the work I do these days is electronica, and I find Cakewalk to be pretty ideal for it.

If you wish to do the same, it's andy.jones@futurenet.com. The issue is Aptil 2022, #306.

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Great stuff, Craig.  Wasn’t SOS still doing occasional columns about cake for a while? 

still, unless Bandlab releases a new synth or new reverb or comp or something, it is hard to place a review.  As great as stability is, it is hard to get non users excited in a laundry list of bug fixes.  If Bandlab wants press they’ll have to break some code eggs.

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12 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

Well, there's always this...and this is still mostly relevant, too.

 

I've purchased several of Craig's articles in pdf form from Sound-On-Sound (SOS).  Because SOS ran Craig's monthly column I had a digital subscription to the magazine.  When SOS dropped Craig I stopped my subscription.  I also emailed SOS's editorial department to explain why the magazine lost me as a paying subscriber.  I received a very nice personal email from the editor in return acknowledging my dissatisfaction.

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5 hours ago, Alan Tubbs said:

unless Bandlab releases a new synth or new reverb or comp or something, it is hard to place a review.

I understand what you're getting at, but I gotta say that an Arranger Track, Articulation Maps, and even nested folders are way more interesting to me than bundled plug-ins. I already had a favorite synth, reverb, and compressor before I started using Cakewalk 4 years ago.

Aside from the workflow annoyance kind of things that I post about in Feedback Loop, an integrated sampler is about the only thing that I think Cakewalk really "needs" at this point to retake its rightful place among the heaviest hitters. Then the vaunted chord track, I guess.

I'd also like to see it return to its roots a little bit and pay attention to the trend toward integration with hardware. That's something I don't do at all at this point, but it's in Cakewalk's DNA and I know that it's a growing trend. I don't know what features are important to those users except for MONO EXTERNAL INSERTS and making it as easy as possible to integrate external synths.

One of the issues with getting those big front-cover reviews is that it's easy for a magazine to know when to do one for Cubase or Live! or Logic: go for the major release. But Cakewalk by BandLab adds features a few at a time rather than making users wait years to get a dumptruck full and then harvesting the upgrade licenses. By the feature-addition yardstick that other companies use, Cakewalk would be up to Cakewalk 2.5 or so by now.

There's also the question of how important is press for an individual DAW these days? I have the most recent 27 issues of CM in my Zinio library. Of the 27, Logic's most recent release made the cover, as did Ableton Live!'s and Cubase's, Studio One's, and (I think) Bitwig's. Live! Lite 11 had its own cover 2 months ago. Live! is mentioned 3X in cover stories in other contexts. That's only 6 covers in 2 years of publishing, and they are heavily skewed toward what they obviously think is their target audience's favorite DAW.

Notice who (along with Cakewalk) is not mentioned on those covers: Pro Tools, FL Studio, Digital Performer, REAPER, Samplitude, Reason, Waveform, Mixcraft, Mixbus, Garage Band, some of which have had major releases in those past 2 years.

I think the idea that press coverage in magazines like CM and SOS results in a lot of uptake of whatever DAW is featured may not be as true as many seem to believe. I think it's the other way around: putting popular DAW's on the cover sells magazines. The former assumes that there is a readership of those mags that hasn't already settled on a DAW, or is ready to switch, and I don't believe that's true. I think people read those to get ideas about what to do with the DAW they have.

If we're interested in the articles about the latest release of whatever, we might read it to check up on the DAW's other people prefer (oh look, Pro Tools now allows you to automate gain inside a clip, how revolutionary). I find the ones on Pro Tools amusing, as they add catch-up features that even "little guys" like Mixcraft have had for half a dozen years or more. I'm looking forward to Pro Tools "revolutionizing" the DAW market by adding a performance panel.?

Edited by Starship Krupa
Found mention of Studio One 5
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17 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

an integrated sampler is about the only thing that I think Cakewalk really "needs" at this point

Does there need to be a revenue stream to support development or licensing of a new integrated sampler feature

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