Introducing Cakewalk Next and our new brand identity

[Jesse Jost]

2 minutes ago, Magic Russ said:

Since you are describing Next as a creation environment and Sonar as a production environment, it seems that you might have a number of users who decide to do creation work in Next and move production work to another environment, such as Sonar.   Can we expect that Next will include appropriate export options?

Yes, there is a plan for project interchange. 

[Adam Brannon]

5 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Unless Bandlab has come up with some magical way to display vector images at runtime with zero overhead, there's no way you're not causing extra resource usage by using vectors instead of raster graphics, especially considering the monitors we use cannot display pure vectors.

Looking at this absolute masterful piece of job, I have my doubts:

 

How about actually using the graphic you are trying to misrepresent? The PNG at the top of the forum page is fully scalable as shown in the attachment. Note, the image is also part transparent, so click on it to see it as it is meant to be viewed. Just as clean at most any zoom level.

Edited June 8, 2023 by Adam Brannon

[Magic Russ]

Sorry, just had to ask because there wasn't one with P5.

[Larioso]

26 minutes ago, Adam Brannon said:

Besides music, I also work with photography and graphic arts.  Vector Graphics = Scalable. They are one in the same. Raster or bitmapped graphics are not. They are a collection of dots per inch (DPI) that create an image. The larger you zoom the image, the more pixelated they get. Vector graphics use point to point calculations and draw lines between points. No matter the zoom rate, it is still a line between points. No pixelation. The new 'vector graphics' UI will mean that the interface will be clear and sharp regardless of zoom, scale or size.

Isn't there also very little that has to be vectorized

- there are a lot of surfaces that are filled with a texture brush, dialogs and panels, toolbars and such

- left is fonts, size of fields in dialogs, borders and windows controls which probably scale

- most of that was in windows 3.x already, if called dialog units apart from pixels, that could be scaled to pixels depending on dpi of screen

 

Icon images need to be vectorized I assume. Track icons and such.

 

You don't need to vectorize it all, as some comments seem to suggest. Like what you see is a video frame and that has to be vectorized and then scaled, which is not the case.

[Jesse Jost]

No need to get sidetracked in the details of UI implementation. TLDR; we're making a scalable GUI for Sonar that will present clearly at any resolution and scale. The design itself is also getting a facelift. We'll share previews later when there's something substantial to show. In the meantime, we are acutely focused on oh-so-much-to-do!

[Keni]

27 minutes ago, Larioso said:

Yet another idea apart from Artist, Pro and Platinum like before.

 

You have Sonar

- as raw as daw comes without most exclusive plugins and synths and content overall

and Sonar Suite

- with all the bling-bling

 

A lot of software has this approach. PowerDirector, Magix Independence etc.

 

And easy to target different price points.

 With all that bling I would call it Sonar Sweet!

[Graham Rhodes]

Lord Tim wrote

"That's an entirely different company who no longer exists, so I guess you need to ask Gibson about that rather than Bandlab."

The comment has validity, but the fact is that Bandlab acquired Intellectual Property from Gibson., so it is the terms of that acquisition which determine any liabilities to licensees of that IP, not the fact that Gibson dumped it. It is not uncommon, and in most cases the norm, for an acquirer to, say, take over responsibilities like ongoing service agreements. Your point is valid in that there probably aren't any. Gibson have zero responsibility since the sale agreement would have negated any such obligations.

What is interesting is where someone has a perpetual licence, as that right exists  whether of not the grantor is still in existence. Ihave the right to use all my Sonar and related products (frozen in time) as long as I wish.

It seems to me that if Bandlab have a set of Sonar users it would be dumb just to dump them, or they have thrown away an open goal sales opportunity. What matters now is how they price any conversion, and weigh jam today against future money. IMHO if they had any sense they would not simply drive them away; Ableton and co would just be rubbing their hands in disbelief.

PS I have a image  on my screen of a floppy disc labelled "Cakewalk Professional for Windows 2.01 /  Copyright Gregg Hendershott 1987 - 1994. I bought this in 1992 when I was in Boston MA, and have used it ever since - strewth 31 years ! I'd be slightly sad to be driven elsewhere.

[NOLAGuy]

On 6/6/2023 at 4:50 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

>>"Annual" means no expiry / no deactivation after one year,   just no further free updates after the year, right?

Exactly. We were one of the few companies offering this model even in the SONAR days. How it works is you either pay for 12 consecutive monthly subs OR you purchase a one year subscription upfront. In both scenarios the last months version is permanently unlocked for you and you own it.  This is essentially no different than buying an annual version of the software outright. Many people who dislike subscription are unaware that we always did this.

Also, an advantage of monthly subscription was that once you crossed the 12 month boundary you could continue consecutive monthly subs for however long as you want and you would always own the last version you paid for.

All subs are not bad and are actually better for some people who prefer paying in smaller increments. So definitely read the fine print.

Disclaimer: To be clear I'm not saying that this is going to be our model. We're still very much working out the details here. I was quoting how it was done in the SONAR days and saying not all subscription schemes are the same. 

 

That model would be definitely better than how my subscriptions for TV streaming work. If I stop paying the $17/month to Netflix, then I can no longer watch Netflix. Same with other television, Internet subscription content providers, and "use all our plugins for a monthly subscription" like Slate. The key for me would be to keep the monthly fee low, e.g. if the monthly subscription was $15, that would be the same as a $160/annual "upgrade" fee. And if the model offers a discounted upfront fee for less than $$/mo x 12 months, that could benefit Bandlab relating to the costs of monthly processing as well as save us some annual out-of-pocket cost.

[Lord Tim]

9 minutes ago, Panda said:

Lord Tim wrote

"That's an entirely different company who no longer exists, so I guess you need to ask Gibson about that rather than Bandlab."

The comment has validity, but the fact is that Bandlab acquired Intellectual Property from Gibson., so it is the terms of that acquisition which determine any liabilities to licensees of that IP, not the fact that Gibson dumped it. It is not uncommon, and in most cases the norm, for an acquirer to, say, take over responsibilities like ongoing service agreements. Your point is valid in that there probably aren't any. Gibson have zero responsibility since the sale agreement would have negated any such obligations.

What is interesting is where someone has a perpetual licence, as that right exists  whether of not the grantor is still in existence. Ihave the right to use all my Sonar and related products (frozen in time) as long as I wish.

It seems to me that if Bandlab have a set of Sonar users it would be dumb just to dump them, or they have thrown away an open goal sales opportunity. What matters now is how they price any conversion, and weigh jam today against future money. IMHO if they had any sense they would not simply drive them away; Ableton and co would just be rubbing their hands in disbelief.

 

Yeah, from everything I've been led to believe over the last 5 years, the deal was they bought the code, the graphics, the names, and basically that's it. All debts and liabilities died with the Cakewalk company, and then Bandlab hired the old dev team to bring it back to life, and offered to keep the old product servers running at no cost and give us the flagship product for free for years.

Those old Gibson-era products still work though, so in effect anyone who bought the licenses back in the day still can use those products, and all of the paid add-ons work fine with CbB, so even taking into account the ill-fated lifetime deal near the end of the company, that price kind of got everyone 5 years of updates via CbB if you want to frame it that way.

Totally get that people are going to see it as they're going to see it though, and moving to a paid model may make some people move on - I think that's fine and expected. Nobody really knows what deal it'll be going forward, what goodies we'll get, if anything will be free as an incentive... it's all basically speculation for now, so rather than worrying about if the sky is falling, I'd personally hold tight and wait to see what's going to happen and then make a decision. There's been a lot of goodwill over the years, so it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out. I'm optimistic.

For me personally, it makes no sense to go elsewhere to another paid product that I have to learn as well as I do Cakewalk, no backwards compatibility with my old projects, etc. just because I have to pay for this one. If I'm going to pay for anything, I'd like to pay for something that's going to be the easiest transition for me so I can just get the hell on with getting my work done.

[Keni]

18 minutes ago, Panda said:

Lord Tim wrote

"That's an entirely different company who no longer exists, so I guess you need to ask Gibson about that rather than Bandlab."

The comment has validity, but the fact is that Bandlab acquired Intellectual Property from Gibson., so it is the terms of that acquisition which determine any liabilities to licensees of that IP, not the fact that Gibson dumped it. It is not uncommon, and in most cases the norm, for an acquirer to, say, take over responsibilities like ongoing service agreements. Your point is valid in that there probably aren't any. Gibson have zero responsibility since the sale agreement would have negated any such obligations.

What is interesting is where someone has a perpetual licence, as that right exists  whether of not the grantor is still in existence. Ihave the right to use all my Sonar and related products (frozen in time) as long as I wish.

It seems to me that if Bandlab have a set of Sonar users it would be dumb just to dump them, or they have thrown away an open goal sales opportunity. What matters now is how they price any conversion, and weigh jam today against future money. IMHO if they had any sense they would not simply drive them away; Ableton and co would just be rubbing their hands in disbelief.

PS I have a image  on my screen of a floppy disc labelled "Cakewalk Professional for Windows 2.01 /  Copyright Gregg Hendershott 1987 - 1994. I bought this in 1992 when I was in Boston MA, and have used it ever since - strewth 31 years ! I'd be slightly sad to be driven elsewhere.

Yes, you're correct in that it really depends on the terms of their' deal. Such as maintaining the Old Sonar Products library for existing Sonar owners. Bandlab took that over. Gibson no longer tied to it in that way if any...

 

Very cool having the old floppy.... I might have some of them floating around too as I saved everything but can I find it? Too many moves to make that easy if even possible... ?

I started using it back then too... Cakewalk for Windows (1.0)

 

[Misha]

"Those old Gibson-era products still work though, so in effect anyone who bought the licenses back in the day still can use those products"

But they will still require a "server" to activate and I believe would still de-activate in 6 months!   Dear Bakers, seems you are tight lipped on this one....  Why not unlock legacy Gibson versions for those who might need them for archival purposes,  and discontinue/retire  these gracefully?  New kids will either buy/rent or steal new products. Why keep these older 2018 versions caged? 

[Lord Tim]

1 minute ago, Misha said:

"Those old Gibson-era products still work though, so in effect anyone who bought the licenses back in the day still can use those products"

But they will still require a "server" to activate and I believe would still de-activate in 6 months!   Dear Bakers, seems you are tight lipped on this one....  Why not unlock legacy Gibson versions for those who might need them for archival purposes,  and discontinue/retire  these gracefully?  New kids will either buy/rent or steal new products. Why keep these older 2018 versions caged? 

Noel mentioned earlier in this thread that they had plans that if anything were to happen to the company and it wasn't going to get picked up, they would have made a perpetual activation for them. But as it happens, Bandlab came along and that wasn't necessary.

Why not unlock them? 

Back in the day, the big difference between SPlat and CbB was the paid add-ons, really. Bandlab elected to give the core product away for free, but not the paid add-ons. All of that stuff still holds value to them, obviously. Now that they're monetizing their products, it makes sense to me that a lot of those paid add-ons would be offered for sale or included in bundles. If you give them away, you lose that value. But for those of us that did buy them back when they were available, we can use them now without getting locked out of an unsupported host.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

5 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

What part of "the people who work on the DAW don't create the website" is so hard to understand?

Last time I checked, I was just likening one situation to the other as a display of me questioning the assurance I should trust them with graphics, seeing as the old logo didn't have this issue.

[Misha]

Lord Tim.

"Noel mentioned earlier in this thread that they had plans that if anything..." 

That "anything" is about to happen, as it is official:

"Will Cakewalk by BandLab be discontinued? Yes, eventually. We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until Cakewalk Sonar becomes publicly available. "

I am not saying give these older Gibson versions away.  I am asking to unlock these for those folks who paid for them.  So they do not require "servers" or any other bologna with expiring  "activation" after 6 month. 

[sjoens]

For those worried about an all vector GUI, you can download Mixcraft 10 demo and check it out. It's  GUI now uses all svg files and it DOES look better.

My only issue ATM may be how difficult it is to create usable svg files.  I can create them just fine but MX10 doesn't want to display any of the ones I've edited. It also seems there are variants in the svg  format.

[Sheds]

Quote

On 6/6/2023 at 9:25 AM, Carlos Iglesias said:

Won't they fall into the subscription error again? with Gibson it did not work.

I hope not.

 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

12 minutes ago, sjoens said:

For those worried about an all vector GUI, you can download Mixcraft 10 demo and check it out. It's  GUI now uses all svg files and it DOES look better.

My concern is not so much with how it looks, but how it will perform. At least in my experience, as soon as the words "vector UI" and "4k" appear in interface discussion, sooner or later you end up losing your space to the interface and you sure can scale it as promised, except you can't scale it down properly or at all. Or the scaling down is a mere act of making the text smaller instead of everything. Then you end with slightly more screen state at all coupled with text you can barely read.

And I did download Mixcraft 10 to see it and, see for yourself. This is the default scaling on a 1440x900 display:

And, yet another thing I mentioned. I can't make the interface smaller either:

At least the interface doesn't seem to be any less responsive than it should be, but I've never used the software. Although it takes about a second for menus to open after I clicked them.

And this is Dorico 5 once you start opening stuff to do things. This one doesn't have any scaling options or they only exist in the paid versions:

As long as we don't end with these "Fisher Price" style interfaces where everything is so big and robs you of your screen space, things should be fine.

[Patrick Wichrowski]

3 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

My concern is not so much with how it looks, but how it will perform. At least in my experience, as soon as the words "vector UI" and "4k" appear in interface discussion, sooner or later you end up losing your space to the interface and you sure can scale it as promised, except you can't scale it down properly or at all. Or the scaling down is a mere act of making the text smaller instead of everything. Then you end with slightly more screen state at all coupled with text you can barely read.

And I did download Mixcraft 10 to see it and, see for yourself. This is the default scaling on a 1440x900 display:

And, yet another thing I mentioned. I can't make the interface smaller either:

At least the interface doesn't seem to be any less responsive than it should be, but I've never used the software. Although it takes about a second for menus to open after I clicked them.

And this is Dorico 5 once you start opening stuff to do things. This one doesn't have any scaling options or they only exist in the paid versions:

As long as we don't end with these "Fisher Price" style interfaces where everything is so big and robs you of your screen space, things should be fine.

That with scale that does not go to 50% is a problem. Luckly I have some plugins that have a huge UI size, but I can scale to 75%.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Patrick Wichrowski

[John Vere]

What I'm not understanding is the worrying about the Gibson activations??   Other than Splat, all old Sonar version do not need the internet or any on line activations. As well as all the add on's.  I can install any of that old stuff off line from my back up copies of all the software and plug ins. I have all my serial numbers and registration codes. I have all the installers. If you haven't backed all your stuff up from your account I have no pity for you on the day the Music Dies.  So don't complain about servers anymore, you don't need them. Store it locally. 

The big question still unanswered is the same as for Splat, will they unlock CbB so those who don't wish to upgrade can carry on.  

Edited June 9, 2023 by JohnnyV

[Misha]

"old Sonar version do not need the internet or any on line activations."

That is not true. Serial is not enough to activate it.  For offline activation, you are still dependent on Bandlab's server that generates DAT file for offline activation for these last 2017 versions. 

-----

"The big question still unanswered is the same as for Splat, will they unlock CbB so those who don't wish to upgrade can carry on. "

+1