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BandLab Technologies reveals new brand vision for Cakewalk


Larry Shelby

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Quote from Meng from 5 years ago:

"our steadfast goal is that former SONAR owners (of all versions) will not need to spend any money to cross-over/cross-grade to the future flagship product"

"Future flagship product" could be taken to mean the Cakewalk by BandLab that has been licensed by free subscription for the past 5 years, but for anyone concerned about having to pay for Cakewalk Sonar, you might cite this if BandLab decide to charge you for the upgrade.

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I'm neither surprised nor especially disappointed by this news, I also purchased the 'lifetime licence' back in the day, but I have zero expectation of that being honoured or of receiving a preferential discount. Different company, different times, different business model - it can't always be that sons have to pay for the sins of their fathers. Time to let it go in my view (appreciate others will disagree).

An issue for me is consistency, I have put a deal of time and effort recently into learning CbB and establishing a consistent workflow. If I have to re-learn a significantly different product and pay for the privilege, I may as well re-direct that effort into S1 Pro - as I already own a copy. However if the new version remains functionally and visually similar to CbB, then I'm likely to stick rather than twist - as long as the price is right.

Wait and see I guess.

Andy

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I'm also taking a wait and see approach to this. I'm intrigued about the Next being cross platform, as I do have a Macbook Air that I have configured for live use via GigPerformer, and it would be cool if one could transfer Cakewalk by BandLab and or the new Sonar projects into Next and have at least some type of access  on a MAC, too. As far as price, that is a sticky issue. I also purchased Studio One when Gibson bailed out, and have sporadically tried to use it, even upgraded it once or twice, but I still am very limited in how to use it and not comfortable with a lot of it (I have used their Mastering feature, though and that I do like). Now that Cakewalk has Arranger sections there has not been any need for me to migrate to Studio One--as I also hae scores of unfinished projects along with "finished" ones that I occasionally revisit and rework. If the price is reasonable (not sure what that will be) I would pay, but it is hard to accept having to pay after several years of free updates, etc. Subscription model doesn't appeal to me, even though I'm using that for my Izotope software, so I remain in the "maybe" camp for all of this new stuff. I have applied to be a beta tester for NEXT, doubt I'll get in this round, but my curiousity is there. Hoping that Sonar will have some new and powerful features, although I don't really have a definite wishlist for it right now, it does what I need pretty darn well already. 

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2 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Anyone else completely out of patience with threads like this?

Inevitable and self inflicted. If it annoys you then take it up with Bandlab.?

Having made a bit of a thing about it, deleting threads that even mention the subject of the next update, to then announce it without actually announcing is  bizarre behaviour to me, but it seems to be the way of modern marketing. Treat everybody like children.....ooh look everyone, we have this new thing, but we're not going to tell you everything about it ... you'll have to wait a bit longer because for some reason marketing people either think it makes it more interesting (actually has the opposite effect on me) or they think their customers are the kind of people who just can't handle being told everything in one go. 

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32 minutes ago, antler said:

VS Code is better. I can't think of a single time in recent years where I've though otherwise.

For some tasks I find it VS Code helpful, but I've been using Epsilon (emacs based) editor since the early 90s. Back then it was the only Editor I could find that was Unix/Windows cross platform, as I worked in both. Muscle memory persists to this day.

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4 hours ago, dubdisciple said:

Cakewalk would have to do something revolutionary to convince anyone to pay for it at this point.

Unfortunately, they don't... The 6-month activation is embedded, so with the new SONAR release they can either force purchase or let CbB shift to DEMO mode on you. Not sure about features new to CbB that would prevent opening in older SONAR versions (AUX tracks/patch points was one but was in later X3 versions). Without an "official" path forward, I would recommend preparing accordingly (stem offloads at a minimum, just in case).

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16 minutes ago, paulo said:

then announce it without actually announcing is  bizarre behaviour to me, but it seems to be the way of modern marketing. Treat everybody like children.....ooh look everyone, we have this new thing, but we're not going to tell you everything about it ... you'll have to wait a bit longer because for some reason marketing people either think it makes it more interesting (actually has the opposite effect on me) or they think their customers are the kind of people who just can't handle being told everything in one go. 

As you say, it's a modern marketing technique. By not letting someone have it immediately, it's supposedly making the audience think about it subconsciously: 'Won't it be great? I wonder what features it will have... I have to have it... I must have it!'.

And then when it's finally available, people are more ready to buy. At the very least it helps initial sales numbers as those interested have some notice.

Or at least that's my understanding of it. I'm not a marketing person though; I'm sure @PavlovsCat would be able to offer a better insight of this technique.

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11 minutes ago, Bapu said:

For some tasks I find it VS Code helpful, but I've been using Epsilon (emacs based) editor since the early 90s. Back then it was the only Editor I could find that was Unix/Windows cross platform, as I worked in both. Muscle memory persists to this day.

Fair enough. I had my share of emacs back in the day, and then some VI (some people swear by it, some people swear at it ?). They weren't for me, but I appreciate that old habits stick. Tools are tools; use whatever's most comfortable I say.

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