Misha Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 Craig, that's an interesting take, but I will hold of my reply till tomorrow - a "One Year" anniversary since announcement Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunraw Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 7 hours ago, Steve Moddelmog said: And it also seems clear now they aren't going to throw a bone to those of us who paid for perpetual licenses during the prior ownership (I bought every single version of "old" Sonar, so I have paid a fair amount). They certainly aren't obligated to, but I would have done it if I were in their place (meaning a modest discount). That was the first thing I thought. Just the name Sonar kind of stuck in my craw. After paying for the ballyhooed 30th edition. I can't even get CWB to offline activate so they won't see a sub from me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CSistine Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 Even if they will have a perpetual license in the future, it differs for me whether the user can activate the perpetual license once on a system or if it is necessary to re-activate after a time interval! The latter would mean for me NO GO, because users would be completely in their hand and I am in doubt that I could trust in them on the long run! Who knows, maybe they drop Sonar once and cease the authorization servers! Who knows what "perpetual" really means for them? But YMMV! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bristol_Jonesey Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 6 hours ago, CSistine said: Even if they will have a perpetual license in the future, it differs for me whether the user can activate the perpetual license once on a system or if it is necessary to re-activate after a time interval! The latter would mean for me NO GO, because users would be completely in their hand and I am in doubt that I could trust in them on the long run! Who knows, maybe they drop Sonar once and cease the authorization servers! Who knows what "perpetual" really means for them? But YMMV! We know what perpetual meant for Gibson. But given their track record, it's totally disingenuous to tar Bandlab with the same brush. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misha Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 "totally disingenuous to tar Bandlab with the same brush." Well, they have to prove it. Providing years of development, just to say it will be discontinued giving NO details in a year (!) time for NON subscription options, erodes 75% of the trust they gained in my book. "Coming soon" banner hanging for a year will not cut it. Near future CLARITY please. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Moddelmog Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 Weirdly, when I now click on the links for Bandlab Membership (from "how to get Sonar"), I don't see Sonar mentioned anywhere there or in the page on Backstage Pass. Am I somehow missing it? I could have sworn it used to explicitly mention access to Sonar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Jones Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 Regarding the Gibson fiasco in 2017: 14 hours ago, Craig Anderton said: ...IMHO they were less like vultures, and more like first responders coming to the scene of an accident to try and keep the patient alive. This is my take as well. Of course the companies that offered to "bail out" abandoned SONAR users were hoping to gain some new users, but at the time I considered it a positive gesture overall. I bought three DAWs in those days, and I still keep one of them fully updated and have spent considerable time making sure I know how to use it in case New Sonar never materializes in an affordable (and non-subscription) form. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misha Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 I am certain vultures are important animals in the world's life cycle and have no issues with them, or their instincts, but: "bail out" abandoned SONAR users were hoping to gain some new users" - certainly seems like a prime reason for the gesture. Even if there was more philosophy to it, it came as a bonus. In my view there is a very stiff competition between upper dozen of popular DAWs. 30 minutes ago, Larry Jones said: and have spent considerable time making sure I know how to use it in case New Sonar never materializes in an affordable (and non-subscription) form. Lucky you (no pun intended). I was not that foreseeing. I am grateful to Mr. Meng for keeping and advancing Cakewalk all this time... I am. But now, unless they release non sub Sonar or clarify of near term plans for us, silly users, it's same fork of 2017 for me. This time it would be darker, because I will stay in the same 2017 spots, but now with over 100 projects added. -------------------------------- I am a slow learner. I estimate, it will take me 200-300 hours to get comfortable with another DAW and likely 500+ to fully adopt and start liking it. With family and work, free time is a big luxury, so just grabbing and learning another DAW is a tough call. I believe clarity is not too much to ask for from Bandlab. Especially now, since I do have more time in the summer for ventures like learning another DAW. I do spend a few hours every year test driving different DAWs there are a couple that I like. P.S. I was sincerely hoping they would release non-sub version on 1 year anniversary since announcement. They still have a few hours, but I doubt that will happen today. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Jones Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 28 minutes ago, Misha said: I am a slow learner. Yeah, me too. But just keep in mind that all DAWs do the same thing, and almost anything you need to accomplish can be done no matter what program you're using. I think the biggest obstacle is that different makers use different terminology for essentially the same functions, and when you have to look.everything.up it can really mess with your workflow, until you learn the terms (in one DAW, "clips" are called "events," and if you don't know that, how can you "bounce to clips?" The other big issue for me is cost. Since The Gibson Fiasco I have lost most of my income sources, so I need to keep it cheap. If New Sonar remains $15/mo., that's about what I used to spend for an upgrade in the Before Times, although I hope I'll be able to buy a year in advance and then own a license, like they offered before Gibson shut the whole thing down. I haunt this forum, and my take on New Sonar from reading here is that it has a lot of bugs, so I'm thinking of it as an unfinished product that I don't want to buy -- yet. But I am getting pretty impatient with this long delay, even though I'm not complaining about having CbB for free for five years, and I do have options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Moddelmog Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 (edited) 55 minutes ago, Larry Jones said: If New Sonar remains $15/mo., that's about what I used to spend for an upgrade in the Before Times, although I hope I'll be able to buy a year in advance and then own a license, like they offered before Gibson shut the whole thing down. I have thought the same thing - no more expensive to pay the fee every month than it was to upgrade once a year. But if you decided not to upgrade, you still had a usable product. Maybe improvements to these products happen so frequently (continually) these days that there really is no point where the developer can say, well, this is now a big leap forward so now it's time for you to pay an upgrade fee if you want these new features. So after the first year, from a cost standpoint it's kind of like saying you're paying an upgrade fee monthly - except if you decide to stop getting the upgrades, you lose the program altogether. Edited June 6 by Steve Moddelmog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Anderton Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 1 hour ago, Misha said: In my view there is a very stiff competition between upper dozen of popular DAWs. But there's also a lot of camaraderie. To me, it's one of the main appeals of this anamolous industry. I won't name names, but when Gibson crashed and took Cakewalk with it (although to be fair, Cakewalk's ongoing losses contributed to the crash), one representative for a very popular software company felt that although software companies have their own target audiences and goals, Sonar was perhaps the deepest of the available programs. In theory he was a "competitor," but the reality was he saw each DAW as very different, and now an important one was gone. I saw his point. Someone who buys Ableton Live will never be swayed to switch to Pro Tools, and vice-versa. Someone who does music for TV will never leave MOTU. Those doing beats will gravitate toward FL Studio, etc. etc. There's indeed competition for new users, but I'd say it's more like offerings for new uses, with the companies hoping they've chosen the right feature set so that when a new user downloads a trial version, it does what they want. That's an area where Sonar's depth is advantageous, but it can also make the program more daunting. There are always tradeoffs. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Anderton Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 And...let me add one more thing. Music software is a fickle, difficult, low-paying industry. If you look at the parking lots of DAW companies, you won't see luxury cars - more like 10-year-old Hondas. Everyone I know doing music software (and that's a lot of people!) loves what they do, and are willing to trade off the perqs of sweet corporate jobs in favor of something that fascinates them. They're usually musicians themselves who use their programs. It's a different world compared to making dishwashers for Whirlpool. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misha Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 Craig, I am not going to pretend that I know the "reasons". That what it seemed to me - companies tried to grab as much runaways as they could in 2017. If it was much more than that and had higher meaning, great. Here is a counter argument (and perhaps BL marketing would like to hear this too) Out of all people I've talked to (7 or 8 outside this forum, that were longtime Cakewalk users pre 2017 and switched DAWs on Gibson saga... I know only one that "came back" using Cakewalk and not even full time. Not because Cakewalk was "bad". They all loved it. They lost trust. The year long silence in my view doesn't help Bandlab's image. From my reading / understanding Meng Ru Kuok is not only corporate entrepreneur, but also a visionary and a music lover. I just can't understand why create unnecessary tensions & frustrations for fellow musicians that have valid reasons to be worried. Bottom line is this. I am willing to wait another 6 months or even another year if I know for a fact that new Sonar will be available as non-subscription within that time period. If they are still unsure, this should be stated in some kind of "nice" words that make sense, so people can plan ahead . "Coming soon" is not it. ----- Larry, I hear you. Unfortunately (or fortunately) specific "tracking" take lane workflow I am after is only available in Cake. I have tried about a dozen DAWs. A couple came close, but not there yet. If it comes to switching, I will have no choice but to adopt. It's life 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnbee58 Posted June 6 Share Posted June 6 1 hour ago, Misha said: Bottom line is this. I am willing to wait another 6 months or even another year if I know for a fact that new Sonar will be available as non-subscription within that time period. If they are still unsure, this should be stated in some kind of "nice" words that make sense, so people can plan ahead . "Coming soon" is not it. ----- 😀😀😀😀 I hope they're listening! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twelvetone Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 On the off-chance that the bakers do see this, I would like to go on record and say this current subscription model is not appropriate for the way I use a DAW. Also, the need to phone home to register got me into a tricky situation in front of a client once, so I reverted to SPLAT for safety reasons a while back. Ever since the pandemic (and, truth be told, the decline of the CD), calls from bands to record demos have dried up. I am now very much an occasional user, firing up Sonar on an inspiration and if I have time for some personal music making. I cannot see myself keeping up a subscription just for sporadic use like this. That said, if the Bakers bake up a great new feature, sure, I will gladly pay for that, load it up and spend some happy hours getting to know it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwal³ Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 honestly i wish they'd just say "no, sorry, no perpetual licenses" and get it over with, but it seems like the devs are banned from even talking about it, which speaks volumes to these ears 🤷♀️ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heath Row Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 36 minutes ago, pwal³ said: honestly i wish they'd just say "no, sorry, no perpetual licenses" and get it over with They already have haven't they. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twelvetone Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 Here's the thing that worries me: Normally, we pay for new features (or fixes) we see as desirable. That's why developers enhance the product. In the subscription model, we keep paying just so we are not shut out. So where's the motive to innovate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwal³ Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 1 hour ago, Heath Row said: They already have haven't they. nope, they've avoided that question, but that's just the devs, i'm surprised "perpetual license" isn't rendered as ***** ***** 🤪 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heath Row Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 (edited) Yes, I was being somewhat facetious 😇 like they may as well have, but not really. I find it a little amusing watching those who were once sworn against subscriptions slowly come over to either the monthly or yearly, of course if you said anything 'it was only until the perpetual license arrived' 😁 Hook, line and sinker 😆 Bandlabs (Cakewalks) master plan is slowly falling into place mwuhahahahaha 🥸 Edited June 13 by Heath Row Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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