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Cakewalk now exclusively available through BandLab Membership


Larry Shelby

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15 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

That's it for me. I'll be updating to the latest version of Studio One Pro the next  big sale.  Hopefully, someone will come up with a decent, painless way to convert the Cakewalk project files. 

If you want to go to Reaper, there is a painless way using azslow's plugin called reacwp it works pretty good for me for Audio only projects. All you do once reacwp is installed as a Reaper plugin, is open the .cwp in Reaper and save the Reaper project to wherever.

I did discover that Cakewalk Instrument tracks have a wonky result from reacwp, so a quick fix is to move the MIDI to a MIDI track and routing that MIDI to the Instrument track which is extremely helpful before opening the .cwp file in Reaper.

YMMV

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Reaper to DAWProject format (which is doable, via a free 3rd party tool) so that it can be opened in Studio One is a bit more problematic given that Reaper has the most flexible track routing options (which can mean more complex). Since a track in Reaper is anything you want it to and ypu do that without being confined to any way of identifying what type of "track" it is. There is no formal track/bus/vca/aux/fx identification. Just route what you want where you want. 

Heck a Reaper track can be an instrument (ala Cakewalk) with audio in it too all the while being a folder. Why you would want to do that is beyond me but it probably would be done with horrendous results.  

I've seen reacwp make a valiant effort to structure a Reaper project out of folder, tracks and buses and as I said, I had some pretty good results in the 20 or so projects I tested. But I use mostly audio with some occasional simple MIDI. I just never went fully into using Reaper. I found Studio One a better fit for me. 

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It's probably telling that no one seems to care. 

For example, the press release Larry linked to in the OP,  lingered 24 hours before attracting a single reply or comment.

LOL, nothing to see there.

This forum seems to be the only place people have noticed the announcement, seem to care about the subscription, and are compelled to demonstrate who is right or wrong about Bandlab's imagined rights or wrongs. 

I don't know much about Studio Uno, but I imagine people are happy using it and not seeking out obscure press releases.

Meanwhile, over at the REAPER forum, the hot topic seems to be an exceedingly polite thread about how REAPER might be improved to better accommodate project templates stuffed with 1000 tracks of sample library players.

 

Edited by The Dispossessed Orangutan
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What's actually changed???

Cakewalk Sonar (new version) has been available exclusively via BandLab membership for a good while.

Noel mentioned weeks ago that it was beyond beta status.

 

Cakewalk has formally/publicly announced the Sonar release.  ?

 

Why the doom/gloom?

I don't love the idea of subscription, but I understand the underlying business reasons for it.

$150/year (if you use the tool regularly) is not terribly expensive.

A high caliber guitar is now $4000-$6000 (and that's not even a "custom shop" model).

A boutique tube amp-head is ~$4000.

A top-tier guitar modeler is ~$1700.

A top-tier 88-key workstation keyboard is over $4000.

One could say we've been spoiled by the likes of Reaper and CbB.

Those aren't realistic business models for the vast majority of companies.

In a normal business scenario (where expenses are incurred each month), imagine trying to stay in business selling a product that costs $40.

If you sold 100,000 copies, that's 4 million.

Lets say that this company has a dozen employees with an average salary of $80k.  Payroll alone is about 1 million.

 

Recommending FL Studio as a replacement??‍♂️  Two extremely different products.  

 

The new Cakewalk Sonar works just fine.  It's Sonar Platinum (or CbB) with many enhancements/improvements.

I've got most of the major DAW applications. 

Throw out any DAW application... and a seasoned DAW user can find fault in it.

That same seasoned DAW user could also successfully make music with any or them.

 

Studio One is now a great DAW.

Even if it's not your primary recording/mixing application, the "Mastering" and Delivery options are worth the cost.

Keep in mind that Presonus was recently bought by Fender.

Thus far, that doesn't seem to be a negative endeavor.  Same with Steinberg and Yamaha (though that's now been 20 years)

Let's hope Fender doesn't repeat the mistakes of Gibson... by spreading themselves too thin... and getting into business scenarios where they have no real experience/expertise.  Gibson was hemorrhaging money... after many bad business decisions (ie: Robotic Tuners on a Les Paul).  Gibson had to restructure (and refocus on making heritage guitars) to stay in business.  It wasn't a Cakewalk failure. 

 

If you're a long-time Cakewalk user, IMO it's worth $15 (one month subscription) to check out the new Sonar.

Worst case, you're out $15.

In today's economy, that's about the cost of a fast-food "value meal".

Edited by Jim Roseberry
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36 minutes ago, The Dispossessed Orangutan said:

It's probably telling that no one seems to care. 

For example, the press release Larry linked to in the OP,  lingered 24 hours before attracting a single reply or comment.

Maybe you know there are other parts of the Cakewalk forum than the Deals section?

I think the first mentioning of it was posted here, long before this thread was created. Soon after, other threads were created, like this one. Also, it was discussed extensively in other already existing threads, like this one.

That it didn't get immediate attention here in the Deals forum isn't that surprising, since so many here use other DAWs.

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I don't think it says much of anything that a post on Gearsluts (now Gearspace) didn't generate a lot of responses.

In 35 years, I've never gone to that forum to discuss DAW applications.

I've been on audio "forums" since they were Newsgroups on CompuServe.

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Since I no longer record/mix/master in CbB this is no great upset to me. My only observation is that once a person was on the Cakewalk train, a version update was $49 for years and then slowly crept up to $99 (IIRC) and then the Lifetime Update hit (and flopped obvs).

In today's economy they've decided that $299, $399 or even $599 for a base product and then version updates at $49/$99 is better served by everyone in at $149/year. Hats off to BandLab, I say.

Will I be a full on yearly member for on and on. Maybe.

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43 minutes ago, Canopus said:

Maybe you know there are other parts of the Cakewalk forum than the Deals section?

Yes. I do know that there are other parts of the Cakewalk forum where people have been bickering about this, which is why I called this forum "this forum" rather than "that forum"  where the OP in this thread mentioned that a formal press release distributed by Bandlanb of Singapore had been copy-pasted ... even though no one goes to that forum to discuss DAW applications.

 

LOL. 

 

.

Edited by The Dispossessed Orangutan
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1 hour ago, The Dispossessed Orangutan said:

I don't know much about Studio Uno, but I imagine people are happy using it and not seeking out obscure press releases.

Oboy, if what you seek is a DAW without users going drama about licensing, Studio One ain't it. A few months ago the pitchforks and torches were out because they switched licensing models to make it so that certain add-on FX were only available with the subscription.

Then they backed off and allowed perpetual license purchases of those add-ons from 3rd parties and I guess all was peaceful once again.

The promo they were running at the time was great, $150 got you a year subscription at their top tier, and at the end of the year, you could keep a perpetual license for Studio One Pro. So it amounted to a Studio One Pro perp license for $150, with a year subscription to their other services at no extra cost. Despite Studio One Artist not being my primary DAW, I gave it some consideration.

Talk sure was nasty for about a week, though....

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6 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

it's just not for me when I can move over to Studio Pro One and buy a perpetual license

Curious, about you and others making similar statements, if you mean you are dumping CbB as a result of Sonar currently only being available with the BandLab membership:

Since they also changed the news about Cakewalk by BandLab, now saying that it will be getting maintenance updates (presumably in case a future Windows update breaks something), why are you not just sticking with CbB?

It hasn't gotten any new features in a year, but then there are people who are fine with SONAR, which is lacking a TON of features and, not incidentally, bug fixes and performance improvements now present in CbB.

CbB also retains a feature that was dropped in Sonar, the Theme Editor. If you've followed the link in my sig, you know how important that feature is to me. I like the new UI well enough, but at this point, you can't even change any color settings. You're stuck with the various stock ones.

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1 hour ago, Bapu said:

Will I be a full on yearly member for on and on. Maybe.

We interrupt this broadcast of Bapu announcing the possibility of him buying more software  to bring you breaking news from our Woodland News Correspondent....

BREAKING......BREAKING.......BREAKING......BREAKING.......BREAKING......BREAKING.......

"Hello -  there's significant drama here amongst the trees as it appears that some bears do appear to be looking for somewhere to park their breakfast, thus confirming the source of the popular saying. One is circling a shady clearing just below and to the right of where I'm standing and another seems to favour a more leafy area to the left. Looks like it's only a matter of time now......there'll be more as we get it....back to you in the studio.......

 

 

 

 

"What do you mean there's one behind you......where? ......oh crap.......(GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR)   AAAAAHHHHHHHHGGGHHHHHH....

Edited by paulo
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3 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Will I be a full on yearly member for on and on. Maybe.

Or as @Jim Roseberry says, maybe I only need to spend $15 for a one month usage every now and then. As it is I probably only open up CbB for real use 2 or three times a year at most.

 

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54 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Oboy, if what you seek is a DAW without users going drama about licensing, Studio One ain't it.

We DAW users (or more probably, the human race) are good about complaining about things.  I moved to Cubase after the Sonar for Life debacle, and watched users give Steinberg hell for the ELicenser.   Then get more hell when they moved to the the current authorization method.  

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I'm pissed that i missed the 30% off year subscription sale.  I wish I had seen this offer back when it was live: 

 

I was holding out for a perpetual license offer.  Not sure if I will just purchase the $150 yearly membership, or just use the free CbB. 

I always load Cakewalk as my go to DAW which  CnB still works fine, so not sure that I need the Bandlab membership to get the new Sonar, but I guess I will consider it.  I really wanted to purchase a perpetual license, but am kicking myself that i missed that 30% offer.

Edited by Cecelius2
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1 minute ago, Cecelius2 said:

Not sure if I will just purchase the $150 yearly membership, or just use the free CbB. 

For those who really like (and are happy with) Cakewalk by BandLab, there now doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to dump it.

It's going to get maintenance updates, it will keep working, so why switch? I get that some may be feeling jerked around, but as we saw with Studio One, that can happen in other places too.

IMO, the practical route would be to stick with CbB for now. If you really want to upgrade to Sonar, then hold out for a while longer and see if they introduce a reasonably-priced perpetual license.

Also, and I have said this many times: it's always a good idea to stay competent in more than one DAW. We all had the fear put into us by the Gibson Debacle. Fortunately BandLab reanimated SONAR into Cakewalk by BandLab, but there was a period of a few months where everyone thought it was gone forever.

Mixcraft is good for people who are used to the Cakewalk workflow, I have that as well as Studio One Artist. They're both reasonably priced, especially if you wait for a sale on Mixcraft or get S1 Artist bundled with a PreSonus interface.

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6 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

For those who really like (and are happy with) Cakewalk by BandLab, there now doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to dump it.

And what's with the monthly re-authorisation punishment? For those who have offline systems this is a real PITA! If it was like before (a half year), then I could agree to your statement.

In addition I don't know if I can trust in a company that fixes such malicious decisions! They can drop the authorization any day without warning, they can increase the sub payment any day without warning! With such systems users are completely dependent (like drug addicts) and it is not like a tv sub where you can switch almost without issues, we have old projects that would not be usable anymore!

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I think if the people who ran the Cakewalk forum did a raffle once a month for a free years subscription to Sonar, that would be quite good, ask that Mike Creative sauce chap to do it on his facebook page. he has over 10,000 followers.

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Why not petition @azslow3 to say we need a CWP Converter (like this Reaper one by MOSS) for CbB/Splat to DAWProject format?

Someone suggested that MOSS created that in a very short time (hours or just few days). If MOSS and @azslow3 got together I would think in less than a week they could have a direct CWPtoDAWProject converter. I'd chip in $100 for the development of that.

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3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Mixraft is good for people who are used to the Cakewalk workflow, I have that as well as Studio One Artist. They're both reasonably priced, especially if you wait for a sale on Mixcraft or get S1 Artist bundled with a PreSonus interface.

Does Mixcraft support ARA?

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