Regarding the Opacity of Bandlab and Cakewalk

[MIDInco]

I am a composer who has been using SONAR since 2013. I am delighted to see SONAR being renewed as Sonar, especially given the unstable transition from Roland to TASCAM and then to Bandlab. However, I have several concerns.

There appear to be various issues related to the development team, development status, management, and other aspects. As users, we have to deal with this DAW, which is buggy and unstable, while continuously paying for a subscription without detailed information.

Additionally, the website lacks the content volume seen in Cubase or Ableton (though this may not be crucial), and it remains simple and has not been updated even after more than two years. The community is also underdeveloped.

I am quite anxious about these issues.

1. What happened to the employees before Bandlab's acquisition?
2. If the current development team consists of different members, how has the development environment been transferred?
3 .Is there a necessity to develop Cakewalk Next, even if it means delaying the release of Sonar and bug fixes?
I love Sonar and hope it will be a DAW that I can use for decades.

I would appreciate hearing others' opinions and any additional insights on these matters.

[Colin Nicholls]

My opinion is that 1 and 2 are none of our business, and 3, honestly, if the appearance of a new Mac compatible DAW from the folks who brought you SONAR doesn't excite you, then I can't help you.

[Glenn Stanton]

3 hours ago, MIDInco said:

I am quite anxious about these issues.

maybe drink less coffee? maybe spend more time using the DAW and creating content and skip worrying about how much social media a product is using (e.g. how many times have you visited the "off-topics" area? vs tools & techniques?)

one thing - if you are wealthy and can afford to suppliment the bandlab developer salaries, i'll bet it would be win-win -- you could become less anxious and they would have more money for cars, hot chicks, and better guitars.

[MIDInco]

44 minutes ago, Colin Nicholls said:

My opinion is that 1 and 2 are none of our business, and 3, honestly, if the appearance of a new Mac compatible DAW from the folks who brought you SONAR doesn't excite you, then I can't help you.

Thank you for your honest opinion.
I was initially excited about Cakewalk Next, but with its current features, I feel it is not a product that can be used practically or effectively. So, it seems impossible to help me. lol

[MIDInco]

34 minutes ago, Glenn Stanton said:

maybe drink less coffee? maybe spend more time using the DAW and creating content and skip worrying about how much social media a product is using (e.g. how many times have you visited the "off-topics" area? vs tools & techniques?)

one thing - if you are wealthy and can afford to suppliment the bandlab developer salaries, i'll bet it would be win-win -- you could become less anxious and they would have more money for cars, hot chicks, and better guitars.

Thank you for your valuable opinion.

Unfortunately, I don't consume coffee or energy drinks at all (they give me headaches), and yet I still experience this kind of anxiety.
It might even be a type of mental illness at this point. Additionally, while I do make some money from composing, if you are a professional Hollywood composer or similar, the number of my compositions would be significantly less.
My skills and career are somewhere between amateur and professional, so they're not particularly impressive.

Also, it is difficult to keep track of all the information in the forum, so I may be lacking in knowledge in some areas.

Only two responses have come in for this topic so far, but the opinions seem more optimistic than I expected, making me feel that I might just be worrying too much.

I would love to make the employees at Cakewalk wealthy, but I regret that I'm not in a financial position to give money to others.

[Wookiee]

@MIDInco as noted by @Colin Nicholls really 1 & 2 are none of our business, regarding 3, who are we to question Bandlab Technologies business plan. 

Back to 1. As far as I know, when Gibson closed SONAR down on the 17th of November 2017, that is what they did they closed it down. How do I know this because I got an email telling me that Gibson had shut it down with immeadiate affect. I will let you contemplate what that actually meant.

[MIDInco]

16 minutes ago, Wookiee said:

@MIDInco as noted by @Colin Nicholls really 1 & 2 are none of our business, regarding 3, who are we to question Bandlab Technologies business plan. 

Back to 1. As far as I know, when Gibson closed SONAR down on the 17th of November 2017, that is what they did they closed it down. How do I know this because I got an email telling me that Gibson had shut it down with immeadiate affect. I will let you contemplate what that actually meant.

Thank you for the valuable information.

In Japan, the notice of Cakewalk's sale came through a Japanese company called TASCAM (a subsidiary of Gibson). Due to my youth at the time, I didn't have detailed information. You told me to think for myself, so I did my best to consider it, but does that mean it's correct to assume that the development team from that time is no longer there?

Regarding the development environment and business plans, we have been significantly affected by ROLAND and Gibson's business decisions, which put us in our current situation. Why, then, can we say that we are not in a position to speak about management and business? If development is stopped due to similar failures twice, it is inevitable that paying users will become anxious about such a concept.

I apologize if my remarks seemed confrontational.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

4 hours ago, MIDInco said:

As users, we have to deal with this DAW, which is buggy and unstable

This is the only part of your post I take issue with. The vast majority of users do not find it buggy or unstable. I haven't had a crash since the days of X1 - a LONG time ago in DAW world. Maybe you could share your experience regarding what you find buggy or unstable.

[Glenn Stanton]

1 hour ago, MIDInco said:

Regarding the development environment and business plans, we have been significantly affected by ROLAND and Gibson's business decisions, which put us in our current situation. Why, then, can we say that we are not in a position to speak about management and business? If development is stopped due to similar failures twice, it is inevitable that paying users will become anxious about such a concept.

valid concern giving other companies dealing with users. i think for Bandlab, it's somewhat different as they're part of a well-funded media product holding company. but like anything in the future, nothing is guaranteed. Studio One could go under, Apple Logic could eventually become a proper DAW, the programmer of Reaper could decide to take the riches and retire.... ?

so, much like anything else, only you can decide if your wallet and risk tolerance is balanced in a way that says "yes, Sonar makes sense for me", or simply acquire another product which does provide the balance.

[Wookiee]

@MIDInco as to if anyone from the old team persist, who knows, I have been using Cakewalk software since 1992, that 32 years, I have never known, there are a couple of names that pop up but if they are staff from then and as to how long, no idea.

[MIDInco]

4 minutes ago, Glenn Stanton said:

valid concern giving other companies dealing with users. i think for Bandlab, it's somewhat different as they're part of a well-funded media product holding company. but like anything in the future, nothing is guaranteed. Studio One could go under, Apple Logic could eventually become a proper DAW, the programmer of Reaper could decide to take the riches and retire.... ?

so, much like anything else, only you can decide if your wallet and risk tolerance is balanced in a way that says "yes, Sonar makes sense for me", or simply acquire another product which does provide the balance.

I see, just as everything tangible eventually crumbles, no software lasts forever.
All I can do now is subscribe and diligently report any bugs as they arise.

[MIDInco]

5 minutes ago, Wookiee said:

@MIDInco as to if anyone from the old team persist, who knows, I have been using Cakewalk software since 1992, that 32 years, I have never known, there are a couple of names that pop up but if they are staff from then and as to how long, no idea.

You've been using Cakewalk software for 32 years. As both a Cakewalk user and in your music career, you are a senior to me.

Did you ever feel any concern about the series of acquisitions and sales by ROLAND and Gibson?

Also, after 32 years of development, it’s inevitable that the development team would change, much like the paradox of the Ship of Theseus.

I can only hope that software development under the Cakewalk name will continue.

[Wookiee]

@MIDInco Cakewalk software first appeared for Microsoft DOS in the late 1980's. It was created by Greg Hendershot, under a company called Twelve Tone Inc. At that time I was using an Amiga as I didn't have £2000.00+ to purchase a PC. 

I believe Greg was still about in the early 1990's, but did eventually move on. 

Will it survive? Who knows, it has survived some 36+ years and a couple of different owners.

The Cakewalk Wikipedia page will tell you most of this.

All I can tell you is that Bandlab has done more for Cakewalk in the last 6 years than Roland or Gibson ever did.

[MIDInco]

5 minutes ago, Wookiee said:

@MIDInco Cakewalk software first appeared for Microsoft DOS in the late 1980's. It was created by Greg Hendershot, under a company called Twelve Tone Inc. At that time I was using an Amiga as I didn't have £2000.00+ to purchase a PC. 

I believe Greg was still about in the early 1990's, but did eventually move on. 

Will it survive? Who knows, it has survived some 36+ years and a couple of different owners.

The Cakewalk Wikipedia page will tell you most of this.

All I can tell you is that Bandlab has done more for Cakewalk in the last 6 years than Roland or Gibson ever did.

I see, considering past troubles, it is true that the events of the past few years are not particularly significant.

Additionally, thanks to your insights, my perspective on BandLab has changed. After being acquired by BandLab, the continuous updates and bug fixes over the years have been remarkable.

I appreciate the valuable information about the past.

[John T]

Every day, I sit down to work in Sonar, and the secrecy gnaws at me, bedevils my every effort... What is Noel's shoe size? I HAVE TO KNOW. I HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW.

[Terry Kelley]

Bandlab saw an opportunity to add a DAW (that was otherwise dead) to their offering. They bought the rights to Cakewalk (and probably got it for a song and dance) and then got some of the previous developers to come onboard and update it. It's that simple. It's now at a point where they believe it's fair to ask people to pay for it.

We got paid via having CbB free for several years. That's coming to an end.

But they owe us nothing - neither pricing or explanation wise. If Sonar fails,  it could wind up being Gibson all over again, but that's something that remains to be seen. It's possible that Sonar won't generate the incremental revenue necessary to pay for the developers but considering  the size of Bandlab I'm betting they are willing to make it a line item cost on the books vs. an income. That's for their CFO to decide. Or they said "time to pay for yourselves.)

Edited July 24 by Terry Kelley

[Noel Borthwick]

MIDInco firstly thank you for voicing your concerns respectfully to the community.

Let me just say this - the Cakewalk team is comprised of dedicated and passionate people who believe in making creative tools for musicians. You may not know it, but most DAW teams are very small. Building DAW's is not a high profit margin industry in case you haven't noticed. 

To help catch you up - we've achieved a lot in the last six and a half years with BandLab... A lot more than we did under Gibson or even Roland. You can achieve a lot with small teams. Not only have we breathed new life into Sonar but we also built a new cross platform DAW - Cakewalk Next. which is very centered on music creation rather than production. For Sonar we've been laser focused on stability and the features we've added are very workflow centric. Our list of bug fixes since we started exceeds 4000 just looking at our ticket counts. I'll let you refer to the change log and make up your own mind as to the value we've brought. Here is the Sonar Change Log and here is the Cakewalk change log

As far as the team goes there are a several senior members, some of which even go all the way back to the 90's. I personally started using Cakewalk in '92 and joined as a developer in 1997 on Cakewalk Pro Audio and I've worked on every single version of Sonar since. 
And my shoe size varies depending on the vendor I buy it from ?

[Magic Russ]

1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

And my shoe size varies depending on the vendor I buy it from ?

I always wondered about that.   It should be straightforward enough to say that a certain size shoe should fit feet of certain sizes.  

Even worse, some brands can't even be consistent.  My wife had shoes and slippers from Uggs on her wishlist.  One pair of one style was too tight at size 8 and another pair in a different style was loose at size 7.

Getting back on topic, Bandlab has put in a few nice features and fixed a lot of bugs and avoided any of the blunders of the Roland or Gibson years.

 

[Grem]

8 hours ago, Wookiee said:

Bandlab has done more for Cakewalk in the last 6 years than Roland or Gibson ever did, combined.

Fixed!!

 

 

[MIDInco]

6 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

MIDInco firstly thank you for voicing your concerns respectfully to the community.

Let me just say this - the Cakewalk team is comprised of dedicated and passionate people who believe in making creative tools for musicians. You may not know it, but most DAW teams are very small. Building DAW's is not a high profit margin industry in case you haven't noticed. 

To help catch you up - we've achieved a lot in the last six and a half years with BandLab... A lot more than we did under Gibson or even Roland. You can achieve a lot with small teams. Not only have we breathed new life into Sonar but we also built a new cross platform DAW - Cakewalk Next. which is very centered on music creation rather than production. For Sonar we've been laser focused on stability and the features we've added are very workflow centric. Our list of bug fixes since we started exceeds 4000 just looking at our ticket counts. I'll let you refer to the change log and make up your own mind as to the value we've brought. Here is the Sonar Change Log and here is the Cakewalk change log

As far as the team goes there are a several senior members, some of which even go all the way back to the 90's. I personally started using Cakewalk in '92 and joined as a developer in 1997 on Cakewalk Pro Audio and I've worked on every single version of Sonar since. 
And my shoe size varies depending on the vendor I buy it from ?

Thank you for the response from the development staff.

I have great respect for those who have provided professional audio production tools for decades.

First of all, I did not think that the development of a DAW was on a small scale. I wanted to deepen my understanding of DAWs and tried to study C and C++ just a little (not even to the level of dipping my toes in, just enough to understand if statements), but I was considering how difficult it is to handle audio with computers and programming, and how much manpower and time it would require.

I could imagine that the profit margins for DAWs are low. Therefore, I was genuinely worried when Cakewalk by Bandlab became free, wondering how the development would continue. Also, I saw people in the forums asking for a one-time purchase option for Cakewalk Sonar, but I believe that subscriptions are better for ensuring revenue while continuing development. Of course, if there were a one-time purchase option, that would be nice too.

I have seen many bug fixes over time. I always enjoy reading the patch notes. Seeing thousands of bugs being removed is certainly valuable.

When my shoes truly no longer fit, I'll quietly buy shoes from another brand.

I still have some concerns, but hearing directly from the staff that "we have accomplished more than when we were with Roland or Gibson" alleviated many of my worries.

I will continue to support the development.