Sonar 2025.07 Feedback

[Jeremy Oakes]

20 minutes ago, SVSX said:

Yeah, its irritating to wait so long though 😉

Anyway, it seems to not bother many people.

You’re complaining about a minor issue for a free DAW ???

J

[Larry T.]

On 7/1/2025 at 3:37 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

If its already running Cbb then its a very good chance it will work as well or better.
You can easily verify for yourself by downloading Sonar and running the Free tier with your largest project.

Update:

I went for the Sonar $79 license. Pleased to report my 8GB of RAM pc is running all that it was running OK 👍🏻 👌🏻 🙆‍♂️ 🙂 

In fact, it loads quicker than before.

Thanks so much!!!!

[SVSX]

7 hours ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

You’re complaining about a minor issue for a free DAW ???

J

Yes i am, as my time is precious and i cannot wait 15 seconds everytime some project is crashing to get access to my music.

But again, if you are fine with it its ok, im rolling back to Sonar Platinum now and find my peace.

[57Gregy]

20 hours ago, SVSX said:

Yeah, its irritating to wait so long though 😉

Anyway, it seems to not bother many people.

Understandable. I use an old, slow machine, so I'm used to the apparent snail-like progress of these more complicated programs.*

*Not on Cakewalk Sonar yet but am learning what may occur when I do upgrade from this forum. Thanks!
 

[falk]

Long time Cakewalk user, used to hang at the old office in downtown Boston an age ago, first post on the new forum since Platinum era (lol)

 

I originally wanted to ask if Cakewalk lost the ability to have multiple sessions open at once, since that's integral to my workflow when comping orchestral recordings but then right before I started typing this I found the checkbox in Preferences hidden away under File->Advanced (who woulda thunk) so I guess I'm now just popping in to say hi (Hi Noel, been a long while, lol)

 

Also against my better judgment I swapped from CbB to Sonar Premium tier in the middle of three rather involved long-term projects and I'm glad to say sometimes risks pay off- transition was smooth, I'm enjoying the sleeker UI and things somehow feel snappier, especially when dragging a large number of clips at once. Cross fingers it holds and I'm not jinxing myself.

[Noel Borthwick]

Sonar has been updated to  31.07.0.084. Please read the release notes and update as soon as possible since this update contains fixes and optimizations for some important user reported issues.

Please note that Cakewalk Product Center has also been updated. CPC is a forced update due to breaking back-end changes that were preventing it from properly installing add-ons for Sonar Premium users. It also correctly tracks previously installed addons for some additional installers.

[John T]

In the latest build, my control bar is resetting to defaults every time I open a project. Is that a new behaviour? I've only just switched from CbB, where this didn't happen.

Edited 13 hours ago by John T

[Chaps]

24 minutes ago, John T said:

In the latest build, my control bar is resetting to defaults every time I open a project. Is that a new behaviour? I've only just switched CbB, where this didn't happen.

Might that be related to Workspaces or Screensets? I've never used either so I'm not familiar with their behaviors. Have you tried locking the Modules' order? I am using the free tier, no workspace or screenset, and my Control Bar never changes. There is an update for the Cakewalk Product Center, and Sonar, today. Is that the Sonar build you are using? 31.07.0.084 ?

[John T]

Yes, that's the version number. 

[Canopus]

I just updated Cakewalk Product Center to the most recent version. When doing so, I had to sign in to BandLab, which I did. But only five minutes later, when starting Sonar, I get a 'Session Expired' toaster. Is the BandLab backend server slowly developing dementia? If the server can't remember my log-on status for five minutes, it sounds pretty alarming.

At the same time, I did get a toaster stating there was a Sonar update available. Could it be that you are automatically thrown out whenever there’s an update? If so, is that really necessary? To me, this 'Session Expired' toaster usually occurs several times each day, so it's becoming a nuisance.

Persistence is futile?

[Cint MMedia]

It's becoming a problem because of the new Sonar and the end of CbB.
Since we have due dates to meet, we decided to temporarily switch back to good old Sonar Platinum (2017). It works fine - at least for our purposes.
We make extensive use of ProChannel, which has always worked well. But after installing the trial version of the new Sonar today, the ProChannel in Sonar Platinum suddenly stopped working the way it did just a few hours earlier: in all modules, the 'presets' button no longer work - and we have quite a lot custom presets stored in it.
We reinstalled the Platinum Core Plugins, but that didn’t solve anything. Even reinstalling Sonar Platinum itself didn’t help.
Is there anyone out there who knows how to fix this to the new Sonar related problem?
Thanks for your attention.

[Wookiee]

10 hours ago, John T said:

In the latest build, my control bar is resetting to defaults every time I open a project. Is that a new behaviour? I've only just switched from CbB, where this didn't happen.

Are you subscribed or free? The Control bar is dictated by the Workspace, unfortunately the number of Workspaces in the free tier are restricted to one, which I believe you can't change or save.

[Jeremy Oakes]

On 7/11/2025 at 6:59 AM, SVSX said:

Yes i am, as my time is precious and i cannot wait 15 seconds everytime some project is crashing to get access to my music.

But again, if you are fine with it its ok, im rolling back to Sonar Platinum now and find my peace.

You might want to check out the first post here about the new update to v084 which takes care of your issue. :

 

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Jeremy Oakes
Terrible spelling !

[SVSX]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

You might want to check out the first post here about the new update to v084 which takes care of your issue. 

Thanks for the reminder 🫡

As a longtime Sonar user and supporter, i lost some of my trust in the recent actions of the owner. I want Cakewalk to stay here, of course i'll support them, when i get the feeling they offer a good and trustfull platform. I think some others are feeling the same. That's why i/we criticised this splash screen, cause it gives me some fishy vibes.

After this update they showed me, they're listening, which is a good sign👌. Keep doing great work bakers, thx for evrything!

[Noel Borthwick]

There is nothing “fishy” about having a promo screen in free software. Its extremely common for all companies which offer a free version to have some sort of adware in it. In this case the popup is for our own products. I think if anything Cakewalk is extremely lenient about what is being offered in the free version compared to the competition.