New FREE version/tier of the venerable Cakewalk Sonar

[Sidney Earl Goodroe]

I have Platinum and X3 still on my drive simply for the available plugins to use in CbB and now Sonar Free. I also kept all the add-on plugins!

I also have every version  of Cake products from Pro Audio 9 up until Gibson buried it! Along with the registration keys!

It is possible to reinstall those older versions with just the key codes, no hooking to the dead server to register.

I have all the add-on plugins as well!

When Gibson put us out to pasture, I immediately went to my account and backed up everything there! What was not there is maintained on the original disc!

I feel like a museum director!!

[Jan Deeben]

On 6/21/2025 at 2:40 PM, aidan o driscoll said:

So it looks like all we need is there FOR FREE .. so this is in a way a FREE SUBSCRIPTION, not a paid software subscription.

I recommend installing it, check it out and if it does the job I WILL be dumping the Cakewalk by bandlab...

Just keep in mind that it's FREE and there's no obligation of any kind for BandLab to maintain this version.

Anyway, after August 1st you won't be able to update your activation for Cakewalk By BandLab, so that package will become useless shortly. I'd suggest first thing to do is to check if your existing projects & plugins work under the new free software.

Personally I'd probably run it for a while to finish existing projects and then move to a DAW with a perpetual license, as I definitely don't like the subscription model. But I won't complain, as I've been able to use CbB (a fantastic DAW) 6 years for free. And honestly, nothing in the world is free, now is it?

[Doug Steinschneider]

Been migrating over to Sonar.

Heads up tip - there is a "Sonar" folder inside the "Cakewalk Content" folder that has all the same folders as subfolder "Cakewalk Core". I copied the project templates I use to the "Project Templates" folder under folder "Sonar".

Edited Thursday at 03:10 PM by Doug Steinschneider

[CSistine]

13 hours ago, kitekrazy1 said:

Anyone thought of installing the last version of Sonar that was under Gibson?

Yes, when BandLab increased the re-authorization cycle to 4 weeks, I dropped CbB and now I use Platinum and Reaper. (I use 3 systems, 2 of them offline and the re-auth takes not some seconds as someone pretended above. For all 3 it takes minimum 1 hour and it is a hassle; one pc is in another building).

By the way I also installed Sonar X3 and I wondered that there is not a lot I am missing!

[kitekrazy1]

21 minutes ago, CSistine said:

Yes, when BandLab increased the re-authorization cycle to 4 weeks, I dropped CbB and now I use Platinum and Reaper. (I use 3 systems, 2 of them offline and the re-auth takes not some seconds as someone pretended above. For all 3 it takes minimum 1 hour and it is a hassle; one pc is in another building).

By the way I also installed Sonar X3 and I wondered that there is not a lot I am missing!

I've always archived my DAWs. I always thought Plat was X3.

I use to keep old versions installed since the exe was only 18mb.  

The danger is discontinue software is the spread of illegal versions and that come with other nasties.

[fjz]

22 minutes ago, CSistine said:

By the way I also installed Sonar X3 and I wondered that there is not a lot I am missing!

What version of Windows did you install X3 on? I'm just curious and wonder whether or not it installs and runs well on Windows 11.

fj

[CSistine]

7 minutes ago, fjz said:

What version of Windows did you install X3 on? I'm just curious and wonder whether or not it installs and runs well on Windows 11.

fj

I guess I have it not yet installed on my 3rd machine that is W11. But I am quite sure it runs without issues.

The other 2 pcs, where I have installed it, are W10.

[ZincT]

Annual sub offer has gone up to $79 now  It was $49 yesterday using Larry's link.

[Brian Walton]

On 7/3/2025 at 6:40 AM, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

I have Platinum and X3 still on my drive simply for the available plugins to use in CbB and now Sonar Free. I also kept all the add-on plugins!

I also have every version  of Cake products from Pro Audio 9 up until Gibson buried it! Along with the registration keys!

It is possible to reinstall those older versions with just the key codes, no hooking to the dead server to register.

I have all the add-on plugins as well!

When Gibson put us out to pasture, I immediately went to my account and backed up everything there! What was not there is maintained on the original disc!

I feel like a museum director!!

I believe the off-line auth is possible for X3, but Platinum I thought I recall as needing to phone home (or use an offline computer plus a portal generated number - thus if they shut that down, future installs would go away).

My personal concern here is that X3 did not have the theme editor, so the look I'm missing isn't available for it.  So it seems X3 might be the only fall back option for those that need a real off-line - no dependency solution.  

 

Last version of X3 is in the ballpark of 10 years old now.

 

Edit:  installed Splat to see what would happen - there was no option to import themes so this provides no value to me at this time.

Edited yesterday at 12:28 AM by Brian Walton

[aidan o driscoll]

Mike at CREATIVE SAUCE has answered some Questions re the new FREE tier Sonar:

Might be worth reading the comments under the video also. I am sure more observations there

Edited Friday at 04:33 PM by aidan o driscoll

[Sidney Earl Goodroe]

I do not mean to give the impression that the older versions designed for antique OSs would be useable in Windows 10 or 11.

I was simply referring to the really old versions could be activated without allowing the hookup for registration. You could simply cancel the connection and Sonar would activate from the key code.

Sorry, if I missed anyone!

[kitekrazy1]

If it were $49 or less for annual sub I would give it come thought

[Jan Deeben]

If I read correctly, it was $49/year FOR THE FIRST YEAR in the offer, whiwh already was time limited. I belive it's $99/year now. As said earlier, I don't like the subscription model -to ANY sotware by the way. This means that the software maker can change their T&C at any time. Also, many users will -at some point- get used to, or forget about the subscriptions they have and won't unsubscribe the moment they no longer need a software or service. That's part of the subscription business model. 
Go check out for yourself how many subscriptions you have for stuff you no longer use / need...

[X-53mph]

I downloaded the new free Sonar and opened up some old sessions just to check things work, but now it won't let me save unless I login using my Facebook id. 

I already have a band lab login and password, but it won't let me login with that anymore, I have to use Facebook.....but what if I don't want Band lab getting access to my Facebook account? 

Sigh 😔 

[kitekrazy1]

 I pretty much dumped Sonar around 6 as the GUI kept getting cluttered but still bought licenses 7 and on.

So in some ways the "I can't have" kicks in over "not really needed".

The real question is can we still use SPLAT.

Give them credit for making the new Sonar to have some backward compatibility.  Often stuffed shirts would find a way to ruin that.

[User 905133]

3 hours ago, X-53mph said:

I downloaded the new free Sonar and opened up some old sessions just to check things work, but now it won't let me save unless I login using my Facebook id. 

I already have a band lab login and password, but it won't let me login with that anymore, I have to use Facebook.....but what if I don't want Band lab getting access to my Facebook account? 

Sigh 😔 

I am pretty sure others have mentioned similar issues and the advice was to contact Support. 

Edited 19 hours ago by User 905133
edits

[Brian Walton]

37 minutes ago, kitekrazy1 said:

 I pretty much dumped Sonar around 6 as the GUI kept getting cluttered but still bought licenses 7 and on.

So in some ways the "I can't have" kicks in over "not really needed".

The real question is can we still use SPLAT.

Give them credit for making the new Sonar to have some backward compatibility.  Often stuffed shirts would find a way to ruin that.

You are safe with X3 Producer.

But the last version of Sonar Platinum I'm not sure if there is the periodic call back to the mothership or not.  It was the first move to no longer have the serial + registration key, so it needed a Cake server to authenticate in the first place (or the online portal to upload the export file and then import the response file.  It isn't clear to me what that is going to look like long term.

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/4/2025 at 9:24 AM, Brian Walton said:

installed Splat to see what would happen - there was no option to import themes

Not sure what you mean by this.

You installed SONAR Platinum and were expecting it to give you an option to import custom themes?

AFAIK there's never been any dialog or mechanism to import themes, you just put the .STH files in your C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Themes folder (that path is hard-coded) and they show up as available in Preferences.

I only installed SPlat after years of using CbB and creating themes for it. Themes created in newer versions of Theme Editor seem to load fine into SPlat. I guess as with the DAW itself it just ignores the stuff associated with newer features, which is the way to do compatibility, IMO.

I don't think Cakewalk/SONAR/Sonar gets enough credit for how well it handles 2-way project file compatibility. Newer project files usually open okay in older versions. From the limited testing I've done, this goes for themes as well. My up-to-date CbB themes work in SPlat.

This is good news, because with my aging eyes, Sonar's new Squintlight™ interface makes comping more difficult.

[Brian Walton]

42 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Not sure what you mean by this.

You installed SONAR Platinum and were expecting it to give you an option to import custom themes?

AFAIK there's never been any dialog or mechanism to import themes, you just put the .STH files in your C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Themes folder (that path is hard-coded) and they show up as available in Preferences.

I only installed SPlat after years of using CbB and creating themes for it. Themes created in newer versions of Theme Editor seem to load fine into SPlat. I guess as with the DAW itself it just ignores the stuff associated with newer features, which is the way to do compatibility, IMO.

I don't think Cakewalk/SONAR/Sonar gets enough credit for how well it handles 2-way project file compatibility. Newer project files usually open okay in older versions. From the limited testing I've done, this goes for themes as well. My up-to-date CbB themes work in SPlat.

This is good news, because with my aging eyes, Sonar's new Squintlight™ interface makes comping more difficult.

I kind of thought so too but the Themes in that folder don't show up in my actual SPLAT

 

edit:  looks like it is now actually needed in this folder instead:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Brian Walton

[Canopus]

There have been some changes to CbB that makes later versions of themes have display issues in SONAR. The most important one was probably that CbB 2020.04 added Arrangement Tracks, and with the addition of one more tab in the Inspector, they all needed to be more narrow. Thus, user themes updated to CbB 2020.04 and later will not look that great in SONAR.  

I actually had to recreate an old version of my theme Lead recently, with the old tabs, to be able to use it in SONAR Platinum: