New FREE version/tier of the venerable Cakewalk Sonar

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

looks like it is now actually needed in this folder instead

Ah, that must have been where I copied them to before trying it.

[frankjcc]

for the record I just opened Sonar Platinum and it was not authorized, I had to open the " command center " for authorization.

[X-53mph]

10 hours ago, frankjcc said:

for the record I just opened Sonar Platinum and it was not authorized, I had to open the " command center " for authorization.

My Splat is still working fine. Indeed, it's start up time is faster than the new Sonar 😆

[P-Rizzy]

after bandlab raised the price for new sonar subscribers 40 percent, and the regular price of an annual subscription from $149 to $179, the cakewalk subreddit blew up. then a bandlab employee posted that they could pull the free version of sonar at any point, it's a free for all. 

i'm more interested in next, but i'm not certain anymore after all of the things bandlab has been doing lately. what do you long time customers think? i love that they're doing free versions. but i don't want to create a bunch of projects today that I can't open next year when they ditch the free versions. 

[RummieGit]

...has a longtime Cakewalk user ever tried to open Cakewalk By Bandlab projects with an old version of Cakewalk Sonar (e.g. Sonar X3 Studio or Sonar Home Studio)? And if so, what particular differences do the projects opened there show compared to the original?

[kitekrazy1]

42 minutes ago, RummieGit said:

...has a longtime Cakewalk user ever tried to open Cakewalk By Bandlab projects with an old version of Cakewalk Sonar (e.g. Sonar X3 Studio or Sonar Home Studio)? And if so, what particular differences do the projects opened there show compared to the original?

it depends  guess if  you did 32 bit plugins that are no longer installed

my .bun made with Sonar 2 open up in Cakewalk

[CSistine]

29 minutes ago, RummieGit said:

...has a longtime Cakewalk user ever tried to open Cakewalk By Bandlab projects with an old version of Cakewalk Sonar (e.g. Sonar X3 Studio or Sonar Home Studio)? And if so, what particular differences do the projects opened there show compared to the original?

I have reverted from CbB to Sonar Platinum a year ago. So far all my old projects did open without issues, as I had never used new features like the Arranger or Articulation Map (this was intuition!). I even opened some projects in X3  with success.

The only thing is a warning coming up when the project is loaded.

[ptheisen]

I have also recently reverted to Sonar Platinum for opening any existing .cwp files. I have not encountered any issues so far, other than the warning message mentioned by CSistine.

For what it's worth, I started using a completely different DAW for any new projects starting in November of 2023. Another member, azslow3, has made a utility program that can for the most part convert .cwp files and assets into files that open in the other DAW. I have used it a few times already and will be using it to convert any .cwp files as required in the future. It takes a bit of preparation  as far as copying the necessary files to an appropriate location, but I have made a .bat file to simplify that part a fair amount.

[ilunga]

On 6/21/2025 at 1:30 PM, Larry Shelby said:

https://www.cakewalk.com/sonar
(Note the tiny Download for Windows text. Sorry, other platforms.)

"Download for Windows" now only Product Center
https://downloads.bandlab.com/cakewalk/CPC/Win/Cakewalk_Product_Center_Setup_1.0.0.093.exe

 

Edited July 8 by ilunga

[aidan o driscoll]

2 hours ago, ilunga said:

"Download for Windows" now only Product Center
https://downloads.bandlab.com/cakewalk/CPC/Win/Cakewalk_Product_Center_Setup_1.0.0.093.exe

 

YES @ilunga But if you install the Product Center and load, it gives you options to install Cakewalk Sonar etc .. as per image below:

I have an old version of NEXT installed which i am about to uninstall, same goes for CbB ..

 

[sjoens]

On 7/5/2025 at 3:01 PM, frankjcc said:

for the record I just opened Sonar Platinum and it was not authorized, I had to open the " command center " for authorization.

It might need this the 1st time it's installed but my version has never needed it since.

SPlat & CbB have separate Theme Editors.
SPlat themes are in Cakewalk Content/SONAR Themes
CbB themes are in Cakewalk Content/Cakewalk Themes

Themes files are the same format and will load in either DAW but there are minor differences that may need re-editing to work properly.  Missing or added Control Bar Modules, features, button states, some colors, etc.

The Theme Editor is basically a standalone resource editor for Cakewalk products only that reads from - but does not alter - the default TTSImage file.

It's possible to "theme"  older SONAR versions (X3 and prior) using generic resource editors but they won't create a "theme" file.  They alter the default TTSRESxxx file, so backing up the original is a must, which good editors can do automatically.

One limitation with X3 and prior is Track Icons can only be BMPs.  PNG format was added with SPlat.

Edited Thursday at 07:45 AM by sjoens

[P-Rizzy]

it kind of blows my mind that it's nearly impossible to find someone with something positive to say about new sonar or next in this forum or the cakewalk subreddit. it makes me wonder how many people actually use their software. I realize that sonar and next aren't the best daws, but for free, you can't expect that they'll be as good as the top players. ive just been looking for anyone with something positive to reassure me that bandlab won't pull the free versions like with cakewalk by bandlab, so im not left with a bunch of project files i can't open at some point, because even free is too expensive if that's the future. i guess no one feels confident about that, so im better off paying for something better?

im thinking about a daw called something studio that isn't a vegetable. any advice from you more experienced daw users? last week a member here wrote a hateful series of bigoted posts targeted at me after i posted my appreciation for a dev supporting the lgbtq community.  his posts clearly violated this forum's policy.  he promised that he would be my "demon" and the guy still posts here the next day, but i  can be banned for mentioning another daw. that's f'ed up. 

Edited Wednesday at 10:02 PM by P-Rizzy

[frankjcc]

3 hours ago, sjoens said:

It might need this the 1st time it's installed but my version has never needed it since.

 

Must be what happened like the other poster, I installed but did not use since I built my new system.   Would this still leaves the possibility of authorization being prohibited in the future?  

Personally I bought the membership when it was on sale at the end of last year (canceled now),  I tried but did not succeed in learning a new thing, with the hope of being as efficient as I am with the current thing.  I started in the dos days and like some others, I stayed current with all the upgrades.    I strongly dislike the model that is being offered,  I would more than likely pay every year any way for bug fixes and innovations, but that sub thing......

[Starship Krupa]

4 hours ago, P-Rizzy said:

ive just been looking for anyone with something positive to reassure me that bandlab won't pull the free versions like with cakewalk by bandlab, so im not left with a bunch of project files i can't open at some point, because even free is too expensive if that's the future. i guess no one feels confident about that, so im better off paying for something better?

I think to the developers, Sonar is Cakewalk by BandLab with an updated GUI and a change to the licensing model. It's the same codebase they've been maintaining for a very long time, so to them, CbB is just the last version of the DAW that used the bitmap GUI.

Yes, they have announced that Cakewalk by BandLab will soon not be able to validate, but they have provided a free-to-use successor that works exactly like CbB and can freely open any Cakewalk project files.

I understand the FUD, but if you step back a bit, BandLab has provided a free subscription DAW starting in early 2018 and continuing through today, uninterrupted. Their communication and the wording of the announcements could....use some improvement, but they're software engineers, not marketing people and they put it plainly: nothing is guaranteed. BandLab runs the Cakewalk group pretty lean, so that's how it is.

But if you look at the behavior of the company, they have kept it free and continue to do so. They've always been free to pull the plug, it's just that recently they've been saying so more out loud. It's a free subscription. As such they are not able to promise that it will always be free, because BandLab is a big company and management could change. They could go out of business. The Cakewalk IP could once again be sold in liquidation. The future's not ours to see.

My take on it is that if you have been comfortable for the past 7 years with using Cakewalk by BandLab under a free subscription, there's so far no reason to feel any less comfortable with using NuSonar via free subscription. Yes, OMG, BandLab could decide at any time to discontinue free access, but it was that way with CbB too.

Attracting people by offering a free DAW and then yanking their access to it would be the dewshiest of dewsh moves, and so far, BandLab hasn't pulled too many of those. Yes, a lot of people, me included, were very disappointed when NuSonar was released to the payware world as a membership only product, but they still let people use CbB for free, and continued to do that until the arrival of a free-to-use version of NuSonar.

Speaking of free tier Sonar, they've put some resources and effort into coming up with a way to have a free version and then implementing it.

In the event that this should ever happen, I feel confident that users would get plenty of time to save their stuff off as audio stems and MIDI files or feed it to the converter program or however they would want to migrate to a different DAW.

It'd be a pain in the asterisk, but no more so than moving to another DAW for any other reason. The only difference is when you do it. If you do it now, you're guaranteed the PITA right now. If you wait and see, the PITA might be years off, it might never even come.

No matter what DAW is your main, I think it's good to have another DAW around and at least keep rudimentary skills up on it.

[sjoens]

5 hours ago, frankjcc said:

Would this still leaves the possibility of authorization being prohibited in the future? 

  

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

They've always been free to pull the plug

Even my SPlat "Membership" says  Valid through infinity  -  not "To Infinity and beyond!"  

Edited Thursday at 06:32 AM by sjoens

[Maria P]

Question

The elastique pro stretcher has to do with stretching audio clips manually also found in  audio track properties or is it an Audio Snap thing?
The first two have been very useful to me. Audio Snap always seemed too complicated for me.

Also, I have a paid version of Sonar but still use CbB because of color customizing missing feature, particularly for the Piano Roll View. I had contacted support, obviously it's not their priority to add that

 

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, Maria P said:

The elastique pro stretcher has to do with stretching audio clips manually also found in  audio track properties or is it an Audio Snap thing?
The first two have been very useful to me.

The Elastique Pro algorithm is used in the clip stretching operations you mention, not sure if it's also used by Audio Snap. Elastique Pro is only one of the multiple algorithms Sonar users may choose in Preferences. Free tier users have to use one of the others for clip stretching.

We'll still have our choice of stretching algorithms, just one fewer. Same with dithering, there are still multiple dithering algorithms to choose from, just not POW-R.

IIRC, Elastique Pro is something that was added to Cakewalk by BandLab after its initial release, first 6mos. to a year after it came out.

If you're concerned, you have a few weeks left to do audio testing of the algorithms to see if there's an audible difference.

3 hours ago, Maria P said:

I have a paid version of Sonar but still use CbB because of color customizing missing feature, particularly for the Piano Roll View. I had contacted support, obviously it's not their priority to add that

Given that the removal of individual color customizations in Sonar is one of the top complaints (along with smaller text), it may become more of a priority once CbB is no longer an option.

The only way anything can become a higher priority is if the developers know that people want it, so please post in the Feedback forum if you have any complaints or suggestions.

There are existing topics in that forum that you can bump or you can just make your own new topic.

The developers don't read posts in the Deals forum unless they get notified that there's been a rules violation.

[Maria P]

Starship Krupa thank you for the detailed answer about stretching.

I have already made a topic a few months ago and contacted support for that matter.
 

 

[Xoo]

9 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Given that the removal of individual color customizations in Sonar is one of the top complaints (along with smaller text), it may become more of a priority once CbB is no longer an option.

I think they'll have to revert to bitmapped graphics (and soon before they add new functionality so they can seamlessly reuse the existing themes from CbB).

[aidan o driscoll]

Am I noticing changes in CW Sonat since this latest update - Cakewalk_Sonar_Release_Setup_31.07.0.084?

1. The 15 sec timer seems to have dropped to about 5 or 6 seconds?

2. When you close sonar after that initial timer screen and reopen, the timer DOES NOT happen again.

The release notes say "The Free-Tier of Sonar does not display the membership promo page when successively restarting the application."

Edited 14 hours ago by aidan o driscoll