New FREE version/tier of the venerable Cakewalk Sonar

[User 905133]

53 minutes ago, aidan o driscoll said:

Am I noticing changes in CW Sonar since this latest update . . . . 

Yes, much nicer to have shorter wait times for the Free Tier. I am getting initial countdowns from around 8 or 9 and then just the button (no countdown) later on.

Clicking on Workspaces seems to have its own independent countdown timer (from around 8 or 9) just like the initial splash page. During the same session a second click just had the button (Use Free Tier, no wait timer).

People who don't like long waits should appreciate this!  Thanks!!!

[Starship Krupa]

12 hours ago, Xoo said:

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).

Really?

I don't see that happening. First, for the reason you state, they've already added plenty to the program, like the stuff in the new Track Manager and the business about the free tier. Everything about the free tier notifications is via the vector UI. Resizable Console modules is only doable with the vector UI.

All Sonar needs is to restore the size of text (and some graphical elements like note value buttons) in certain locations and give users control over some colors.

I've been watching the factory color schemes closely. Theoretically, every screen element that is different between any 2 color schemes is a screen element where the user can be given control over its color.

So far that would include the main program and view frames and backgrounds, various text and backgrounds such as track names, button text and highlights, and Browser text. Although our once proud order has been driven into hiding if not outright extinction, my fellow .STH Lords and I could do some cool schemes with only access to those colors.

Control Bar buttons still have the same 4 states (inactive, rollover, pressed, active). One guess I have is that where each of those buttons used to require 5 different bitmap images, instead of images those are now the same image in 4 different colors. Given access to those colors, I could make schemes that would help the accessibility issues Sonar has for other people with vision problems.

[Xoo]

Well, apart from the subscription/full license discussion (let's not go there, OK? :-)), the look and feel is *the* big issue that is being raised in the forum.  It's a really big issue for a lot of people, and I think it would be a good idea to take a serious rain check and go "yeah, this approach doesn't work, we need to reverse the change".  I think that would also reassure people that the Bakers are listening and taking usability issues really seriously.

FWIW, personally, apart from a few very minor things (and text size isn't one of them, even though I've had to start wearing glasses for screen use in the last few months and I don't have huge monitors), I don't see the new UI as a step backwards (or forwards for that matter - it's not that different to my mind).

[Doug Steinschneider]

Heads up, I know most of you would never let the following happen, but I think it's worth mentioning.

My singer was mixing some live tracks off the board from a recent performance using Sonar Free. He worked for hours on a song without saving and left it open for me to check out which was the next day. I thought he did good work so I clicked Save Project and was told you can't save until you activate Sonar. I logged onto to Bandlab but that wasn't enough, Sonar insisted the program had to be updated before activation could happen. So that mix went out the window 😒.

I hope they offer a perpetual license soon.

Edited Thursday at 10:15 PM by Doug Steinschneider

[Amberwolf]

EDIT:  Noel pointed out that Sonar doesn't work this way, *and* has a warning at startup (for non-activated versions?) so the situation couldn't (?) happen.  

 

Left my original post as-is below for reference:

******************************************

 

That's complete data loss, a situation that should never be allowed to happen by the code itself.  I would report this as a data loss bug.  The bakers may disagree, but:

If it could happen in the situation you had there (in a perhaps never-activated install of demo? post isn't clear about that part), it could also happen anytime a reactivation becomes necessary for any reason, including a program fault where it "forgets" it was activated because of whatever issue.

So a user could be working along, doing things normally on what for them has been an already-activated version of Sonar that the've been using for however long without issue, then they go to save, and because it has somehow become inactivated (reason doesn't matter), it has to be reactivated before they can save.   If at that time, the version being run has a required update available*** when activation is attempted, and it wont' activate and thus won't save before updating, all the user's unsaved work is now lost.

**** (are they all required?  Or can you skip them? I don't have direct experience with Sonar's updates, or have it to wait for them to come up and then test)

 

 

Data loss is a really big problem, to me (and presumably to most artists and other computer users).

 

I do everything I can to prevent it, saving often, always saving as new files never over the top of one, etc., using autosave, versioning, everything any program has to make it harder to lose data.   (and copying to external drives that are not connected except during backups, etc).   

But...a situation like the above could, even with frequent saves, still create a dataloss situation, if it came up. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Amberwolf

[CSistine]

9 hours ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

Heads up, I know most of you would never let the following happen, but I think it's worth mentioning.

My singer was mixing some live tracks off the board from a recent performance using Sonar Free. He worked for hours on a song without saving and left it open for me to check out which was the next day. I thought he did good work so I clicked Save Project and was told you can't save until you activate Sonar. I logged onto to Bandlab but that wasn't enough, Sonar insisted the program had to be updated before activation could happen. So that mix went out the window 😒.

I hope they offer a perpetual license soon.

I advise everyone to ditch the new Sonar exactly because of such reasons. It is very risky, especially if you want to use projects in a longer term. But YMMV, use it to your own risk!

[pedwal wally wally wha]

12 hours ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

Heads up, I know most of you would never let the following happen, but I think it's worth mentioning.

My singer was mixing some live tracks off the board from a recent performance using Sonar Free. He worked for hours on a song without saving and left it open for me to check out which was the next day. I thought he did good work so I clicked Save Project and was told you can't save until you activate Sonar. I logged onto to Bandlab but that wasn't enough, Sonar insisted the program had to be updated before activation could happen. So that mix went out the window 😒.

I hope they offer a perpetual license soon.

are the raw recorded WAV files in the audio folder?

[aidan o driscoll]

14 hours ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

Heads up, I know most of you would never let the following happen, but I think it's worth mentioning.

My singer was mixing some live tracks off the board from a recent performance using Sonar Free. He worked for hours on a song without saving and left it open for me to check out which was the next day. I thought he did good work so I clicked Save Project and was told you can't save until you activate Sonar. I logged onto to Bandlab but that wasn't enough, Sonar insisted the program had to be updated before activation could happen. So that mix went out the window 😒.

I hope they offer a perpetual license soon.

As @pedwal wally wally wha said - check the AUDIO folder insire the cakewalk project folder. In there should be the WAVs of the audio takes? If so, at least you can rebuild the project from them.

Also for project files ( .CWP ) isnt there an auto save on? If so I think the autosaves go into the "\Cakewalk Projects\Audio Data" folder?

 

 

Edited 16 hours ago by aidan o driscoll

[Doug Steinschneider]

3 hours ago, pedwal wally wally wha said:

are the raw recorded WAV files in the audio folder?

Yes - they were imported from a recording made on a digital mixer. We did screen shots of the plugin settings and the volume automation lanes but still a lot of work to get that mix back. The project had been saved after importing the raw tracks. 

[Doug Steinschneider]

2 hours ago, aidan o driscoll said:

Also for project files ( .CWP ) isnt there an auto save on? If so I think the autosaves go into the "\Cakewalk Projects\Audio Data" folder?

 

 

Good idea on turning Autosave on

[Colin Nicholls]

16 hours ago, Doug Steinschneider said:

He worked for hours on a song without saving and left it open for me to check out which was the next day

This has nothing to do with Sonar and a lot to do with very stupid choices

[Jeremy Oakes]

9 hours ago, CSistine said:

I advise everyone to ditch the new Sonar exactly because of such reasons. It is very risky, especially if you want to use projects in a longer term. But YMMV, use it to your own risk!

What utter rubbish. I’ve used it for a year, with zero issues. Doesn’t sound like you have ……

And I think its fair to say : user error,  not app error. Who in his right mind works on a project without saving it regularly ? I do the same sort of thing with our group, the first thing i do after importing each single file is SAVE.

You may not be aware, but Sonar is non destructive, so there is a good chance the audio files are somewhere on the HDD. 

BTW, If you don’t like Sonar, why are you here ? Curious mind.

 

[T Boog]

16 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

I do everything I can to prevent it, saving often, always saving as new files never over the top of one

I save often when I'm working (ala Ctrl + S) then every hour or so I save a copy as a bundle file to my E drive. And every other day or so I save another bundle file copy to a flash drive (a back up for my backup)

Wolf mentions '"saving as new files never on top of one". I usually keep editing on the same project for a couple weeks. Then I eventually save it as a new project with a new name. 

Is this a bad practice...  editing on the same project file over and over for a couple weeks? Should I be saving as a new project more often?

Forgive my ignorance but I dont understand computers and files as good as most of you here.

[Jeremy Oakes]

1 hour ago, T Boog said:

I save often when I'm working (ala Ctrl + S) then every hour or so I save a copy as a bundle file to my E drive. And every other day or so I save another bundle file copy to a flash drive (a back up for my backup)

Wolf mentions '"saving as new files never on top of one". I usually keep editing on the same project for a couple weeks. Then I eventually save it as a new project with a new name. 

Is this a bad practice...  editing on the same project file over and over for a couple weeks? Should I be saving as a new project more often?

Forgive my ignorance but I dont understand computers and files as good as most of you here.

Whatever rocks your boat.

I sometimes use the File/Save function (and sometimes Ctl+S) but every 10 mn autosave kicks in. When recording or playing back it doesn't. So its not as intrusive as some imagine it is.

BUT in the Control Bar one of my buttons is programmed Save - very easy to hit it every important step.

Hiting save has never let me down (more than a year on Sonar, plus going back to Pro9. I will save as if its necessary, but as Sonar is non destructive, you can always recall a file from a previous take.

Of course YMMV

J 

Edited 8 hours ago by Jeremy Oakes
Attrocious spelling - sorry

[Noel Borthwick]

22 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

That's complete data loss, a situation that should never be allowed to happen by the code itself.  I would report this as a data loss bug.  The bakers may disagree, but:

If it could happen in the situation you had there (in a perhaps never-activated install of demo? post isn't clear about that part), it could also happen anytime a reactivation becomes necessary for any reason, including a program fault where it "forgets" it was activated because of whatever issue.

So a user could be working along, doing things normally on what for them has been an already-activated version of Sonar that the've been using for however long without issue, then they go to save, and because it has somehow become inactivated (reason doesn't matter), it has to be reactivated before they can save.   If at that time, the version being run has a required update available*** when activation is attempted, and it wont' activate and thus won't save before updating, all the user's unsaved work is now lost.

**** (are they all required?  Or can you skip them? I don't have direct experience with Sonar's updates, or have it to wait for them to come up and then test)

 

 

Data loss is a really big problem, to me (and presumably to most artists and other computer users).

 

I do everything I can to prevent it, saving often, always saving as new files never over the top of one, etc., using autosave, versioning, everything any program has to make it harder to lose data.   (and copying to external drives that are not connected except during backups, etc).   

But...a situation like the above could, even with frequent saves, still create a dataloss situation, if it came up. 

Completely incorrect information here. There is no way the program will switch from an activated state to a non active state mid session. The OP ignored the warning on opening the app and continued to work and saved much later. I'll add a persistent nag but if the user refuses to read warnings and doesnt save thats not the programs fault.

[Amberwolf]

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Completely incorrect information here. There is no way the program will switch from an activated state to a non active state mid session.

Ok, that's good to know. 

I don't know how it works internally, so this is useful information.   Thank you. 

 

I added a note at the beginning of my post that you'd quoted to advise that the scenario couldn't happen, but left the orignal below taht for reference. 

 

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

The OP ignored the warning on opening the app and continued to work and saved much later. I'll add a persistent nag but if the user refuses to read warnings and doesnt save thats not the programs fault.

That's true; I didn't know there was a warning, or I wouldn't have typed all that up. (I'm not using the modern versions; I'm still back at SPlat and earlier). 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Amberwolf

[Amberwolf]

7 hours ago, T Boog said:

I save often when I'm working (ala Ctrl + S) then every hour or so I save a copy as a bundle file to my E drive. And every other day or so I save another bundle file copy to a flash drive (a back up for my backup)

Wolf mentions '"saving as new files never on top of one". I usually keep editing on the same project for a couple weeks. Then I eventually save it as a new project with a new name. 

Is this a bad practice...  editing on the same project file over and over for a couple weeks? Should I be saving as a new project more often?

Couple of reasons I do it the way I do:

 

First is whether or not you are worried about the small (but always possible) risk of this low-probability-high-impact event:

Let's say you are in the middle of saving a file, and the computer reboots, program or computer crashes, power shuts off, etc.  For almost all programs I've ever used, in this event, the file isn't finished saving, but it already overwrote the existing file.  (some programs actuallly write to a totally new file, then delete the old one, or evne just "hide" it from you when using the program (but it still exists and is visible in Windows Explorer, etc).  I don't know how the modern Sonar does it's saves, so it might avoid this situation (and it has Versioning, which would also avoid it). 

In that specific event or set of conditions, unless you have a copy of the file somewhere else, your work is now gone.

It happened to me, once (long before Cakewalk or Sonar), and I ensured it would never happen again.

 

Second, it depends on how you work.

If, like me, you want to be able to go back to any version of any project (in whatever program), you can SaveAs to a new file everyt time you save, and save at every point you make any change you might want to undo.   This leaves you free to do any kind of edit, deletion, etc, and experiment freely, and then later completely change your mind and go back to whatever point you want, either to start over, or to just copy that stuff back into the current version of the project.   

 

So I use a filename system that is the date, the number of the project I started taht day (as I might get ideas for several), and then the version of the project,  and then any notes about why I'm saving right there.

An example might be something like 071825 000003 000325C -- mix edit changes - bass - strings - vocals.   

 

In Sonar, there's "versioning" available (I assume this still exists in modern versions ) so that you can just do your usual Save or Ctrl-S, and it will automatically deal with saving older versions as files with a different version number and keeping however many around that you specify (up to 999 I think).  

But most programs don't have that, and I developed my system before it existed, so I just use my system to safeguard myself.  I do actually have it turned on, but since I disabled the save button in the toolbar and took it out of the File menu,  so I only have SaveAs, and I bound that to Ctrl-S instead of Save...it doesn't ever use the versioning.

 

 

 

[Amberwolf]

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Completely incorrect information here.

BTW...if everything I said was wrong...why did you "like" my post?  😕

[Jacques Boileau]

48 minutes ago, Amberwolf said:

BTW...if everything I said was wrong...why did you "like" my post?  😕

He didn't like your post, he gave it a thumb down. If you click on the icon it will reveal who gave the likes and who gave the thumb down.