New FREE version/tier of the venerable Cakewalk Sonar

[Kamikaze]

Downside seems to be,

Some functions not available

This 15 second countdown to evaluation option every time you open the it up. 

This banner at the top of every session taking up real estate and niggling at you.

Monthly sign-in 

But other wise it looks good to me. When I'm ready to pay for a license and I see a deal option, I may upgrade. When it expires I can revert back to the Evaluation option until the next deal comes around and I'm feeling it's worth paying. 

 

 

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, Wookiee said:

It was only with the last iteration of the SONAR family,  Platinum, Professional & Studio did we see the theme editor arrive.

That's what I thought, that it was a relatively recent feature.

Theme Editor was fun while it lasted, but as far as making the DAW sufficient to my needs, not necessary. I don't have to have REAPER or CbB-level control over the program's look to be happy.

I need to be able to make out my measure and beat lines, and their colors weren't determined by Theme Editor. It was Color Preferences. Although the interface to the feature is still there, it no longer has any effect on parts of the UI that I want/need to modify in order to make them legible. I can't figure out what elements it even CAN control any more.

I have a feeling that Color Preferences dates back a good many Cakewalk/SONAR/Sonar revisions. I'll take a guess and say at least as early as the first X, probably earlier. The dialog has that "party like it's 1999" look about it.

One thing that gives me some hope is that among the current fixed color schemes we can get an idea of what screen elements can have different colors. If we're allowed to once again choose our own custom colors, the elements that I'm most interested in tweaking should be tweakable.

The aforementioned clip backgrounds and lines, text color in the Browser, various buttons, various backgrounds. As soon as they let us at it I'll be working on my own custom color schemes/themes.

I hope that it's just a matter of the devs wanting to rework the Color Preferences dialog panel to match the new Sonar look before we get it back. I didn't realize until I used CbB how much more inspiring a program is when I can set the colors myself.

[Chaps]

I've tried the Free Sonar a couple of times now. The first time it I uninstalled it because the menu language switched to French after a couple of uses. It also changed the menu language in CbBL to French. Yesterday I tried it again and installed it with Cakewalk Product Center and it changed to menu language to German, also changing the menu language in CbBL. Very perplexing. Maybe it reacted poorly to my VPN (which are using USA servers). It's simple enough to change it back to English but is still annoying. Not sure I'll keep it because I really don't like the way it looks. I'm going to really miss CbBL when it's gone.

[ZincT]

Hmm, just tried the Sonar evaluation. After the timer countdown I clicked on Continue Evaluation and...nothing - just went back to the desktop.

Tried again after a reboot - same thing. I have had most major DAWs installed and never had a problem like this before. 

Update: Someone on KVR just pointed me to this thread in case anyone else is having startup problems...

 

Edited 16 hours ago by ZincT

[sjoens]

Color options have been around since the early days of SONAR.  Sonar 8.5 had a ton.  X series actually broke them.  Some in the list didn't work but you could import a color set from 8.5 or earlier and get them back.  New Sonar almost closed the door with no option to import from earlier versions.

[Starship Krupa]

3 minutes ago, sjoens said:

Color options have been around since the early days of SONAR.  Sonar 8.5 had a ton.  X series actually broke them.  Some in the list didn't work but you could import a color set from 8.5 or earlier and get them back.  New Sonar almost closed the door....

Hmm, so with each big move in the UI, Color Preferences has become less capable of allowing the user to set colors? Disturbing.🤔

Between Theme Editor and Color Preferences, I was able to get CbB to mostly bend to my will, color wise. There were some elements that were impervious to color customization, notably the Browser background.

With NuSonar, the Browser background color can now be changed, you just have to be a developer to change it.😆

[pwalpwal]

5 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

With NuSonar, the Browser background color can now be changed, you just have to be a developer to change it.😆

let me just hard-code that for you sir

[sjoens]

AFAIK all GUI elements have an image or color assignment in order to be visible. Whether they are user changeable or not depends on the developer.

Interestingly, Mixcraft has no user theme editor but it is set up to apply custom skins.  Its GUI files are all available thru an image folder and INI file (simple text file) where you can recreate the entire GUI at will - with some limitations.  By editing the INI file (at your own risk), some of the images can actually be replaced with a color and vise versa.  Colors can either be solid or fades.  PNGs can be replaced with BMPs, and so on.  Cakewalk's Studio Instruments have a similar approach with separate Graphic, Text, and  Layout CWRES files (simple text files) allowing  you to rearrange the entire layout, tho the image formats can't be changed.

Edited 15 hours ago by sjoens

[CSistine]

17 hours ago, Promidi said:

This is a direct quote from Noel Borthwick on a Facebook group.

"Activation automatically renews at the end of the actual month"

This is only half the truth! It is if you are always online!!!

I have seen a lot of people having trouble with the required browser login since the developers introduced this in CbB! It's following the motto "if it's simple make it more complex"!

2. The complains about having no ThemeEditor anymore: Democrathy in the user - company relation is not modern anymore! Nowadays developers force a lot of things to their users, if they like it or not!

Edited 4 hours ago by CSistine