What does CbB Activations end 8/1/2025 mean for me?

[Roy Slough]

I am getting this message when I start Cakewalk by Bandlab. Will this stop me using CbB after this date?
I do not really understand what is meant by activations, it is already activated or does it require repeat activations after a period of time?

Also can someone confirm this is 1st August 2025 (in UK this date would be 8th January 2025)

Thanks 

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/10/2025 at 1:20 AM, Cint MMedia said:

didn’t everyone assume this would only concern the end of support?

No.

On 7/10/2025 at 1:20 AM, Cint MMedia said:

transitioning to the new Sonar should be a process that doesn't immediately disrupt productivity.

It didn't, for anyone who paid attention to the notices. Cakewalk by BandLab and Sonar Free Tier have overlapped for weeks. Install them both side by side, ensure that everything works in Sonar, and proceed with no interruption. That's what most users did.

On 7/10/2025 at 1:20 AM, Cint MMedia said:

that lifetime license, with everything it included, is now totally worthless

It's no more "worthless" today than it was a year ago. Sonar Free Tier is able to use the vast assortment of Cakewalk and 3rd-party plug-ins that came with SONAR Platinum. All of those licenses are still valid. The core program, SONAR, Cakewalk by BandLab, and now Sonar, has changed, but still uses the same project format that Cakewalk by BandLab did.

For that matter, SONAR Platinum should still work as well as it did when you bought the lifetime license.

It seems that you experienced a bug with the installation of Sonar that somehow broke your ProChannel presets, that's unfortunate, but it's neither by design nor is it common.

On 7/11/2025 at 12:51 PM, Cint MMedia said:

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?

Contact Cakewalk/BandLab support about the issue, if you haven't already. Installing Sonar definitely should NOT break anything about an existing SONAR installation.

Do the presets buttons work in Sonar?

Edited August 10 by Starship Krupa

[John King]

After 8/1 online activation will be discontinued , but for me, I'm already activated and signed out of Bandlab (to avoid the Sonar upgrade nagging).  I also have my activation exported for offline activation, in case I have to reinstall Cakewalk for some reason.  If I go to Help, About,  it shows it's activated and since I'm signed out it shouldn't be able to prevent me from using it.

Edited July 8 by John King

[BobXX]

One thing is that free CbB "support and development is discontinued", a totally different thing is the fact that it will be on purpose stopped working.  Why do this ??  Just eliminate the activation and leave CbB  working at user's risk !

I'm using Cakewalk @home since it was just "Cakewalk" ~20 years ago, then Sonar Producer & Platinum (free and purchased updates) with a lot of plugins added. Not for professional use.

I was going to purchase the new Sonar Premium, to get more features and contribute to its development, I'm happy to, 
but I stopped because I don't like pay-per-use software and free/purchased versions will no longer work.

Hope to have misunderstood something.

EDIT 14/08/2025: 
there's a Sonar free tier available with less features than the paid version (IMHO that's fine), from my test completely compatible with CbB. During installation it asks to import CbB settings to (suggested).
Both free/paid versions have a new graphical interface (1 fixed theme) not particularly pleasant to see because it's flat, dark and more confusing. But it was my understanding  that is because it was rewritten to allow big screen and GPU acceleration.
So probably there will be some improvement in the near future.

Edited August 14 by BobXX