Do Themes Not Work in Sonar Now?

[johnegenes@gmail.com]

Hello,

Just getting my feet wet with Cakewalk Sonar Ver 2025.07  I'm a longtime user of Cakewalk, going all the way back to floppy disks. My go-to version has mostly been Sonar 8.5, but I do have X2 and Platinum, along with the Bandlab version. My new version, 2025.07 is the full subscription version, so I have the Cakewalk Product Center installed and have installed various plugins, etc. 
From what I've read, I should be able to import Themes into Cakewalk, but it doesn't seem to be able to do that. I see no listing for "Themes" in the Preferences area (under "Customization"). I've attached a snapshop of my Prefs window. 

I can import Colors, from my old Sonar 8.5, but the results aren't very good. I really don't like the themes that come with this program and would like to change them. I do have the Cakewalk Theme Editor, which works in Bandlab, but not in Cakewalk Sonar. I guess at this point I'm just a bit confused. I thought I was UPGRADING from Cakewalk Bandlab to the paid version of Cakewalk Sonar, but I don't really see much improvement, except for some plugins (most of which I already had). 

So, my question is: how do you re-skin the paid version of Cakewalk Sonar? Thanks. 
--john

[Colin Nicholls]

Hi John, unfortunately that is correct. Themes are not supported in the new Sonar. It uses an entirely different graphics/display engine (vector based, not bitmaps) as part of the High-DPI support.

It's early days, though, and BandLab/Cakewalk haven't ruled out bringing back some form of user-customization for colors in Sonar. 

I fully expect to see some kind of theming back in the product in the near future but it won't be based on the previous theming engine, and those Cakewalk themes will not be compatible. 

The built-in themes (more than just Tungsten and Mercury!) do a good job and being generally acceptable to most people but of course there's always something that, if only we could tweak slightly, would make it perfect 🙂

I hope that helps.

[Dave C]

My first time back in the forums since Sonar X1-2. Been using Cakewalk since Pro Audio 9.

I get that the custom themes had to be removed to go to vector graphics. Not an issue.

The removal of controls to set some very basic colors on the interface is however, very frustrating. If I cannot customize piano roll background, track names, etc, or the main highlight color in a theme (orange? purple? come on thats not going to work for everyone) it is not just annoying but makes visual use of the software fatiguing and slows workflow.

Cakewalk, please step up and put this basic feature back ASAP, or at least provide more default themes like Mercury but with a dark PRV like Tungsten has, and please let the highlight color be set by user. I think most would be happy with some basic control here, and not sure we need another total theme editor, just let us pick major interface colors again! New Sonar coming from CbB should not have been released with this removed in my opinion, especially when it is advertised as the same or better but is not in a couple aspects. I was actually surprised to find this change when I installed and realized this ability was gone, since I am not sure how colors that were not part of theme editor before CbB were not removed.

I am not thrilled about the subscription model, but I hope it is worth it to invest in this future for Cakewalk, and that we get some updates in a resonable time, while Next is also likely consuming a lot of resources.

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Dave C

[dougalex]

1 hour ago, Dave C said:

New Sonar coming from CbB should not have been released with this removed in my opinion, especially when it is advertised as the same or better

I totally sympathize and understand those who have need for color tweaking... HOWEVER
There are also many of us who have never once customized any colors. I have always just picked the canned theme I liked the best and got right to work.
After all, someone on the programming team took some amount of time to find something that works well. I know I am not going to do any better, particularly when it already "works fine for me" and "I want to make music rather than tweak colors".
So... I am glad they released new Sonar. I'm like, yeah! Let's GO-O-O-O-O-O!!!!!!😃

Edited 11 hours ago by dougalex