This explains a lot about Cakewalk/Sonar

[vintagevibe]

"Hoover cites the prosumer market as the biggest part of Cakewalk’s current business, which it serves with “professional products that are geared towards non-professionals who want the very best"

I've said before that Sonar is marketed and designed for non-professionals. Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure it's a huge market. They just have never admitted until know (to my knowledge). This explains things such as:

1) No interest in updating staff view to actually be useful.
2) Focus on "content" which mainly consists in-house stuff that is usually of little use to anyone who has any modern sample libraries or 3rd party FX. It's fine for a hobbyist who wants everything in one purchase.
3) Tendency to bounce around, discontinuing or never properly developing features that are then dropped.
4) The forum. I don't even know where to start. You either love Sonar or your a troll. The moderators are constantly getting into little spats with each other. Cakewalk basically took some people who use the Sonar forum as their social life and made them moderators. You can even find Craig Anderton calling people trolls and making fun of frustrated newbies.

Nothing wrong with being a hobbyist. It's good now that Cakewalk is forthcoming about their target demographic so professionals can better evaluate their product.

Yes, professional work can be done on the least capable DAW so let's get that out of the way.

[chk071]

Their sales are very aggressive, so i'm not surprised really. But it takes more to really be able to be competetive on the market. As you said, you need to maintain your products. Z3TA 2 hasn't seen an update since 2011, and it's pretty much a bug fest. Z3TA 1's last version is even buggier. Sonar X3 was about the only host which crashed on me a couple of times, doing the most simple tasks. I think their way is wrong. Instead of selling their products to every bum who can afford it (sorry), they should rather aim to make quaility products. Because in the long run, you will only anger and lose your customers that way. I probably will end up upgrading my Z3TA 1 copy to version 2 again (I've sold my Cakewalk stuff here some time ago, but still had another copy of Z3TA 1) if it's on sale for 20 or 25 €. I wouldn't pay more than that because i know that it is bug prone. And that even though it's one of the most complete synths there is. It's really a monster. But running into bugs is a waste of time for me when i know that there is stuff out there which is of higher quality.

[deastman]

I'm curious exactly which product he's referring to in that quote. The majority of Apple's business is also in consumer products, but they still make a Mac Pro. Surely you aren't suggesting that the top tier version of Sonar is not a professional tool?

As for their forum? I never go there, except a couple of times when I've needed help with something specific.

[khanyz]

I learnt everything I needed to know about Cakewalk when I started testing (Z3TA 2) for them. I was given an incomplete product, which was still under development and this was a beta test, leading to a release candidate. With that kind of lax testing it's no wonder their products are so buggy. That was the final straw after X1 being such a downgrade from 8.5 (for me at least) so I stopped buying products from them after that. I thought they'd gotten better after the 8 to 8.5 improvements, but fool me once...

[JoseC.]

"Hoover cites the prosumer market as the biggest part of Cakewalk’s current business, which it serves with “professional products that are geared towards non-professionals who want the very best"

I've said before that Sonar is marketed and designed for non-professionals. Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure it's a huge market. They just have never admitted until know (to my knowledge). This explains things such as:

1) No interest in updating staff view to actually be useful.
2) Focus on "content" which mainly consists in-house stuff that is usually of little use to anyone who has any modern sample libraries or 3rd party FX. It's fine for a hobbyist who wants everything in one purchase.
3) Tendency to bounce around, discontinuing or never properly developing features that are then dropped.
4) The forum. I don't even know where to start. You either love Sonar or your a troll. The moderators are constantly getting into little spats with each other. Cakewalk basically took some people who use the Sonar forum as their social life and made them moderators. You can even find Craig Anderton calling people trolls and making fun of frustrated newbies.

Nothing wrong with being a hobbyist. It's good now that Cakewalk is forthcoming about their target demographic so professionals can better evaluate their product.

Yes, professional work can be done on the least capable DAW so let's get that out of the way.

According to you, any DAW without a staff editor must be absolutely non pro. Funny, because that should make Sonar "more pro " than several other DAWs widely used by people making a living with them. Sonar has a staff editor, and Cakewalk keeps it updated although it has been made pretty clear that they will never make it a full scoring editor. That is much more than all those "unprofessional" DAWs mentioned above.

About dropped features, I cannot think of any disappearing functionality beyond workflow changes (oh, yes, Studioware panel design, although old panels are still supported). In fact, I believe that one of the reasons why some people think that Sonar is "bloated" is precisely because it maintains pretty much everything and it is a very deep program.

About forum trolls, well, some are, in fact, trolls. Other are "frustrated newbies" ( nice euphemism) with personal intercommunication issues, who after a couple of posts ranting about something that they will not clearly explain disappear again forever. Those are really few, most people asking for help get it, and the forums themselves have improved very much in terms of REAL bugs detecting, replicating and properly reporting, and the developers (from CTO Noel Borthwick down to other members of the developing team) are much more involved in discussing issues than in any other DAW forum I've participated in.

Truth is, Sonar has become a very good program, and it is in no way "the least capable", whatever you might mean with that. Since the Gibson aquisition things are running more smoothly than ever, and it seems to translate into user satisfaction.

[MrFurious]

I'm sure _all_ DAWs get most of their business from non-professionals. There simply isn't enough pro's to support the all the big players in the business, be it Cakewalk (Sonar), Steinberg (Cubase), Apple (Logic) or Image-line (FL-studio)

Many years ago, when using pro-tools involved owning very expensive hardware from the same company, they could survive on pros alone, but today its another story.

[jinotsuh]

I agree with everything young JoseC says. Reading some of the other stuff, it's as if another product/company/community is being talked about, or that the 'old days' is being recalled with no knowledge of how things actually are today. I always read about the bugs in Z3TA2, even on the Cakewalk forums, i'm sure they are there, nothing is bug free, but I have never come across them, but I guess I don't dig really deep into editing/creating new sounds, just presets with a bit of tweaking to suit my needs.

I have found X3e to be one of if not the most solid DAW environment I have used, and to be honest Sonar Platinum leaves it for dead.

As for the forums, in general I find them to be probably the most helpful of any of the forums I visit. They do get people there who are obvious trolls, that's just how it is, how they deal with them is fine, even the obvious ones are given the benefit of the doubt, until they really show there true colours and start abusing etc. As for Mr Anderton, I have always found him to be VERY long suffering, very helpful, and very slow to anger, but when he gets pushed past the limit, he does react, as would any of us, however his reactions seem to still be tempered with a large degree of restraint. Also note, that he has recently apologized, saying that recently he may have acted a little harsher than he would normally to an incident, and gave the reason, due to personal issues, 2 deaths to close members of his family in close succession, a fact which all forum regulars would be aware of.

As for the forum 'Hosts' I have no issues with them, there are those who have their noses out of joint it seems, and have been very vocal about it, perhaps it's because they or their candidate was not chosen for the job ? As for either love Sonar or you are a troll, well all I can say is you must be drawing your conclusion from hear say, and not actual experience, or perhaps a one off situation, because I often bring up things regarding Reaper, how certain things people are wanting to achieve are achieved much easier in Reaper, or make snide, negative remarks about the state of Rapture Pro, how it's release state was so bad, how it continues to be so.

Anyway, that's my take on this thread, as someone who ACTUALLY visits the Cakewalk forums daily, and see's what goes on first hand. Take that as you will.

[chk071]

I agree with everything young JoseC says. Reading some of the other stuff, it's as if another product/company/community is being talked about, or that the 'old days' is being recalled with no knowledge of how things actually are today. I always read about the bugs in Z3TA2, even on the Cakewalk forums, i'm sure they are there, nothing is bug free, but I have never come across them, but I guess I don't dig really deep into editing/creating new sounds, just presets with a bit of tweaking to suit my needs.

They're mostly pretty easy to reproduce. E.g. just try to assign a LFO to one of the waveshapers, then draw some notes in your sequencer, play the notes with the LFO modulating, then stop playback, then rewind, and play again. The LFO modulation should stop working. In my case even until i closed the project, or close the host. There were also problems with the arpeggiator, but i can't quite recall those now. And Z3TA reportedly could produce a ear and speaker blasting tone totally randomly, so tough luck if you don't use a limiter.

[jinotsuh]

Like I said, for what I do, and I use it quite often, I don't come into contact with these things, and like I said it's probably because I just skim the top, with minor tweaking of presets to suit. I play guitars and drums, I have neither the time nor inclination to learn how to create my own sounds and all that jazz within Synths, very happy to use what's there with a little tweak where needed. Guess I'm lucky in that respect

[chk071]

Fair enough. I guess version 1 is more bug loaded anyway, at least i discovered a few more bugs than on version 2...

[EvilDragon]

E.g. just try to assign a LFO to one of the waveshapers, then draw some notes in your sequencer, play the notes with the LFO modulating, then stop playback, then rewind, and play again. The LFO modulation should stop working. In my case even until i closed the project, or close the host.

I wasn't able to repro that behaviour here in Reaper, at least.

[chk071]

Maybe try the last reply of Pyrotek here then: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 2#p6153882 But then, maybe it simply doesn't happen in Reaper. As it has to do with the transport function, it might work a little different in other hosts.

[EnGee]

I think the management is to blame for the direction of Sonar/Cakewalk. IMO, they did great with Project 5 and then with Sonar 7/8. If they had a good management and resources, then Project 5 would be now in the top with Live, FL Studio and Bitwig. They should kept Project 5 geared towards the Dance crowd and develop it more.

Sonar on the other hand should have continued from the 7/8th version design and evolved little bit. Yes, it felt very much like a typical windows application, but so what?! It is a Windows application.

Instead of all that resources that went to a new interface, they should have polished more the Midi and finish the half cooked Matrix, Step Sequencer and staff editor in Sonar. Anyway, Roland management is not great either!! And now under Gibson, Sonar must 'look' more professional and compete with Pro Tools!

There is one audience I can think of that can use Sonar, Rock/Country band that records their audio in it. This audience doesn't care usually of the Midi or score editing! They do care about the mixer and effects though.

So, in the end Sonar is not for everyone. Dance crowd and Midi based composing should look somewhere else. Also, movie composers that want a good score editor might not be attracted to Sonar. Finally, those who want easy workflow and easy start, find it not so easy to use!

I hope it is not too late, but I don't feel optimistic about Cakewalk future.

[digitalboytn]

I have found X3e to be one of if not the most solid DAW environment I have used...

I agree with this...

I use Sonar X3e Pro x64 and it is a great DAW...

And as the name suggests,it is highly "professional" too

To suggest that these top tier Cakewalk products are anything less than professional is total BS...

These days,every business related to the music industry that wants to survive,needs to cater for the "prosumer" because that's the middle ground where the bulk of the income will be derived from..

So they focus on that demographic,but there are usually 3 or so levels of products to cover the different demands of their client base..

But as the 80-20 principal shows us - most of their sales will be in the middle ground...

Anyway - getting back to Cakewalk "pre Gibson"...

I've never ever had a problem with Rapture,Dimension Pro or Z3TA+2 on a PC...Not once...

I use Sonar X3e Pro x64 around 8-10 hours a day on average and it is very stable with only the occasional crash,but statistics show us that most crashes are the result of pilot error anyway

Anybody who has grown up with hardware knows that everything has it's idiosyncrasies - even the high end gear...You just learn to work with it and get on with the job...That's what professionals do...

And that job has very little to do with the gear anyway...

The level of your musical training and the level of your mental capacity are far more important than what what gear you happen to use...

It really depends on the quality of the song,the quality of the performance and what is going on inside your head...

That's what's going to determine the result at the end of the day...

So there

[szurcio]

Question for someone familiar with both Sonar and Cubase in Windows: do you think Cubase is in general less buggy than Sonar and the users' problems/requests are addressed faster by its development team than those of Sonar? Or are they both on the same level of reliability and support?