Gibson axes Cakewalk /Sonar

[lingyai]

I think now is time for Microsoft to buy Cakewalk. Then they can compete with Apple also on DAWs.

Maybe add a touch friendly gui, a wobble and raiser synths and some one knob instant plugins. Make it more EDM friendly, you know. Then replace Windows sound recorder with it. It would then sell tons of Windows 10 licenses, Surface Pros and recently announced MS branded laptops.

Oh, god forbid. Microsoft is an anti-Midas, not unlike Gibson

Microsoft would have the means and the motivation (as I said, they seem to look for a way to enter the audio market). I don't see anyone else, at the moment, with the "muscle" and the resources to pick it.

And Cakewalk is perhaps the DAW with the closer integration to the Windows OS and technologies.

You've obviously not bought a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone, which -- the 1020 model in particular -- was top-notch before Microsoft bought Nokia in 2013; Microsoft then dismembered Nokia and just last month killed the Windows Phone platform, which it had basically stopped upgrading or even debugging over a year ago. Microsoft also royally f**ked up LinkedIn since buying that. And if you were naive enough to buy a Surface RT tablet when it came out in 2013, you'd have found that support for Windows RT ended in Jan 2016. They've no loyalty to customers of niche products (which is what a DAW is from their perspective), and would probably dumb Sonar way down until people ridculed it, and then would kill it.

[Astralv]

Not trying to be Davil's Advocate, but Sonar improved and progressed under Gibson more than under any other companies. I had many hopes that Roland will be good for Sonar because it was keyboard company, but they were not able to manage it. I dont think Gibson was planning to Kill it. The model with monthly updates was very powerful. They started implementing some serious innovations, the software became stable like never before, and it was great to work with. There was a promise of great future and we supported it the best we could. Apparently, we did not get enough supporters on board or Gibson had to cut losses and abandon it due to other reasons. The Cakewalk Team was delivering on their promise and Sonar was getting better every month. It is sad that they had to abandon it when it became so good. I dread to switch to other DAW. Also i am afraid- the Windows updates will make it obsolete in a year or so.

[glokraw]

Nothing's certain obviously but I reckon Reaper could be one of the safer bets; I gather it's a real labour of love (may be not the right expression...)

That's the impression I get, from his forum contributions in the reaper linux forum,
seems quite positive and appreciative in his postings, and very very quick
to fix things.
Cheers

[apondinthestream]

Nothing's certain obviously but I reckon Reaper could be one of the safer bets; I gather it's a real labour of love (may be not the right expression...)

That's the impression I get, from his forum contributions in the reaper linux forum,
seems quite positive and appreciative in his postings, and very very quick
to fix things.
Cheers

I think the dev, Justin, said he would opensource Reaper or similar if he ever decided to stop working on it. He seems a very nice guy

[In The Mix]

Why is it they're still selling it though?

[planetearth]

Why is it they're still selling it though?

I don't believe they are. While they still show it on their own site (cakewalk.com), the "Store" is now closed, and you can't even get into it.

Clipboard04.jpg

For those who are still offering Cakewalk products this week, they probably haven't had time to pull the products from the sale. I'd be surprised if you could still buy Sonar from JRR Shop or Sweetwater or anywhere else, since you couldn't authorize it. You may still see an ad (and you will, until the web design team updates the pages), but I doubt you'd actually be able to buy it.

Steve

[pekbro]

Why couldn't you authorize it? You can still seemingly redeem a purchase code. They state clearly that the system will continue to work, being manned by a dedicated team. The only thing they actually say is that you will no longer get updates from cakewalk. They don't say you can no longer get support or anything. Their shop is closed thats all. There is no point in buying it, unless you can get platinum for $1 or something. However, just because cakewalk has closed is no reason to suspect Gibson wont still take your money for it.

[kb420]

They finally shot Ol' Yeller.

Lmao!!!!!

[Bug Music]

I was a former Opcode Vision/SV Pro user.
Hopefully it works out better for Cakewalk than it did for us.
All I have to say to Gibson is this ...

- Jay

[GrabtharsHammer]

Could the person(s) responsible for Sonar‘s Drum Grid pane please switch over to Apple‘s Logic team, please?

[reusenoise]

Could the person(s) responsible for Sonar‘s Drum Grid pane please switch over to Apple‘s Logic team, please?

Already done,these is the reason Gibson shut down Sonar,they was bought by Apple

[kb420]

I remember the snide remarks in the forum given with an air of superiority. People saying "I have Lifetime updates so I don't have to worry, you should have jumped on when you had the chance. They gave you plenty of opportunities! Your loss!" Good times. Now everyone is on equal, disappointed footing.

Plenty of red flags popped up but the questioning was always shouted down by fanboys. Hopefully the stubborn can move on to a DAW that will have the right resources behind it for the future. When I moved on post Sonar X3 I was surprised to find that plenty of the things in X3 that didn't work, that I found frustrating or required workaround upon workaround simply worked in Reaper, Cubase, Live, etc.

I've moved on from all Cakewalk products for some time now. Actually since Sonar 8. I do have the current version of Sonar Platinum, but I missed out on the lifetime updates. I guess in hindsight, I didn't miss out on anything. It is funny how things that didn't work in Sonar work fine in everything else. For me, Live, Studio One 3, and Cubase all seem to handle things that Sonar made me scratch my head about, with ease. It always made me wonder just who the hardcore Cakewalk/Sonar users really were. If you think about it, you can go on Youtube, and find tons of videos of regular hobbyist and professionals using Live, Studio One, Cubase, Reaper, etc, but you NEVER see anyone using Sonar. I really started noticing that 3 or 4 years ago. That and the lifetime updates offer pretty much let me know that Cakewalk's future was coming to an end.

[kb420]

There was simply no place for Sonar on the DAW market. Basically if you want powerful MIDI tools you get Cubase, if you primarily work with audio then you get Reaper. If you need a jack of all trades, Cubase does that much better than Sonar. For electronic music you get Ableton Live...

And that's on Windows. On Mac they would also have to compete with Logic, and deal with the fact that 99% of their potential Mac users already have very powerful DAWs.

I'll up you one - Sonar just wasn't good enough, resting, as it did, on technological laurels a decade old. Add to that the cult-like resistance by many users to any sort of constructive criticism/feature requests of/for the program, on Cakewalk forums and elsewhere, and you had a set-up for failure. Sonar's demise is not entirely Gibson's fault.

Anytime constructive criticism is met with the kind of resistance that Cakewalk forum member fanboys put up, it is a recipe for disaster. They were absolutely ridiculous. In that respect, they got what they deserved. If Sonar was as perfect as they tried to convince everyone including themselves that it was, then it wouldn't be out of business.

[Bug Music]

Could the person(s) responsible for Sonar‘s Drum Grid pane please switch over to Apple‘s Logic team, please?

Well, IIRC when the evil empire (Gibson) dropped the hammer on Opcode, they did not even want Opcode's OMS MIDI manager software to be distributed.

Since there was no other (reliable) MIDI manager software available for the Mac at the time (edit: I forgot that MOTU did have a competing product, but it was not as popular at the time), OMS had become the "defacto" standard software that a lot of other companies used to manage MIDI connections on the Mac.

There was some legal wrangling, and even threats of lawsuits from some former Opcode guys IIRC, before Gibson agreed to let OMS be distributed.

About a year or so later, it turns out that Doug Wyatt (the guy that wrote OMS at Opcode) became an Apple employee and wrote what is now the Apple "Audio MIDI Setup" program (around OS X 10.2 I think).

The most sickening part of this whole thing is that even though Gibson had other offers to buy Opcode's intellectual property (I actually heard this from ex-Opcode guys), they decided instead to let it whither on the vine and die.

Hopefully somebody can pick up Cakewalk as a whole entity and continue development, but you never know where folks are going to end up, it happened once before that Gibson's loss was Apple's gain.

- Jay

[pekbro]

There is always Corel or Smith Micro...