POLL: Are you surprised that Cakewalk/Sonar is no more?

[kb420]

There seems to be quite a few threads on the subject, and I even saw a live stream discussion about it, but are you really surprised about the demise of Cakewalk? I'm not surprised at all. It definitely wasn't as popular as some of the other players that have been in the game for as long as it was. What are your thoughts?

[Romantique Tp]

I think everyone who has been paying attention saw this coming from miles away. They never recovered from the disaster that was Sonar X1 and X2, and every decision they made since the Gibson acquisition reeked of desperation.

With electronic music at its peak and both Cubase and Logic doing everything that Sonar was trying to do but better, there was simply no place for this DAW in the market. For years it felt like 95% of this DAWs userbase were middle aged american dudes who have never tried anything else, and their only real source of new users were people upgrading the software that was bundled with Roland products. The Steam versions don't seem to have sold very well either.

[SuperG]

Really? The Sonar X series was/is great. I'll admit that the Sonar community could be a little offputting for those lacking in etiquette, but that's to be expected from any long-established community. It was a good long ride - shame that Gibson skullduggery had to do it in.

[deastman]

I actually think they made remarkable progress in the past couple of years, and the Sonar Platinum of today is a really strong product. That said, I’m not the least bit surprised by this news. I’m only surprised that it took this long after the Gibson acquisition was first announced.

[jonljacobi]

I think everyone who has been paying attention saw this coming from miles away. They never recovered from the disaster that was Sonar X1 and X2, and every decision they made since the Gibson acquisition reeked of desperation.

With electronic music at its peak and both Cubase and Logic doing everything that Sonar was trying to do but better, there was simply no place for this DAW in the market. For years it felt like 95% of this DAWs userbase were middle aged american dudes who have never tried anything else, and their only real source of new users were people upgrading the software that was bundled with Roland products. The Steam versions don't seem to have sold very well either.

Really, could you be a little more condescending? How about restricting your comments to the merits of the software and leave the user base alone.

[jonljacobi]

BTW, no I'm not surprised. The workflow and interface weren't the greatest. Powerful, but not easy. They tried to modernize it while not alienating the existing user base. They never quite got it right.

[Aloysius]

Sloppy releases. Bad support. I can see iZotope going down the same path of self-destruction. I don't blame Gibson.

[lfm]

They never recovered from the disaster that was Sonar X1 and X2, and every decision they made since the Gibson acquisition reeked of desperation.

Still X3 was quite a boost - and things were almost up to Sonar 8.x. Personally I saw/felt nothing wrong with Sonar 8.x interface - never quite understood why it was ditched.

But I never updated during Sonar 4.x until Sonar 8.x due to no fixes of bugs I reported - that is also one component - if many people felt like I did and did no upgrade - lost money for Cakewalk. It would be like $500 or so from me alone in losses. They did not have a good enough way to handle bug tracking.

Big warning would be that Roland did not have it lift and sold it. That was the first time I could buy in local store if I wanted - everywhere Roland were you could buy Sonar.

I saw nobody that were as dedicated as Cakewalk with maintenance and rolling updates. A pity it did not pay off.

Been using Cubase for a couple of years already - so not using Sonar as main daw for a while anyway. But Sonar was the goto backup where I have the most started projects on.

[Steve Bolivar]

Was I surprised that Gibson did the same to Cakewalk as they did to Opcode, no. Was it a crappy underdeveloped, behind the times DAW, not by a longshot. The first with 64bit mix engine, one of the first to adopt the single screen layout, console emulation, color customization and themes, Sonar had all the right features but none of the right marketing or corporate strategy.

You have Gibson and all their endorsees, Tascam who makes hardware, and Cakewalk who makes software. Why didn't Tascam make a guitar-centric audio interface that integrated tightly with Sonar and have Gibson endorsees market it: I'm 'insert Gibson rock star name here' and when it's time to record, I use my trusty Tascam GTR-MAX interface with Sonar." Back with Sonar 2.2 they had the DJ from Slipknot endorse it with the tagline "SONAR is so powerful that its possibilities are frightening". I'm not a huge Slipknot fan but at the time they were pretty big. Why didn't Tascam make interfaces and control surfaces that integrated into Sonar like Presonus and Studio One?
http://6sic6.wikifoundry.com/page/Craig+Jones
You look at the Sonar endorsee list now and it's just not as compelling, it's more journeyman like.
https://www.cakewalk.com/Artist/More

They simply did not create the synergy that could have been.

[chk071]

Even though Cakewalk had been going downwards for a long time, even before the Gibson purchase, it surprised me that Gibson decided to drop it. And that the whole brand is obviously going to disappear. A shame with such a big name.

TBH, i smiled a bit about the people requesting to make Sonar open source though. Not sure if those people are aware, how big the chunks of different code is in something like Sonar, and that it hardly could be open sourced due to that. Completely impossible. And, frankly, as the owner of the rights, i would never allow that either, because you never know if you won't recycle that code for future projects anyway.

[InLight-Tone]

Not surprising at all. Cakewalk WAS a strong midi sequencer with innovative features back in the day. Unfortunately, they neglected what made them great namely CAL, forward thinking DXi midi plugins and lack of updates to the notation editor. If they would have developed those midi tools they could have kept up with Cubase instead of winding up on the scrapheap and catering to Worship musicians and dying a slow death...

[Jace-BeOS]

I voted yes... but just a little. I thought they'd languish at another few owners first.

[chk071]

I voted yes... but just a little. I thought they'd languish at another few owners first.

Yep, about the same here. Still surprised that they bury such a big name. But, not sure if someone would have been interested to buy Cakewalk anyway. Not exactly a "cash cow", i guess.

[budweiser]

They never recovered from the disaster that was Sonar X1 and X2

What disaster ? X1 was way better than 8.5 with its old school design, imo.

[Zombie Queen]

Yes, surprised and disturbed. Sure all Sonar bashers will now claim they have seen it coming from years, but the point is, apparently it has nothing to do with Cakewalk performance.