Gibson Brands Announces Intention to Acquire Cakewalk Inc.

[LawrenceF]

I never owned Sonar, and I am well aware of the distant history with Opcode and all that, and there is always a little bit of trepidation when the thing you value is taken completely over by another company, that's by no means irrational.

The main factor here - from the outside looking in, to me - is Craig Anderton. If anything bodes really well for Sonar not being left to wither on the vine is him being there.

I think Craig being involved maybe directly neutralizes a lot of the potential fears. Now if they put out a press release a year from now saying Craig is leaving Gibson, yes, that might mean trouble is in the air for Sonar. As long as Craig is there I wouldn't worry about the product.

He indeed may be Sonar's biggest fan.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Not one person I have spoken to about this has said that it is a good thing for Sonar users...

Instead - they have all said that Sonar will end up in the toilet


I don't like the thought of Sonar becoming another uninspired Gibson turd...

Ok, let me say this (since no one else is being positive)...Cakewalk has been going in the wrong direction for so long that I wonder if Gibson could possibly make it worse. In my heart, I know they'll find a way, but it won't be easy.

And my beef with Cakewalk (as someone who spent over a decade with it as their primary DAW):

1. The BS with the Producer version having one useful feature not in Studio, then loaded up with plugins.
2. The lack of an MP3 encoder (no effing way I'm paying extra for that feature)
3. The same old bugs never getting fixed (disk may be full error, easily corrupted projects, doubled notes after quantization)
4. The basic DAW features that have been ignored entirely (terrible routing, bad comping made worse, etc)
5. Still using a plugin wrapper instead of just building in true VST support (gee wonder why it's unstable)
6. Emphasis on half-baked gimmicky features (matrix view, step sequencer, pro channel), many of which had to be revised one or two releases later because they weren't done right the first time (step sequencer 2.0, take lanes will be another)
7. Certain features became harder to use over time (two snap settings? AudioSnap, the staff view, event durations)
8. The neglected staff view
9. The X1 series added a dock for the console, but the console strips became larger and the mixer isn't resizable so you can't even use it properly when docked
10. The lack of proper instrument tracks
11. The never ending pop ups (I just want to paste what I just copied, or just want to add an instrument - do we really need to confirm all this or present me with a ton of options?)
12. Did Windows 8 and touch screen support really need to come before addressing the stuff above? No. Gimmicks!

There are some things I love about it, but the stuff above never getting fixed, or getting worse in recent releases has told me Cakewalk hasn't been focussing their efforts in making the most stable, and efficient DAW, but have been instead trying to pack in as many features and plugins as possible without ever addressing the fundamentals.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

The main factor here - from the outside looking in, to me - is Craig Anderton. If anything bodes really well for Sonar not being left to wither on the vine is him being there.

I think Craig being involved maybe directly neutralizes a lot of the potential fears. Now if they put out a press release a year from now saying Craig is leaving Gibson, yes, that might mean trouble is in the air for Sonar. As long as Craig is there I wouldn't worry about the product.

He indeed may be Sonar's biggest fan.

I just hope Craig isn't so big a fan that he doesn't see some of the fundamental problems with Sonar. If Sonar X3 or X4 seriously address some of the issues in my last post I'd probably jump back in a heartbeat.

[Jace-BeOS]

Erm, it's neither sure yet that Gibson takes over, nor is it sure, that Cakewalk will cease. ^^

i'm shocked, since you are using the Borg logo as your forum avatar.

[riley4reason]

Well the quality of gibson USA guitars is a joke, unless you want to spend 5k or more, and they will still try to sell you turd at that price.
I hope their guitar QA has nothing to do with Sonar.

[Jace-BeOS]

Switched from Sonar to Reaper a few years ago. Still get E-Mails from Cakewalk and just got this one a minute ago. Sucks, as I liked Cakewalk as a company, even if I stopped using their software. As a guitarist, I have my own loathing towards Gibson's business practices and do remember what happened to Opcode. (As well as Tascam grabbing Gigastudio, Avid acquiring M-Audio, and plenty of other ill-fated ventures.)

Yeah, Gigastudio was abandoned by Tascam (after failing to really bring it a modern GUI) and M-Audio was sold off, with product being abandoned because it was built by Avid, despite being under the M-Audio name. i'm ripe pissed about that, since two of the abandoned products are ones i own (ProjectMix I/O and Lightbridge).

i've been off the Cakewalk Sonar train since Sonar 8.5. It was the last straw for me. Enough money dumped down that hole. Windows itself has me pissed enough, let alone Sonar running on it. i'm happy with Logic on a Mac. i just hope i can afford to replace my evil Windows machine with a Mac Pro in the near future, since i'm poor and my music Mac has suffered GPU failure (thanks NVidia!!).

[Jace-BeOS]

From the Cakewalk site:
"Will SONAR continue to be developed?
Of course!"

Uh huh. Right. That's a promise carved in butter.

[Jace-BeOS]

Lastly, it should be pointed out that, unlike Roland, Gibson is not a publicly-traded company. Its managers do not have to present happy pretty numbers every quarter to cover their asses in front of ignorant shareholders. Thus, Gibson and its subsidiaries are at liberty to make adventurous and long-term investments.

What a concept. If only other companies could learn from that. But instead it's like you're a traitor and explicitly non-american if you think public ownership is bad.

[LawrenceF]

I just hope Craig isn't so big a fan that he doesn't see some of the fundamental problems with Sonar. If Sonar X3 or X4 seriously address some of the issues in my last post I'd probably jump back in a heartbeat.

Well, he's not a Sonar developer.

My point was that having a person on the inside who obviously "champions" the product bodes well for it's continued existence and development. That by itself has nothing much to do with coding or quality control... but more to do with someone on the inside who will very highly likely be very vocal against any ideas about scrapping it... if that were to ever actually come up... which seems to be the fear of some here... that they might scrap it like they did Opcode or whatever.

[Jace-BeOS]

And what is with all the SONAR hatred here??? it may not be perfect but it isn't a pretender either. If I heard Cubase was going to be discontinued, I don't think I would be happy about it even though I don't know enough about it to not like it.

i used to wonder why it always got the crap end of the public opinion. Now, after being a Cakewalk customer from Cakewalk Apprentice, to Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, and through all versions of Sonar from 2 to 8.5... and trying out Logic on a Mac... NOW i understand. Cakewalk product is bug ridden, poorly supported, poorly maintained, clumsy... The GUI is inconsistent in look/behavior and archaic (the new sexy GUI is still inconsistent and holding on to archaic Win API garbage). Sonar's audio engine stutters and stops for no good reason. We report bugs and they forget that we've done so (and that they've acknowledged them). And on and on.

Some of this is because the whole audio platform of Windows is a workaround and some of it is just because Cakewalk is more interested in being a Microsoft house than in being an independent thinker. They co-developed the DirectX "DXi" plug-in format with Microsoft, to compete with VST. The transition for Sonar to utilize VST plug-ins was an utter nightmare and the management of them in Sonar STILL is. Like most things Windows-based, there's even a third party tool being sold by a developer who found ways to hack Sonar's registry content to make some things in menus and such actually sensible, since Cakewalk wont bother themselves.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I just hope Craig isn't so big a fan that he doesn't see some of the fundamental problems with Sonar. If Sonar X3 or X4 seriously address some of the issues in my last post I'd probably jump back in a heartbeat.

Well, he's not a Sonar developer.

My point was that having a person on the inside who obviously "champions" the product bodes well for it's continued existence and development. That by itself has nothing much to do with coding or quality control... but more to do with someone on the inside who will very highly likely be very vocal against any ideas about scrapping it... if that were to ever actually come up... which seems to be the fear of some here... that they might scrap it like they did Opcode or whatever.

I don't think Gibson will dump it, but I do think they'll run it into the ground.

[riley4reason]

Tascam and Cakewalk, the dead buying the almost dead.

[Jace-BeOS]

i see a lot of hate on Gibson for guitars. Since i own one, a Les Paul, what are the complaints about them? i'm wondering if there's anything i should know (other than "loosen the strings before storing for a long time or you'll end up with a buzzy neck" because that's what happened).

[riley4reason]

i see a lot of hate on Gibson for guitars. Since i own one, a Les Paul, what are the complaints about them? i'm wondering if there's anything i should know (other than "loosen the strings before storing for a long time or you'll end up with a buzzy neck" because that's what happened).

If you got a good gibson, you are one of the lucky ones, their quality is very inconsistent.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

i see a lot of hate on Gibson for guitars. Since i own one, a Les Paul, what are the complaints about them? i'm wondering if there's anything i should know (other than "loosen the strings before storing for a long time or you'll end up with a buzzy neck" because that's what happened).

Buzzy necks are easily fixed with a truss rod adjustment. That's every guitar BTW and routine maintenance.

Gibson gets some stick for their headstocks snapping so easily, but when they tried to address that, customers got pissed and they went back to the older, more flawed design. Most of the beef is about a perceived lack of quality and high prices, along with truly awful ideas like the robot guitars and whatnot. Frankly, I couldn't turn down an ES335 or a Les Paul Jr Double Cutaway if presented with one.