Cakewalk Sonar X3

[Jace-BeOS]

Nice to have these answers. But, yeah, too late, Cakewalk. If you had done it right the first time, i wouldn't have all these rants in me from suffering the product's various freaky behaviors.

So even if its actually been about 7 years since they changed the thing you just said had never been changed, that's not good enough because they didnt do it from the start.

That's not the conclusion i am trying to present. Regardless of the myth or not, my personal experience with Sonar's handling of plugins has been utter crap. If they had done in version 2 (when VST was added?) what they ended up doing in version X2a(?), then my experiences with VSTs might not have sucked and i wouldn't be ranting about VST support (yes, i'd still be pissing on about other things they've still not cleaned up, like the bad GUI behaviors they're slowly eliminating in the X series, also too slow/too late a change for me to have been spending money on another 3 releases from 8.5). Has it been 7 years since they improved the VST handling? No. It's been 7 years since they changed the underlying architecture, but it seems many users were not really able to tell the difference because it still behaved badly.

As for flugel45 and Ryan99, this is all relevant discussion; Cakewalk has been selling this product in its various states of broken functionality for many years and this has shaped a long history worth examining.

Even when you keep claiming 'broken functionality' that isnt actually broken, thats not actually the way you say it is?

As of 8.5, the things i've complained about are honest reports. i've not made anything up. i admit i have furthered a myth about Sonar using FXpansion's VST to DX wrapper. That is cleared up, but i've explained why i still believed this. Regardless of the truth, as of 8.5, Sonar's VST handling blows. They didn't change that until X2a, which i don't, and wont, have. In fact, they even went so far as to make plug-in swapping a feature you had to buy separately in an addon, because Sonar X2 Producer wasn't complete enough and they could come up with more things to sell that should've been in the basic package. That's offensive to me.

They ought to expect old users to share their experiences with new (and potential) users, when discussion starts of new versions that Cakewalk hopes to make money on.

It would be nice if all of those experiences had more basis in fact, though.

Addressed above.

For anyone who is considering getting on the Cakewalk train, here are some former users telling them what the history has thus far been.

Except its less 'history' than 'mythology' in some cases, and some of those proponents of that are doing their damnedest to make sure noone dares not to toe that party line.

i'm not trying my damnedest to make sure of anything except that people know Cakewalk is not to be trusted when they announce features and improvements. Paying to watch a piece of software slowly progress inch by inch, you get pretty sick of running into all the same crap version after version. i'm not the only one here with that experience. The facts are maybe incorrectly stated by me with regard to how the VSTs are wrapped, but the results are the same for end users (VST integration was piss poor in all versions i've used). i've made it clear what my experiences are.

The other thing of course, is that some of those 'former users' are former users of everything, but regularly find the time to spend money on something they say they hate, by a company they say they want to see fail, so that they can decide it doesnt work, repeat the same old nonsense, and somehow justify themselves as interested users providing impartial commentary before changing their mind and jumping onto the next big thing to complain about. But while there's kicking to a prone body to be done, they'll be happily kicking.

Okay, that's not me. If someone has the money to try to move to a different environment, so what? Let them. If they liked something in Sonar and have been lured back by Cakewalk marketing, then that's on Cakewalk and the user. Cakewalk's marketing has been a bit like Microsoft's (this comparison keeps coming up...): they keep fixing the same things and users keep finding the fix to not be all that impressive. Audio engine, VST support, plugin handling, GUI... Should those of us who left Sonar not come back to check how it's doing? Maybe not. But we're all a little susceptible to being told what we want to hear. "Sonar is fixed now? Really? i'll check it out, because there were things i liked in it." Why is that wrong? Is it wrong to get caught up in the upgrade only to find "Damn, they added this nice thing, but they've not fixed a single one of my reported bugs!" Dunno. i can empathize, though. We are supposed to be open minded and not be in here bashing Cakewalk, but the reason we are is that we USED TO BE OPEN MINDED and spent a lot of money on Cakewalk, only to have to come to the final painful conclusion that Cakewalk was never going to get right what it was doing wrong. But, damn, maybe they finally fixed it in the version i swore i wouldn't upgrade to...

As for me, i have no money any more, so unless someone donates a license of Sonar X3 to me, i'll never know what it's really like. It's not important to me to demo it because i don't use Sonar for new projects. If Sonar X3 made it easier for me to extricate myself from Sonar... well, that's still out of my realm of expense, and i'm still leaving Windows as a platform. i have never said i want to see Cakewalk fail! i have been critical, and maybe unfairly in some ways, but i have been a legitimate paying customer, have reported bugs, and spent lots of money, time, and frustration on Cakewalk (not just on Sonar). Complaints aren't all unjustified! i understand you want people not to spread myths. i think i've corrected my participation in that. i still feel the complaints from myself and others here are justified because they're based on performance and user experiences. Behind-the-scenes developer facts don't matter nearly as much as user experiences. But that's how they try to sell product: bullet points and specs.

Now, i HAVE stated that i can't wait to see this PLATFORM die, because of everything i've already said about it here and elsewhere. If Cakewalk ported Sonar to Mac OS X, and did it in a sincerely thoughtful and NATIVE way, i'd buy that upgrade and try it out with interest. i'd still be cautious because of the track record, but eliminating the underlying platform would be a great start toward a new beginning. Or it could suck; look at Sony Sound Forge for Mac (ok ok, i've not tried it, but everyone seems to hate it). But this will never happen. If all this new GUI development in the X series is about making Sonar portable, then great, but it will never provide the ability to run old projects on a Mac because of all that abandonware introduced in Sonar versions 1 though X3 that wont be ported with the DAW!! Do you know how many versions of Sonar i have installed on my PC? Two. On my test machine? Four! Not including the difference between 32-and 64-bit! This is JUST so i can open older projects and port them to MIDI and audio to be archived or ported to Logic. In Logic, if you only ever used the included plugins and synths, you are fine from versions 4 through 10. In Sonar... you're actually better off using ONLY third party, BIG NAME, cross-platform plugins!! The included stuff keeps being dumped, even when it's not an LE or LITE version of some third party product. This is part of that track record we're complaining about!!

[Jace-BeOS]

If you look at the VST scanner that Sonar runs at version 8.5, it seems to still be a third party product (i can't recall the name... some kind of virtual network port??), regardless of what Sonar itself is using internally.

That'll be the BitBridge; its a version of FXTeleport. Its there to take care of 'top layer' 32bit/64bit bridging, rather than the underlying VST hosting, just like in any other host using a bridge.

Ah yeah, that's right. Thank you for that info (i'm not at the Windows machine), and sorry for continuing to appear as though i'm focusing on only a small feature as if it's the whole (the real cause of my irritation). Then again, the bit bridge sucks a bit, too. Then again, bit-bridges suck on any platform.

The VST scanner isnt part of the host's useage of VSTs, though. It preps for it, but its not involved in it. My own perception is that Sonar did 'the right thing' by making the scanning/collation process independent of the host.
The perception that the scanner was the wrapper was part of the myth, but only because CW were naive enough to not make it look completely different for the sake of combatting a myth. If they'd changed the look if it, that might have changed.
But the thing about the scanner is that it decoupled the problems that plugin scanning has, and continues to throw up for hosts, while providing an easy way to do something that very few hosts even try to do now; customisation of plugin behaviour, from where they appear in menus to whether you can disable their response to tempo, or reconfigure effects to appear as instruments.
I cant see a compelling reason for them to have stepped backwards on that. There are still hosts that still just crash on startup because of some plugins, with minimal feedback as to which one it is. That's the suboptimal way of doing it.

Good to know the details, and some of that sounds rather logical. i see this is how Logic does it (windowless terminal processes run, and they crash instead of Logic or the scanner itself).

But, again, i am, as an end user, encapsulating the ENTIRE plugin experience into one thing: from scan, to management, to operation. If i want to remove one plug-in, why can't i just delete it from my VST folder? Instead, to remove a plugin from the Sonar menus, i have to clear the whole plugin database and rescan them ALL. If i want to add ONE plug-in, why can't i just point to it instead of doing a scan? Then let's go to the plugin manager. It's got a lot of features, but they're kind of clumsy. i've worked at organizing my plugin menus so many times i've lost count. The behavior of the menu-customization tool is awful. It was a nice feature, but it's not really complete. The GUI sucks and it has bugs. Plus, every time you need to rescan your plugins, you lose all that customization. Waste of time and effort to even bother. Tracktion 2 (i know nothing of 4) lets you organize your menu and your plugs pretty simply. It goes by what is in the folders. The menu is structured based on the folder layout. Smart and simple. i wish to hell Logic was like that, because there's ZERO customization of menu layouts for plugins in Logic.

Then we can talk about [not] handling of missing plugins, or, as Sonar likes to do it, plugins that ARE there but are considered entirely different by Sonar from the one you saved your project with because of how Sonar (X2 and earlier) enumerated them when you saved your project. There is NOTHING the user can do but re-acquire the exact DLL they used (or figure out the exact file name it had, OR BOTH) and make things exactly as they were before, while creating a double entry in the plugins database that you can change your project over to, if you indeed want to upgrade the plugin to a newer version or different file name. This is utter insanity and cost me weeks of hate, rage, spit and bile. It's a POS way to do things and should NEVER have been that way!

Then we can talk about how plugins are handled in the actual interface, where we cannot change from one plugin to another. No, we have to select a plugin in the rack, click delete, ok the deletion, then delete the unbundled audio track left over in our project. Add a new one, add an audio track and then bind it to the MIDI data. And, beware, if that other audio track was soloed when you deleted it, you might find yourself with no audio output whatsoever in Sonar and not know why (look for the green S in the status bar, as it is your ONLY hope of getting audio back); yes indeed, Sonar is soloed to a non-existent track! Then there's the naming of plugins in the rack...

i could go on, but i think you get the point. The entire experience is rotten and is so cluttered with irritations that it feels like one huge pile of hacks. And this is only my feeling about plugin use in Sonar.

i'm sure someone will suggest "But Jace, all those problems are gone now in Sonar X[n]!!" Well, that's great for you, and not for me. My money ran out!! Any money i can scrape together, or beg for donation, will go to companies other than Cakewalk, because i spent 7 versions of time and money on Cakewalk only to feel increasingly abused by their lack of attention to detail and user experience. Yes, they are "too late and too little" on any "improvements" they've made since 8.5.

[noelb]

This is not to stereotype anyone but over the years I've seen three broad classes of software users.

1. Those who use our products as a means to an end, i.e composing, mixing, producing etc. These users tend to hone in on the tools that are useful to their workflow, reject others and ultimately use the product as a tool or a means to a greater end.

2. Those who lap up everything a product does and fiercely support it, accepting its shortcomings, sometimes even being blind to them.

3. Those perpetually on the look out for something that doesn't fit their expectation of perfection, and loudly proclaim the apocalypse when a defect is found. For some even a single defect can render the product useless in their eyes.

Now its rare to find someone fitting one of these groups exactly but all of us to some extent exhibit these behaviors. Users in 1 are generally the ones that are the most productive sorts and get really deep into the software, since they use it as a tool, while those in 3 are the most frustrated and are often blocked by the most basic of issues they may encounter.

Now I will put out an unpopular truth - there is no such thing as defect free software. Software in the modern world is so intensely complex and has such a huge degree of inter-dependency, the potential for unwanted interactions is astronomical. To test every possible permutation of use would take hundreds of man years literally. Most companies use a workflow based test approach to get around this and ensure quality. For anyone who thinks otherwise, send me your model of perfection and I'll be happy to break it for you. We're pretty skilled in finding problems

Anyway the bottom line is SONAR has its fair share of warts, but we have been deeply focused on a modern workflow based approach over the last 5 years that has been rewarding to the major user base of our customers. We obviously cannot satisfy every users specific requirements but there are some truly amazing things that you can do in X3 that were impossible only a few of years ago. There are some pretty powerful workflow enhancements in X3 such as the re-imagined comping tools, and the new VST and ARA integration features. For those still bashing the plugin management please take the time to check out X3 before basing your perception on outdated or incorrect facts. Our new background scanning is an industry first and compatibility is better than ever. How many DAW's do you know of that can start instantly and yet pick up any new plugins automatically as you add them? Its a small thing but can save you hours of work in the long term.
There is tons of info on the website and and Cakewalk blog that goes into the details and the reaction from the majority of users who have tried X3 has been overwhelmingly positive so far.

Noel

[icontakt]

Great post. I'm glad I fall into the user type 1.

[chk071]

I am a mixture of all 3.

Btw, Cakewalk announced unilimited audio and MIDI tracks for all Sonar X3 versions. Now, do MIDI tracks include virtual instrument tracks? I'm asking, because in Cubase, there is instrument and MIDI tracks.

[whyterabbyt]

But, again, i am, as an end user, encapsulating the ENTIRE plugin experience into one thing: from scan, to management, to operation. If i want to remove one plug-in, why can't i just delete it from my VST folder? Instead, to remove a plugin from the Sonar menus, i have to clear the whole plugin database and rescan them ALL.

To get it 'out' of Sonar, you should have been able to just remove it from the menu. Removing it from the folder afterwards shouldnt have required a rescan.

If i want to add ONE plug-in, why can't i just point to it instead of doing a scan?

The scan differentiates between 'new' plugins and redoing the entire scan for that reason.

Then let's go to the plugin manager. It's got a lot of features, but they're kind of clumsy. i've worked at organizing my plugin menus so many times i've lost count. The behavior of the menu-customization tool is awful. It was a nice feature, but it's not really complete.

I must agree, the menu system was great to see introduced, but it behaves in a way that constantly throws me. Speaking as the person who first built a program for allowing someone to (semi-easily) create one's own custom menus, that was kind of disappointing.

Tracktion 2 (i know nothing of 4) lets you organize your menu and your plugs pretty simply. It goes by what is in the folders. The menu is structured based on the folder layout. Smart and simple. i wish to hell Logic was like that, because there's ZERO customization of menu layouts for plugins in Logic.

Yeah, the very least DAWs can do is respect the folder layout.

Then we can talk about [not] handling of missing plugins, or, as Sonar likes to do it, plugins that ARE there but are considered entirely different by Sonar from the one you saved your project with because of how Sonar (X2 and earlier) enumerated them when you saved your project. There is NOTHING the user can do but re-acquire the exact DLL they used (or figure out the exact file name it had, OR BOTH) and make things exactly as they were before, while creating a double entry in the plugins database that you can change your project over to, if you indeed want to upgrade the plugin to a newer version or different file name. This is utter insanity and cost me weeks of hate, rage, spit and bile. It's a POS way to do things and should NEVER have been that way!

That's not an issue Ive come across, TBH, but it seems to me that Sonar always warned you which plugins were missing from a project, and would retain a stub plugin and the settings for you, whereas some others didnt even do that...

Then we can talk about how plugins are handled in the actual interface, where we cannot change from one plugin to another. No, we have to select a plugin in the rack, click delete, ok the deletion, then delete the unbundled audio track left over in our project. Add a new one, add an audio track and then bind it to the MIDI data.

Its not going to help if I say that has a logical consistence with other things you might want to do, to me.
But since I go back to Sonar 1, I admittedly still think to do things the way it did; separate tracks for MIDI and Audio, instruments as plugins on an audio track. Until Sonar gets a properly wires-and-boxes routing system, that's how it works for me, the newer stuff isnt how I think about it (and I do so with ProTools and other software too.)

[wetdentist]

yeah. i like being part of user type 1. each day/night i use X3 Producer (4 days so far) has been a treat. no crashes or bugs for me. yay for the computer age!

[noelb]

So it looks like you are basing your entire perception on SONAR 8.5, something that was released 4 years ago? In software age that's like more than 20 man years ago
Anyway even your memory of how things worked in 8.5 is flawed.
SONAR has never required a user to reset and rescan each time you add a plugin. If automatic scan was on it would pick up the plugin the next time you loaded the application. And yes earlier versions were dependent on the file name but even there it transparently handled it if the file name changed since the automatic substitution code would detect the new plugin in most cases (unless the vendor changed the VST id obviously.

Things have changed so drastically since 8.5 however, that for all practical purposes we may as well be talking about a different product. So telling people it doesn't work doesn't really make any sense unless you are discussing a current product like at least X2. For example even your note about instrument or synth tracks is out of date. As of X2 deleting a synth gives you the choice to delete all related tracks. We also have synth replace etc.

So be critical by all means, but at least base your information on a current version.

Noel

[Jace-BeOS]

1. Those who use our products as a means to an end, i.e composing, mixing, producing etc. These users tend to hone in on the tools that are useful to their workflow, reject others and ultimately use the product as a tool or a means to a greater end.

2. Those who lap up everything a product does and fiercely support it, accepting its shortcomings, sometimes even being blind to them.

3. Those perpetually on the look out for something that doesn't fit their expectation of perfection, and loudly proclaim the apocalypse when a defect is found. For some even a single defect can render the product useless in their eyes.

You need to understand that group 1 can become a member of group 3 after a long time of dealing with mounting irritations. After a while, there are so many that, well, death of a thousand cuts. i was with you guys for a LONG DAMN TIME. It just kept not getting better. My expectation, i am not sorry to say, is that you will improve the product over time.

Now I will put out an unpopular truth - there is no such thing as defect free software. Software in the modern world is so intensely complex and has such a huge degree of inter-dependency, the potential for unwanted interactions is astronomical. To test every possible permutation of use would take hundreds of man years literally. Most companies use a workflow based test approach to get around this and ensure quality. For anyone who thinks otherwise, send me your model of perfection and I'll be happy to break it for you. We're pretty skilled in finding problems

You know why this is unpopular? It's a cop-out and it's not true. This is just a form of special pleading. If companies spent more time testing and actually fixing problems that users have reported to them, which the developers have even verified, software would be a lot more reliable and consistent with what is expected of it. Instead, companies have EULAs that go so far as to disclaim any and all fitness for use... and consumers go along with it, because computers are "special cases". Companies use this "complicated" and "special case" meme to excuse the amount of time it refuses to spend on actual bug fixes and basic functionality. They prioritize releasing new paid versions over making the existing versions reliable and efficient. They allow workarounds, kludges and whatnot in order to not re-engineer something that was badly designed when adding those all-important new feature bullet points. As long as the consumers continue to believe in this meme, software companies have free passes to keep pushing out bad product to paying customers. http://angryartboy.blogspot.com/2012/08 ... puter.html

Anyway the bottom line is SONAR has its fair share of warts, but we have been deeply focused on a modern workflow based approach over the last 5 years that has been rewarding to the major user base of our customers. We obviously cannot satisfy every users specific requirements but there are some truly amazing things that you can do in X3 that were impossible only a few of years ago. There are some pretty powerful workflow enhancements in X3 such as the re-imagined comping tools, and the new VST and ARA integration features. For those still bashing the plugin management please take the time to check out X3 before basing your perception on outdated or incorrect facts. Our new background scanning is an industry first and compatibility is better than ever. How many DAW's do you know of that can start instantly and yet pick up any new plugins automatically as you add them? Its a small thing but can save you hours of work in the long term.
There is tons of info on the website and and Cakewalk blog that goes into the details and the reaction from the majority of users who have tried X3 has been overwhelmingly positive so far.

Noel

Sorry, Noel, but Cakewalk lost me at 8.5. i gave Cakewalk my money from version 2(?) through version 8.5. It didn't get better. Sonar just got more junk stuffed into it that didn't work (i've NEVER been able to use V-Vocal), clumsy workarounds, unfixed bugs from version to version, and all while maintaining the rotten Windows API ugliness of its controls and views, with their jerky scrolling, scroll bars that suddenly pop off if you move your mouse a bit too far before you let go, and flickering and disappearing bits and pieces. It looks like the X series is the attempt to clean all this up, S L O W L Y over each version... BUT YOU ALREADY LOST ME. Why oh WHY would i throw good money after bad? After all these versions i've spent money on, i feel like i have not actually received the product i paid for. No consumer advocacy will support my complaint, because, you know, computers are special, but there it is.

Because there are users that feel like me, betrayed and beyond frustrated with what we got for our money, there will be complaints. This is human reaction. Maybe even a little bit of consumer activism. Until Sonar has proven that it has divested itself of all of its legacy behavior, and the newness outweighs the old, deprecated, unloved, and outright bad stuff (because it's all gone), you're going to see us pop up here when Cakewalk makes an attempt to sell a new version of Sonar with new (or seemingly repeat) promises. Even if the old look and feel of Sonar gets 100% cleaned up, the company behavior still needs a full cleanup. If you're releasing a new version that is all about under-the-hood changes, MARKET IT THAT WAY. Don't load it up with third party product to make it look full in order to justify a full price. Put some in-house development effort into the plugins AND KEEP THEM AROUND, instead of abandoning them as legacy every few versions.

Maybe Cakewalk has learned these lessons... but it'll take a lot of proof to convince us that is true. Cakewalk has EARNED this critical view, not just through Sonar (how about those Mac OS installers for the Cakewalk synths, or Project 5's lifespan...).

[whyterabbyt]

Here's a question I might as well ask here, since Im not that keen on the CW forums. Can anyone confirm if any of the plugins that were included with older Producer versions, eg PX64, VX64, TS64, etc or even the PC76 and PC4K ProChannel modules would be unavailable to X3 if I went for the Studio version this time around?

Also, is R-Mix completely gone now? Will the old version still work in the same manner V-Vocal is supposed to?

[Jace-BeOS]

So it looks like you are basing your entire perception on SONAR 8.5, something that was released 4 years ago? In software age that's like more than 20 man years ago

So then how many man years did i stick with Sonar?

Anyway even your memory of how things worked in 8.5 is flawed.
SONAR has never required a user to reset and rescan each time you add a plugin.

My experience is this: if i add a new plugin, i have to do a scan for changes. Ok, that's not as bad as a full rescan, but it is still pretty time consuming when you have more than ten plugins. But if i want to remove a plugin, i have to do a re-scan to see it removed from the menus, or mark it as disabled in the plugin manager (which seems not the right way to do it, especially when these disabled entries build up over time). If this is the wrong way to go about it, then please guide me. Sonar has not made this clear to me. This is part of the problem. This stuff should be clear. Also, why is the plugin manager so... not part of Sonar? i have had it crash on me (or become unresponsive), while Sonar stays operational. The problem there is that Sonar wont quit. i have had a continuous stream of Sonar-wont-quit problems from various and unknown causes (plus the system tray activity icon will then not go away with Sonar when force quit). See, everything leads me to yet another part of Sonar that is clumsy.

If automatic scan was on it would pick up the plugin the next time you loaded the application.

i don't know about everyone else, but i have automatic scan disabled because of how much time it wastes on start. When you have a lot of plugins, it's all the worse. When you get used to frequent restarting of Sonar (or Windows), you start to turn off anything that slows your progress.

And yes earlier versions were dependent on the file name but even there it transparently handled it if the file name changed since the automatic substitution code would detect the new plugin in most cases (unless the vendor changed the VST id obviously.

Yes, a few of the cases i experienced were down to changed VST ID. You know how much help Sonar provided to me in dealing with this? NONE. i didn't even know what to LOOK for. The forums had a few users like me, but we were all marginalized and mocked. "Obviously no one ELSE has this problem, so you guys must be doing something wrong." Or the number two most common user marginalization response: "it must be your config" (which really means nothing and anything both at the same time, and is utterly unhelpful). Some of them were NOT down to VST ID. i literally was able to resolve a few cases by changing file names. Explain how that happened if it wasn't possible. Also, the documentation claimed that a troubleshooter would appear to tell me about the missing plugin. i got NO SUCH THING. Ever! Explain please!

Things have changed so drastically since 8.5 however, that for all practical purposes we may as well be talking about a different product.

Yes, the old "that guy doesn't work here any more" response. Well, this is the last version i felt i could stomach paying for an upgrade, so i stopped. For all these reasons and more i've not mentioned. For all practical purposes, my product was abandoned. How was i to know when Cakewalk would get around to fixing all this crap? Just keep spending money on upgrades? No way.

So telling people it doesn't work doesn't really make any sense unless you are discussing a current product like at least X2. For example even your note about instrument or synth tracks is out of date. As of X2 deleting a synth gives you the choice to delete all related tracks. We also have synth replace etc.

You made X2(?) users pay extra for synth replace, even though they thought they had the full product with the Producer edition. Is that integrated into the base of X3 now? i'm sure the people who bought the "extended" package will be more than pleased to see what they could have gotten for only the cost of an upgrade which is now part of the package (until it is removed because it is licensed or obsolete).

So be critical by all means, but at least base your information on a current version.

You know what, i didn't START this thread's descent into criticism, i just happened to end up the most ranty and verbose. As i said, the track record speaks for Cakewalk's behavior. If suddenly everything has changed in the last four years... well, how convenient and coincidental that all this wonderful change happens to coincide with 1. my finally getting fed up and swearing to stop using Sonar, 2. my loss of income to pay for Sonar upgrades even if i believed the X3 marketing, and that it would be a sudden massive change in behavior on the part of Cakewalk, in contrast to more than a decade of consistently poor product development/progress.

[Brando]

Here's a question I might as well ask here, since Im not that keen on the CW forums. Can anyone confirm if any of the plugins that were included with older Producer versions, eg PX64, VX64, TS64, etc or even the PC76 and PC4K ProChannel modules would be unavailable to X3 if I went for the Studio version this time around?

Also, is R-Mix completely gone now? Will the old version still work in the same manner V-Vocal is supposed to?

I went for Producer. But Studio has Prochannel and is compatible with all existing PC modules. It doesn't come with the tape sim module IIRC. RMix is gone as is V-Vocal but both are picked up by X3 if you have them installed from a prior version or can be installed from earlier installers and work fine. ARA is in both Studio and Producer. I don't remember if Studio has Melodyne Essential.
X3 is really outstanding here. Solid.

[Proteinshake]

Here's a question I might as well ask here, since Im not that keen on the CW forums. Can anyone confirm if any of the plugins that were included with older Producer versions, eg PX64, VX64, TS64, etc or even the PC76 and PC4K ProChannel modules would be unavailable to X3 if I went for the Studio version this time around?

Also, is R-Mix completely gone now? Will the old version still work in the same manner V-Vocal is supposed to?

I can confirm the PX64 and VX64 even working in Cubase. It's just VSTs. Pro Channel modules are going to work in X3 Studio and Producer.

ARA is in both Studio and Producer. I don't remember if Studio has Melodyne Essential.
X3 is really outstanding here. Solid.

ARA works through VST3 if I'm not mistaken. Even the basic X3 will pick up Melodyne Essential from what I've gathered. Studio has it bundled.

[trimph1]

Here's a question I might as well ask here, since Im not that keen on the CW forums. Can anyone confirm if any of the plugins that were included with older Producer versions, eg PX64, VX64, TS64, etc or even the PC76 and PC4K ProChannel modules would be unavailable to X3 if I went for the Studio version this time around?

From perusing some of the forum and from some of my own contacts it seems you should be able to utilize them. I'm waiting on a couple of them now to find out how it works

Also, is R-Mix completely gone now? Will the old version still work in the same manner V-Vocal is supposed to?

It claims to be able to run both VST3 and VST2 side by side...so I'm guessing it might?

[krandr]