Cakewalk Sonar X3

[SuperG]

Andrew Rossa wrote on the Sonar forum:

"And we will continue making SONAR X3 the very best product for Windows PC."

You abandoned X2. How can I be sure you won't abandon X4?

Excuse me, but why do you need to be sure about that? I thought you were very happy with Cubase 7. But if you miss something from Sonar or are still interested in the program, I'd say you wait for the X3 demo to come out. But nothing can make you sure about X4, I think.

History.

I don't understand. My question is why do you still care about Sonar when you've already found a satisfactory DAW to move on with?

I still use Sonar for some tasks and I have a long history with it.

Strange.  It must really irk you to use a product that annoys you to no end (Sonar) - and to have forked out for alternate product which doesn't fully meet your needs (Cubase).


It's more than obvious to most here that your expectations are in the wee minority - when the world around you is fairly satisfied, you need to question your beliefs.



 

[vintagevibe]

I still use Sonar for some tasks and I have a long history with it.

Strange.  It must really irk you to use a product that annoys you to no end (Sonar) - and to have forked out for alternate product which doesn't fully meet your needs (Cubase).


It's more than obvious to most here that your expectations are in the wee minority - when the world around you is fairly satisfied, you need to question your beliefs.



 

Well you certainly are assuming a lot here. Cubase totally meets my needs but I have years of files that I still need to access and therefore will still need Sonar for. Is that OK with you?

[LawrenceF]

I think you missed the point of his question.

I'm in a similar situation with Cubase. I have tons of Cubase projects and only really keep it installed to access them. But... becasue I reached a certain level of annoyance with it I don't actually - work - in it anymore, so I don't care about what may or may not happen with Cubase (6,7, or eight). They could turn it into Garageband and raise the price to $1500 for all I care. My history with it is history.

Of course if Sonar doesn't do OMF and/or there's no viable way to get those old projects that need to be remixed or whatever over to Cubase, then sure. But if you're still "choosing" to work in Sonar while hating it and the company... why?

At least that was my interpretation of his question.

[vintagevibe]

I think you missed the point of his question.

I'm in a similar situation with Cubase. I have tons of Cubase projects and only really keep it installed to access them. But... becasue I reached a certain level of annoyance with it I don't actually - work - in it anymore, so I don't care about what may or may not happen with Cubase (6,7, or eight). They could turn it into Garageband and raise the price to $1500 for all I care. My history with it is history.

Of course if Sonar doesn't do OMF and/or there's no viable way to get those old projects that need to be remixed or whatever over to Cubase, then sure. But if you're still "choosing" to work in Sonar while hating it and the company... why?

At least that was my interpretation of his question.

I answered that in my previous post. I will still need to use Sonar. Importing via OMF or any other means is not an option for me. I have X2 and have to deal with many time wasting bugs since it was abandoned. I don't want to pay $150 to have my now time line to not disappear. It's not illogical for me for me to wonder if future versions will be abandoned. Cakewalk has a history of abandoning products: Project 5, instrument development(what ever happened to Rene?), they had a sampler that they ditched, VS700...

[LawrenceF]

Well... (and no offense intended by the comment) ... you're (and were) being a little vauge.

Can't you, if all else fails, just stem audio tracks, export a midi file, and work on any of your old Sonar songs in Cubase? I know you implied earlier that you still have to work in Sonar, what we were actually asking is ... why?

If it's known to be buggy and to cause you regular frustration, maybe just don't use it? Export stems (from your old songs) and get 'er done in Cubase. I mean, Cubase is a $500 daw. I assume you bought it for a reason.

That's really all we were saying. Good luck to you.

[JoseC.]

Cakewalk has a history of abandoning products: Project 5, instrument development(what ever happened to Rene?), they had a sampler that they ditched, VS700...

FWIW, the only thing true in that statement is about P5. Every company brings product lifes to an end, but that does not take away that some of us were sorry that P5 was discontinued. Anyway, and back about Sonar, it does not look like changing version numbers of a software product and moving on instead of issuing new patches as infinitum is the same as discontinuing its development. On the contrary, Cakewalk's flagship DAW in its long line of versions is one of the audio software products in the market that has been under uninterrupted development for longest time.

Besides P5, the rest is just disinformed BS: Z3ta+2 was released well after Rene left the company. The (in)famous VSampler was never a Cakewalk product and it seems to be more or less alive (http://www.maz-sound.com/index.php?show=product&id=2). The Roland V-Studio 700 control surface seems to be still getting support from Cakewalk in spite of the fact that they are not Roland owned anymore. How long will this work out is out of Cakewalk's control, but it seems that calling VS700 "abandoned" by them is at least unfair.

[vintagevibe]

Cakewalk has a history of abandoning products: Project 5, instrument development(what ever happened to Rene?), they had a sampler that they ditched, VS700...

FWIW, the only thing true in that statement is about P5. Every company brings product lifes to an end, but that does not take away that some of us were sorry that P5 was discontinued. Anyway, and back about Sonar, it does not look like changing version numbers of a software product and moving on instead of issuing new patches as infinitum is the same as discontinuing its development. On the contrary, Cakewalk's flagship DAW in its long line of versions is one of the audio software products in the market that has been under uninterrupted development for longest time.

Besides P5, the rest is just disinformed BS: Z3ta+2 was released well after Rene left the company. The (in)famous VSampler was never a Cakewalk product and it seems to be more or less alive (http://www.maz-sound.com/index.php?show=product&id=2). The Roland V-Studio 700 control surface seems to be still getting support from Cakewalk in spite of the fact that they are not Roland owned anymore. How long will this work out is out of Cakewalk's control, but it seems that calling VS700 "abandoned" by them is at least unfair.

I'm not talking about VSampler. I can't remember the name of it but it was going to be Cakewalk's big sampler product. Chicken systems was going to write a translater for it yada yada yada ... abandoned. They upgraded one synth. That is nothing like the promise of the new and creative instruments that Rene brought to the company. They were poised to be a serious player in the synth market...abandoned. The VS700 ... I agree "abandoned" is too strong a word but way before Roland even thought about sell Cakewalk owners spent 4k and were always the last to get updates and promised updates never came. At least that's what user on the vS700 forum were saying. Another thing comes to mind. When Cakewalk 3.0 was released it was the first Cakewalk for Windows 3.1. It had by far the best notation on the windows platform at the time. After 1 or 2 updates it was abandoned long ago. So I stand by my statement.

[vintagevibe]

Well... (and no offense intended by the comment) ... you're (and were) being a little vauge.

Can't you, if all else fails, just stem audio tracks, export a midi file, and work on any of your old Sonar songs in Cubase? I know you implied earlier that you still have to work in Sonar, what we were actually asking is ... why?

If it's known to be buggy and to cause you regular frustration, maybe just don't use it? Export stems (from your old songs) and get 'er done in Cubase. I mean, Cubase is a $500 daw. I assume you bought it for a reason.

That's really all we were saying. Good luck to you.

I make my living from music. I have 15 years of files for teaching and live performance. I use them all the time. If I could afford to take off work the 3-4 weeks it would take to port them over I'd surely rather take a vacation with that time.

[CTStump]

Project 5 was not abandoned, it is incorporated into Sonar and has been since Sonar 8.

What was dropped was the stand alone program, I wish they would have left it alone but there it is.

Half alive and not quite dead.

[JoseC.]

I'm not talking about VSampler. I can't remember the name of it but it was going to be Cakewalk's big sampler product. Chicken systems was going to write a translater for it yada yada yada ... abandoned. They upgraded one synth. That is nothing like the promise of the new and creative instruments that Rene brought to the company. They were poised to be a serious player in the synth market...abandoned. The VS700 ... I agree "abandoned" is too strong a word but way before Roland even thought about sell Cakewalk owners spent 4k and were always the last to get updates and promised updates never came. At least that's what user on the vS700 forum were saying. Another thing comes to mind. When Cakewalk 3.0 was released it was the first Cakewalk for Windows 3.1. It had by far the best notation on the windows platform at the time. After 1 or 2 updates it was abandoned long ago. So I stand by my statement.

Well, the only other Cakewalk sampler I can think of is Dimension Pro, and it is still in the product line. Moreover, the sfz format created by Rene Ceballos is still maintained by Cakewalk and is alive and well, used by companies like Garritan, Camel Audio (for Alchemy) and Plogue, among others. Z3ta+2 was a major update, and it is a successful synth. Maybe you do not consider that "serious" enough, but that is opinion, not fact. I do not know about any plans for a Rapture 2, but I would feel pretty happy if they did with it the same kind of work as they did with Z3ta+2. Anyway, it seems to me that they have been doing what their current users really wanted, if you believe the general feeling in the user forums about X3, so maybe they have been allocating their resources right lately. If they have abandoned the instruments business time will tell, but the fact is that the arsenal of Cakewalk instruments is pretty solid and seems to be working as of Windows 8.1.

Drivers for the VS700 are Roland's job, but according to the VS700 forum on Cake's website, it is working on X3 and Windows 8.1, and fixes supporting it were included in the X3a update.

And while I agree that Sonar's integrated notation has not improved much since ages, it is still there, and it seems that some people even use it. I don't know about what was integrated in Cakewalk 3.0, but in Cakewalk PA9 the notation was pretty much the same as it is now, and it has been supported version after version.

[Gonga]

I still use Sonar for some tasks and I have a long history with it.

Strange.  It must really irk you to use a product that annoys you to no end (Sonar) - and to have forked out for alternate product which doesn't fully meet your needs (Cubase).


It's more than obvious to most here that your expectations are in the wee minority - when the world around you is fairly satisfied, you need to question your beliefs.



 

Well you certainly are assuming a lot here. Cubase totally meets my needs but I have years of files that I still need to access and therefore will still need Sonar for. Is that OK with you?

It's totally OK with me because it's precisely my situation as well. I went back to work on an unfinished SONAR x2 project the other day, until it crashed when I tried to instantiate Orangetree Acoustic Guitar. So I exported the midi and imported to Cubase. I learned not to waste another moment, let alone 15 more years, with Cake. I've realized it's better to export all those projects to Cubase, which hasn't crashed once in the past few months I've been using it, no matter what vst I have run in it. I had plans to finish those SONAR projects, but I've now realized there's no point in using SONAR X2 to do it.

[vintagevibe]

I found it. It was the DS864. Now that I think of it it might have only come with Project 5. While some things from P5 made their way into Sonar most of it was trashed. Notation hasn't been "supported" for years. Just because it's still there doesn't mean they have "supported" it. There is a reason Cakewalk profits have tumbled and they were sold. I think the way the change directions every 5 minutes is part of it. X2 has many issues and was not fixed and they rarely ever come to the forum. Now all of a sudden they are on all the forums. Great but they next year will they'll change directions again. Of course unless they go the way of Gigastudio.

[vintagevibe]

It's totally OK with me because it's precisely my situation as well. I went back to work on an unfinished SONAR x2 project the other day, until it crashed when I tried to instantiate Orangetree Acoustic Guitar. So I exported the midi and imported to Cubase. I learned not to waste another moment, let alone 15 more years, with Cake. I've realized it's better to export all those projects to Cubase, which hasn't crashed once in the past few months I've been using it, no matter what vst I have run in it. I had plans to finish those SONAR projects, but I've now realized there's no point in using SONAR X2 to do it.

I just have too many files and it would take too long to do it. I'm quite busy (fortunately). Cubase 7 is so much more reliable than Sonar ever was. X3 may be reliable but it really irks me that I would be forced to upgrade just to get a working version.

[LawrenceF]

I make my living from music. I have 15 years of files for teaching and live performance. I use them all the time. If I could afford to take off work the 3-4 weeks it would take to port them over I'd surely rather take a vacation with that time.

Fair enough. If the transition is too much trouble and/or can't be done incrementally, that's a good reason. I guess with that being the case you'll be tied at the hip to Sonar for the duration, no matter what else happens.

Thanks for clearing that up. I wasn't being a jerk, I honestly just wanted to know why. Thanks.

[JoseC.]

I found it. It was the DS864. Now that I think of it it might have only come with Project 5. While some things from P5 made their way into Sonar most of it was trashed. Notation hasn't been "supported" for years. Just because it's still there doesn't mean they have "supported" it. There is a reason Cakewalk profits have tumbled and they were sold. I think the way the change directions every 5 minutes is part of it. X2 has many issues and was not fixed and they rarely ever come to the forum. Now all of a sudden they are on all the forums. Great but they next year will they'll change directions again. Of course unless they go the way of Gigastudio.

True, DS864 was P5's integrated sampler. I don't remember if it worked outside P5, I've been using Kontakt since it came out and I never used that. About notation, in my book, if a feature gets fixes in a new version to keep it working, it is "supported".

All the thing about the reasons why companies are bought and sold is just speculation. Maybe Cakewalk's problem was being owned by Roland, you have no real info about it. As I said before, time will tell. In the meantime, Sonar is a perfectly fine tool for many people.