About that cakewalk email that should be in your inboxes right now

[jancivil]

I see.
Ok, VSL support - which is always very good - was just nonplussed about my issue of plugins that didn't function at all in audio editors. I think they believe it's Steinberg Botch. That's unfortunate.
But in the Project Window, a plugins failure to register an edit like that is pretty bad for me.

[SJ_Digriz]

Yep, I'm surprised you only have that problem with VSL plugs though. I have that problem with every plugin I use.

[jancivil]

I have yet to use other effects in the project window. Frequency works correctly on regions in Audio Parts editor.
So do others, so far. Vienna Suite is frozen in it. All of it. Maybe VS Pro works right.

NORMALLY I automate most things in VE Pro. I like to interact with Reaktor Skanner in Cubase particularly with the mouse, which looks like a terrific problem potentially.

[Jace-BeOS]

So glad I held back from buying the lifetime update - they were just being too coy about everything. What on Earth were they thinking though trying to build it using Codeweaver's tech? That was never going to work.

Same here. Had I known that this was the way they were trying to do it, I never would've kept waiting around Cakewalk threads to hear news of the Mac port, worrying I might miss out on the lifetime updates deal.

I mean, seriously... wine??? It's a bad idea for high media software (I'm amazed when anything works, especially audio/MIDI apps). It's like they wanted to fail.

If they were rewriting Sonar from the ground up, which they keep talking like they're doing piece by piece, the rewrite should be made in a platform-agnostic manner. But then, we've seen how some developers "grok" cross-perform development and some don't (so many examples of stuff that is bad on one platform and good on the other, or just bad on both). I was expecting Cakewalk to not get it, but didn't expect... this! I had low expectations, because so much of Sonar is legacy that'll never be rewritten. All kinds of abandoned plugins... the point of a Mac port made little sense to me as a former Sonar user anyway because of that. But this...

Cakewalk never cared about the Mac. It's as if their corporate culture itself is the Windows API and nothing exists outside it. It's like talking to MS-certified IT people who think Macs and Mac OS haven't changed since 1997... The only reason they had Mac softsynths is because they absorbed RGC, a cross-platform-savvy developer who hasn't been with Cakewalk for years now. They couldn't even inspire any trust in their software *installers* on the Mac. You technically don't even need to invest effort into installers on the Mac, but, there we go with the Windows culture making presumptions about how the Mac side works...

This was probably an attempt to quickly cash in on the stock market glow of the Apple brand without doing the work... but then they found out that wine isn't a shortcut and gave up, rather than do it the right way.

Image Line already made the same discovery about wine wrappers a while back. They lucked out that Delphi (or whatever it's called today) has a cross-platform compiler now. They stated that the consumer interest in the wine-wrapped prototype was enough to confirm the Mac platform worth supporting with a native build. I'm not expecting much there either, but who knows, they might surprise us.

[Jace-BeOS]

I take some offense to what you say.

Cakewalk has made some mistakes - including our Mac announcement from last year and our lack of communication and transparency surrounding it.

We're owning up to these mistakes and we're trying to right the ship, to set us on a clear and focused direction, and rebuild relationships with customers.

Today we have a vision, we have good strategies and place, and we're starting to execute on them.

You'll start seeing a new Cakewalk emerge from this.

How many times can a company say this before an entire generation of customers feels like they've heard it one too many times?

I'm already there; I left. I still get into these threads because I have two Cakewalk synths in my Logic plugin list, and because Cakewalk is part of my personal music development history (it's part natsukashii and part PTSD). I ultimately want to see Cakewalk turn things around... but they keep doing things like this.

So I find the above statements from you to be problematic. I don't blame YOU, Alex Westner, personally. I don't recognize your name. I can only guess that you might be one of many people who've come and gone at Cakewalk in terms of community management and you might not have the long history in mind that I do... or maybe I'm wrong and you've been a core Cakewalk person from Cakewalk Apprentice days. I'm just guessing here to give you the benefit of the doubt. The point is: Don't be offended when your former customers criticize the company. Be concerned instead.

Actions. Not words.

I guess Cakewalk can afford to lose a handful of longtime users every few years, since humans breed fast enough to pick up a few new users every few months. I don't know. Is that also how the developer team changes over time, or have they been consistent over the decades of Cakewalk's lifetime?

I know there are plenty of longtime users who haven't walked away. It would be fascinating to know what the stats are on Cakewalk customers (I realize it's private data).

[LawrenceF]

[most companies] can afford to lose a handful of longtime users every few years, since humans breed fast enough to pick up a few new users every few months. I don't know.

Exactly. And that's neither a good or bad thing, it's just neutral reality.

No matter who is right or wrong in these types things one thing is almost always true, the Internet breeds certain types (not you or anyone here) who seem to think because they hate a company or a product that means it's doomed. That idea is, generally speaking, an overblown or delusional sense of self importance.

Like Avid and PT has been "going out of business" for ... what... about ... 20 years now?

The reality is that there are new potential customers born (discovering daws for the first time) every single day and no matter how loud a person stomps their feet on the way out of the door there will almost always be another new customer to replace them.

I doubt if Cakewalk or any other company loses any sleep over it, short of a mass customer exodus, which almost never happens.

So.. yeah... when I read words like "doomed" my first thought is "drama queen".

[Stupid American Pig]

So glad I held back from buying the lifetime update - they were just being too coy about everything. What on Earth were they thinking though trying to build it using Codeweaver's tech? That was never going to work.

Same here. Had I known that this was the way they were trying to do it, I never would've kept waiting around Cakewalk threads to hear news of the Mac port, worrying I might miss out on the lifetime updates deal.

I mean, seriously... wine??? It's a bad idea for high media software (I'm amazed when anything works, especially audio/MIDI apps). It's like they wanted to fail.

If they were rewriting Sonar from the ground up, which they keep talking like they're doing piece by piece, the rewrite should be made in a platform-agnostic manner. But then, we've seen how some developers "grok" cross-perform development and some don't (so many examples of stuff that is bad on one platform and good on the other, or just bad on both). I was expecting Cakewalk to not get it, but didn't expect... this! I had low expectations, because so much of Sonar is legacy that'll never be rewritten. All kinds of abandoned plugins... the point of a Mac port made little sense to me as a former Sonar user anyway because of that. But this...

Cakewalk never cared about the Mac. It's as if their corporate culture itself is the Windows API and nothing exists outside it. It's like talking to MS-certified IT people who think Macs and Mac OS haven't changed since 1997... The only reason they had Mac softsynths is because they absorbed RGC, a cross-platform-savvy developer who hasn't been with Cakewalk for years now. They couldn't even inspire any trust in their software *installers* on the Mac. You technically don't even need to invest effort into installers on the Mac, but, there we go with the Windows culture making presumptions about how the Mac side works...

This was probably an attempt to quickly cash in on the stock market glow of the Apple brand without doing the work... but then they found out that wine isn't a shortcut and gave up, rather than do it the right way.

Image Line already made the same discovery about wine wrappers a while back. They lucked out that Delphi (or whatever it's called today) has a cross-platform compiler now. They stated that the consumer interest in the wine-wrapped prototype was enough to confirm the Mac platform worth supporting with a native build. I'm not expecting much there either, but who knows, they might surprise us.

I gotta say that I have been super impressed with the Mac version of fl studio. It's not feature complete but is generally solid and usable. In fact it reminds me of daw software from the late 90s when I was trying to avoid hardware for the software "future". Fl studio is probably one of the best underrated and mainstream daws to this day. Even though nobody likes to admit it, it's something that more people use.

[jinotsuh]

I don't think that the Codeweavers path was the way they were trying to do it from the start, I don't believe that for one minute. They were trying to do it natively, but because of how ingrained SONAR is into the Windows ecosystem, they found that they couldn't do it, at least without much more work and effort and cost than they thought, and in the end the Codeweavers partnership was just to get something out the easy way to say 'Hey, look, we done what we said we were going to do, but that's it for the Mac SONAR version'. Replacing Platinum for Mac, with Home Studio, the hugely stripped down and much simplified version running on Codeweavers, much easier for them, less cost, and they get to save face. Read between the lines of some of the stuff that the Gibson sock puppet (Anderton) and other Cakewalk people have said, and the info that was given from the start and evolved along the way, which of course was recently (ish) and mysteriously removed from the site and public view, and well . . .

They have even tried to blame it on the fact that the Mac is declining in it's 'Pro' reputation, and that 'Pro' studios, users were abandoning the Mac for Windows. The Gibson Sock puppet Anderton has been seemingly preparing the way for this particular excuse over the last month or so, posting links to various articles to back up this spin. If memory serves me correct, you will find one recent post of his in the big thread in the SONAR forums where he goes to great lengths to push this, and includes half a dozen or so links to try and back it up. Don't believe the spin, Anderton is the spin king, and if you regularly read the Cakewalk forums this will be obvious.

Speaking of the Gibson Sock Puppet, he has been suspiciously AWOL since the day the news broke, kind of reminiscent of how he was radio silent during the disastrous launch of Rapture Pro and following months, his excuse was he didn't have anything to say about it because he didn't use it , then as time went by, many, many months later when most of the bugs and issues were fixed he started to break radio silence, and then all of a sudden it seems he uses it in almost every project he does he really does think people are fools, got to give it to him though, he doesn't give up

[Coxy]

What's a MAC?

[Jim Roseberry]

Speaking of the Gibson Sock Puppet, he has been suspiciously AWOL since the day the news broke, kind of reminiscent of how he was radio silent during the disastrous launch of Rapture Pro and following months, his excuse was he didn't have anything to say about it because he didn't use it , then as time went by, many, many months later when most of the bugs and issues were fixed he started to break radio silence, and then all of a sudden it seems he uses it in almost every project he does he really does think people are fools, got to give it to him though, he doesn't give up

Over the past 30+ years, that "Sock Puppet" has done a lot to educate/help *many* folks when it comes to electronics/music.

[Alex Westner]

I don't think that the Codeweavers path was the way they were trying to do it from the start, I don't believe that for one minute. They were trying to do it natively, but because of how ingrained SONAR is into the Windows ecosystem, they found that they couldn't do it, at least without much more work and effort and cost than they thought, and in the end the Codeweavers partnership was just to get something out the easy way to say 'Hey, look, we done what we said we were going to do, but that's it for the Mac SONAR version'. Replacing Platinum for Mac, with Home Studio, the hugely stripped down and much simplified version running on Codeweavers, much easier for them, less cost, and they get to save face. Read between the lines of some of the stuff that the Gibson sock puppet (Anderton) and other Cakewalk people have said, and the info that was given from the start and evolved along the way, which of course was recently (ish) and mysteriously removed from the site and public view, and well . . .

They have even tried to blame it on the fact that the Mac is declining in it's 'Pro' reputation, and that 'Pro' studios, users were abandoning the Mac for Windows. The Gibson Sock puppet Anderton has been seemingly preparing the way for this particular excuse over the last month or so, posting links to various articles to back up this spin. If memory serves me correct, you will find one recent post of his in the big thread in the SONAR forums where he goes to great lengths to push this, and includes half a dozen or so links to try and back it up. Don't believe the spin, Anderton is the spin king, and if you regularly read the Cakewalk forums this will be obvious.

Speaking of the Gibson Sock Puppet, he has been suspiciously AWOL since the day the news broke, kind of reminiscent of how he was radio silent during the disastrous launch of Rapture Pro and following months, his excuse was he didn't have anything to say about it because he didn't use it , then as time went by, many, many months later when most of the bugs and issues were fixed he started to break radio silence, and then all of a sudden it seems he uses it in almost every project he does he really does think people are fools, got to give it to him though, he doesn't give up

I was being completely honest with everyone. I wasn't at Cakewalk when this project started, but that's exactly how it went down - it started and ended as a Codeweavers project.

After I joined the company, I was not in favor of this project, because it was never going to be a great solution long-term, and there just isn't enough business out there to justify the cost for us to "do it right".

That said, I understand Cakewalk promised a SONAR Mac Alpha, so we packaged up and delivered the SONAR Mac Prototype and announced that this was the end of the line for SONAR Mac.

For Cakewalk, we're better off sticking to our strengths. And I understand our first priority is to now rebuild the trust we lost along the way.

[CTStump]

Speaking of the Gibson Sock Puppet, he has been suspiciously AWOL since the day the news broke, kind of reminiscent of how he was radio silent during the disastrous launch of Rapture Pro and following months, his excuse was he didn't have anything to say about it because he didn't use it , then as time went by, many, many months later when most of the bugs and issues were fixed he started to break radio silence, and then all of a sudden it seems he uses it in almost every project he does he really does think people are fools, got to give it to him though, he doesn't give up

Over the past 30+ years, that "Sock Puppet" has done a lot to educate/help *many* folks when it comes to electronics/music.

Craig Anderton does get a lot of flack because of Sonar. Mainly the forum there. Not really fair when you consider his contributions to the industry and music making go far beyond and above that.

Even with that there's bound to be a few out there that have a different agenda.

[flugel45]

Craig Anderton does get a lot of flack because of Sonar. Mainly the forum there. Not really fair when you consider his contributions to the industry and music making go far beyond and above that.

Even with that there's bound to be a few out there that have a different opinion.

It's more than just having a different opinion. Those few are the same two or three who gleefully wait for any CW thread to start so they can jump in and out-shout everyone else with their bashing.

Totally ironic to call anyone a "Sock Puppet" when they are the voice of venom on everything CW here. Juvenile and tiresome.

[CTStump]

Fixed^^^^^^^

I edited my previous post.

[Kai Enaki]

We're owning up to these mistakes and we're trying to right the ship, to set us on a clear and focused direction, and rebuild relationships with customers.

Still, here you are, posting snarky comments/memes and being all professional.