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

[kb420]

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.

Well, it obviously wasn't making any money. If it were, I'm sure that Gibson wouldn't have pulled the plug on it so abruptly. I'm actually surprised at how many of the loyal users that still think it's the best. If it were the best, then why isn't everybody using it? If it were the best, why wasn't it making any money? I really liked Sonar versions 4-8. I always thought the X platform was trying to mimic the look and feel of Studio One with a few copycat features from FL and Ableton Live thrown in. Every since the X platform came out, I started looking at EVERYTHING else, and I'm glad I did. Personally, I'll take Ableton Live, Studio One, or Cubase over Sonar any day of the week.

If Sonar's performance was so good, it would have been more popular. If it were more popular, it would have been lucrative. If it were lucrative, it would still be around.

But, that's just not the case.

[ATN69]

I had to say yes because when I first saw the news it sort of came out of nowhere. After giving it some thought I realize that there have not been much activity at Cakewalk for quite some time. It's a pity because Cakewalk had a lot of potential but with owners that doesn't care about then it's doomed to fail.

[Mystic]

Well, it obviously wasn't making any money. If it were, I'm sure that Gibson wouldn't have pulled the plug on it so abruptly. I'm actually surprised at how many of the loyal users that still think it's the best. If it were the best, then why isn't everybody using it? If it were the best, why wasn't it making any money? I really liked Sonar versions 4-8. I always thought the X platform was trying to mimic the look and feel of Studio One with a few copycat features from FL and Ableton Live thrown in. Every since the X platform came out, I started looking at EVERYTHING else, and I'm glad I did. Personally, I'll take Ableton Live, Studio One, or Cubase over Sonar any day of the week.

If Sonar's performance was so good, it would have been more popular. If it were more popular, it would have been lucrative. If it were lucrative, it would still be around.

But, that's just not the case.

Cakewalk was apparently doing pretty well. The problem was Gibson was not and it seems their focus has shifted in a 180 to put more money into development of whatever they are doing with Philips instead. Regardless of how much a company makes, more money has to go into continuing development and with Gibson being some 500m in the hole, they will go with whatever they feel will make them more in the short term. A lot of people bought into the lifetime membership. They sold a ton of those and those people have come out of the woodworks this past week to give you an idea of numbers and overall popularity. That said, the DAW market is going to be limited to people who do music. With Philips, we have no idea what is going on there.

There are two major things holding Cakewalk back. The first was the obvious lack of a Mac client. With so many people using Mac, it cut the possible client base in half. The second is the disaster that X1/X2 was. The Roland years really did a number on Cakewalk's reputation and they have been clawing their way back from it ever since Roland sold and Gibson allowed Cakewalk to run itself without interference. When that happened, some amazing things started happening with Sonar and it became a much more solid DAW.

There were some other things that prevented Sonar from really becoming a high selling DAW such as the fact that the ones that are currently selling the most licenses are catering to people who want to do EDM. Live and FL for example. Cubase has a long standing user base in the composing world which tends to sway new composers that way because so many of the people they admire use it, Logic is an obvious choice for Mac users if they aren't focused on a certain genre based DAW, Reaper is $60 (or free for those who want to deal with the nag screen) so that leaves Sonar as kind of the bastard child and it has to work harder to acquire new customers because of those three reasons I mentioned alone. The sad part is, it did everything shockingly well. It wasn't without it's issues; nothing is, but it had pretty much the best of all worlds shoved into it, monthly updates with new features which no other company is really doing. When Cakewalk was able to work on it's own, they did so brilliantly but their reputation has been a real bitch to overcome from the X years.

[kb420]

When Cakewalk was able to work on it's own, they did so brilliantly but their reputation has been a real bitch to overcome from the X years.

Why didn't they stay on their own? First they were bought by Roland and then Gibson. If they were doing so well on their own, what was that all about anyway?

[whyterabbyt]

Well, it obviously wasn't making any money. If it were, I'm sure that Gibson wouldn't have pulled the plug on it so abruptly.
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If Sonar's performance was so good, it would have been more popular. If it were more popular, it would have been lucrative. If it were lucrative, it would still be around.

All of these assertions are fallacious.

[kb420]

All of these assertions are fallacious.

Really? Ok. Well, it's been discontinued so I guess it really doesn't matter anyway.

[ATS]

Well, it obviously wasn't making any money. If it were, I'm sure that Gibson wouldn't have pulled the plug on it so abruptly.
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If Sonar's performance was so good, it would have been more popular. If it were more popular, it would have been lucrative. If it were lucrative, it would still be around.

All of these assertions are fallacious.

so it was making money hand over fist but the owners just decided it was taking too long to count it all? Was that it?

[Aloysius]

All of these comments are facetious.

[kb420]

Well, it obviously wasn't making any money. If it were, I'm sure that Gibson wouldn't have pulled the plug on it so abruptly.
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If Sonar's performance was so good, it would have been more popular. If it were more popular, it would have been lucrative. If it were lucrative, it would still be around.

All of these assertions are fallacious.

so it was making money hand over fist but the owners just decided it was taking too long to count it all? Was that it?

You can always tell who's a member of the "Cult of Sonar", can't you? I'm a Sonar user, and I owned version 4 through 8.5, and I also owned X3-Platinum. My subscription is due for renewal in January, but obviously I'm not renewing. Fortunately, I'm not a "Cult of Sonar" member. In other words, I don't use Sonar exclusively. Honestly, I don't use it at all. I was just keeping a current version because it was easy to open older projects with a current version. I couldn't run Sonar 8.5 64 bit in Windows 8. It just would not work.

That being said, I was fed up and start exploring other DAW's and I'm glad I did. If you visit the Cakewalk forum right not, you'll see a bunch of threads about moving on to other DAW's. It seems that most of their users have never even demo'd any other DAW, but they brag about how great Sonar is. If you've never tried anything else, how do compare it to anything else? How can you give an honest assessment to anything if you have absolutely no frame of reference?

[whyterabbyt]

You can always tell who's a member of the "Cult of Sonar", can't you?

Go on, do tell.

If you're levelling it at me, its clearly someone who's used multiple DAWs agnostically for 15 years, and calls you out when an assertion has clearly been pulled out of your arse.

[whyterabbyt]

so it was making money hand over fist but the owners just decided it was taking too long to count it all? Was that it?

Was it some other dumb fallacious assertion instead of the original dumb fallacious assertions?

Erm, no.

[Aloysius]

What is this fadoodle really about?

[whyterabbyt]

What id this fadoodle really about?

The manifestation of the meeting point between mob psychology and Dunning-Kruger, as dozens of KVRtards rush to proclaim their avowed intrinsic superior comprehension of the management of international businesses. Again.

[ATN69]

What id this fadoodle really about?

The manifestation of the meeting point between mob psychology and Dunning-Kruger, as dozens of KVRtards rush to proclaim their avowed intrinsic superior comprehension of the management of international businesses. Again.

In one word ...MONEY

[sfxsound3]

What id this fadoodle really about?

The manifestation of the meeting point between mob psychology and Dunning-Kruger, as dozens of KVRtards rush to proclaim their avowed intrinsic superior comprehension of the management of international businesses. Again.

You always want to be on top, biatch? No problem, I can f**k you that way too.