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

[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.

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

I doubt it, you seem the pathetically-overcompensating-for-your-impotence type.

[dermage]

For me personally, i couldn't use Z3ta2 anymore since almost every update broke something. Currently i can open projects only with a specific version, otherwise Live crashes. I contacted support but the answer was kind of "we will look into it" but with not much commitment, and never heard something again. So... i did see this somehow coming.

[dark water]

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

I doubt it, you seem the pathetically-overcompensating-for-your-impotence type.

I've read WR's posts for many years here at KVR: he tells it like it is but he doesn't come out with immature insults and puerile swearing for the sake of it. FWIW, WR has currently (and correctly) addressed me on a point in the 'sound wave' thread. There are no hard feelings.
By contrast sfxsound3 has been here for about 18 months and his primary M.O. seems to be gratuitous flyby trolling and name-calling on people for no good reason, as per the above quote.

After he started insulting me completely out the blue and without provocation in a thread a few weeks ago, I asked him about his conduct in a PM, but he did not have the courage or decency to respond. A trawl through his profile will show plenty of more foul-mouthed and unnecessary attacks on KVR members.
Effectively sfxsound3 is the worst type of member here: a troll, bully and coward. It won't be too long before he is banned.


As for the demise of Cakewalk / Sonar - no I'm not surprised. I used it as my first DAW many years ago but imho it failed to update and keep itself 'modern' compared to competitors.

[kb420]

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

It's always about money. No matter how someone tries to spin it. It could be the absolute worse software in the world, and never get canned as long as it's making money.

[waltercruz]

A bit surprised, but I guess that it was more my wishful thinking that someday Z3ta+ could be the great synth that it could be. It was so close!

[kb420]

A bit surprised, but I guess that it was more my wishful thinking that someday Z3ta+ could be the great synth that it could be. It was so close!

z3ta+ was actually created by René Ceballos. His company RGC:Audio, was bought by Cakewalk back in 2005. I know that for some time after that, he was involved in helping to develop some of their other synths, namely Rapture. I don't know if he was still with them at the end. Rapture, z3ta+, z3ta+2, Dimension Pro, and Rapture Pro are all good virtual instruments. I don't think they were nearly as popular as some of the other available options, but they are still great sounding products.

[chk071]

z3ta+ was actually created by René Ceballos. His company RGC:Audio, was bought by Cakewalk back in 2005. I know that for some time after that, he was involved in helping to develop some of their other synths, namely Rapture. I don't know if he was still with them at the end.

As far as i know, he left Cakewalk, and plugin developing years ago. Which is a shame, because, especially Z3TA had a big potential. Just needed a bit base work in the sound department. The architecture of the synth is actually very good. And we have way too few waveshaping synths.

[Stupid American Pig]

I am not super surprised, but I never really knew much about their financial situation. I suspected they sold in the upper 4 to lower 5 digits every release, Im not sure how they would have kept the lights on otherwise. I see Greg Hendershott posting on Hacker News occastionally, but looks like his post Cakewalk software life is not music or audio related. I beta tested around the time of Sonar 7, 8 and 8.5, and gave it up due to time constraints. I sorta remember 8.5 was a pretty fragile release. Every project had a tipping point at which time it was 40% more likely to crash. I had switched to mac full time by then, and used sonar less and less.

That said, there were some things in SONAR that I really liked- The step sequencer was fantastic for making realistic sounding drum patterns. I miss that feature in Logic/reason. Luckily FL studio is native to mac now and fills that need pretty well, but not perfectly. In sonar, you could have each instrument on say jamstix on a midi lane. I dont know that you can do that in FL Studio, but I havent tried to do that.

I bought the lifetime updates promotion on the strength of the mac vaporware promise. I still have tons of old .BUN files I want to load up and work on. I guess the next thing is to just render them out or scrap them...

Most importantly I hope that Noel, Alex, Dave and the rest of the bakers land on their feet somewhere. I had my frustrations with your software on occasion, but working with you guys was a lot of fun when I was beta testing. I still have a signed business card from Dave Malaguti thanking me for my efforts.

[Romantique Tp]

The first was the obvious lack of a Mac client. With so many people using Mac, it cut the possible client base in half.

Pretty much every potential Sonar buyer on Mac is already using either Cubase or Logic, and even if they didn't have a DAW these two have always been very hard to beat. Logic is a better bang for the buck than Sonar, and Cubase is a lot more complete and robust, on top of the fact that various famous composers are showing results with it (like you said).

I think that prototype Mac version of Sonar they did was a complete waste of time and money.

The step sequencer was fantastic for making realistic sounding drum patterns.

If realism is what you're looking for then Cubase's Drum Editor and the HyperEditor in Logic are a lot better for that. They're a lot more flexible and not much harder to use.

[waltercruz]

Just needed a bit base work in the sound department.

And a bit of work in GUI, IMHO.

The architecture of the synth is actually very good. And we have way too few waveshaping synths.

[D-Fusion]

I was surprised it went this way since there where some from Gibson that loved Sonar too.
It felt like someone had died when i heard the news but i got Cubase 9 cheap this summer so i figured it was time to install it now that Cakewalk is no more.

After a few days testing Cubase i am now starting to like it and the bundled plugins so i don't feel so hurt anymore

I feel sorry for the great workers at Cakewalk loosing their jobs right before Thanksgiving and so close to christmas.

[Mystic]

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?

What I mean is that Gibson allowed them to build their product with little interference. They could make Sonar what they wanted it to be rather than a company telling them how to do it. Platinum has been a pure joy to work in.

As for why they sold? Who knows. Most companies these days seem to get bought up by a parent company.

[Mystic]

The first was the obvious lack of a Mac client. With so many people using Mac, it cut the possible client base in half.

Pretty much every potential Sonar buyer on Mac is already using either Cubase or Logic, and even if they didn't have a DAW these two have always been very hard to beat. Logic is a better bang for the buck than Sonar and Cubase is a lot more complete and robust, on top of the fact that various famous composers are showing results with it (like you said).

I think that prototype Mac version of Sonar they did was a complete waste of time and money.

It was a waste of time and money because it was half-assed. Even Cakewalk admitted to that. Look how many people bought in because of the Mac client though. There's always a market for options. I know plenty of top producers who bailed on Logic in favour of Cubase as well. It's all subjective.