Cakewalk Gets zplane élastique in build 2018.09 Build 25

[digitalboytn]

I'm keeping an eye on the new Cakewalk - I have it installed. There are a lot of things I like about it but not enough to switch me from Reaper. But Reaper has its own problems and if I eventually get rid of Reaper Cakewalk will be the first alternative I turn to.

I switched to Reaper when Gibson took over the reins at Cakewalk and it is an amazing DAW...

Reaper is not without it's little niggles,but it is extremely efficient and I love it's workflow...

Like most things,there are pros and cons involved and Cakewalk has some cool features also...

So I have them both installed and although most of my work is now done in Reaper,there are a few things that Cakewalk gets called up to do and all of my old projects are in that format...

The good news is that they co-exist quite happily without any conflicts...

The DAW that got removed from my workstations was Studio One 3...

For my purposes,Cakewalk and Reaper are the keepers I work with nearly every single day...

I am grateful that Bandlab have ressurected Cakewalk and are showing it some love

[ruslan.st]

If measure DAW quality by number of successful commercial songs I am afraid Cakewalk is very-very far behind Pro Tools.

by that measure, everything is 'very-very far behind Pro Tools'

And all DAWs are behind vintage hardware

[dellboy]

If measure DAW quality by number of successful commercial songs I am afraid Cakewalk is very-very far behind Pro Tools.

Is anything other than Pro-Tools used for big time commercial release songs ?

My guess is that a lot of middle of the road, country and western songs, have been recorded using Cakewalk.

[whyterabbyt]

If measure DAW quality by number of successful commercial songs I am afraid Cakewalk is very-very far behind Pro Tools.

by that measure, everything is 'very-very far behind Pro Tools'

And all DAWs are behind vintage hardware

To be honest, my instinct is to doubt that, though I could be wrong in doing so. Its obviously impossible to quantify, but ProTools has been around since 1984, ie for 34 years. To put that in perspective 34 years before PT came out, 1950, even stereo tape recorders were exceptionally rare.
Yes, recording does go back a lot further than that, (though not much editing does, except maybe for film) but the number of studios and facilities was very very small. But PT has existed during a massive expansion in the availability and use of such tools, and in tiers from the biggest film studio facility right down to one-person project studios.
I'd say PT is definitely ahead of all tape-based hardware; if you throw in all direct-to-wax, shellac and optical-based film work etc etc over a period of nearly 4 times the lifespan of PT, it might go the other way, though you'd have to show me real numbers to fully convince me.

[ruslan.st]

Maybe you are right, sounds logical.

[whyterabbyt]

If measure DAW quality by number of successful commercial songs I am afraid Cakewalk is very-very far behind Pro Tools.

Is anything other than Pro-Tools used for big time commercial release songs ?

I think in most cases PT will have been used somewhere post-composition, even if its not a PT project. Some film work gets done with Nuendo, there's Pyramix, Sequoia, SaDIE and a few other bits and pieces, but PT's like Photoshop, its genuinely the defacto industry standard.

My guess is that a lot of middle of the road, country and western songs, have been recorded using Cakewalk.

Yeah, Ive heard it has a strong toehold in Nashville etc.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I was a long-time Sonar after having used Pro Audio 9 and the very first Sonar release. I don't care about the politics of Cakewalk and who owned it when and what they did with the company. I only cared about my experience with Sonar as a DAW.

Someone mentioned that Sonar did a lot of things "first." Ok. Credit due. They also did a lot of things poorly. From my [end-user] perspectice, Cakewalk hitched themselves to Microsoft. So whenever Microsoft did anything new, Cakewalk would be the first to adopt it. Examples like: DirectX plugins, MME, WDM, and the other driver modes, etc. VST support was aquired by buying the FXpansion VST to DirectX wrapper and building it into the DAW. Not sure if that was ever fully undone (which is probably why Sonar is known for being very "sensitive" to certain plugins). Touch support was introduced earlier than other DAWs but was really only big deal for a small percentage of users (and I'll touch on the impacts of that later). And finally, the promised Mac support? If you knew the history of Cakewalk, you probably had a feeling that proper Mac support just wouldn't be possible with all the WIndows specific code built into the DAW.

Bugs? Every version of Sonar I had would disappear to desktop with some regularity, leaving the little Sonar icon lingering in the System Tray. This is across multiple PC's. Your bog standard Windows crashes were frequent enough to be a problem too. The other one that would randomly appear and drive me nuts? The "Disk may be full" error message that would sometimes appear when trying to record audio. But most worringly, projects were easily corrupted. I had quite a few over the years that would get corrupt and refuse to open. The last of these was the final straw. Those were the big bugs for me. The functional bugs weren't so bad. I mean, there would be things that would pop up here and there, but I could work in the DAW when it wasn't crashing.

The X-series GUI overhaul was a big step backwards for me too. Aesthetically it was an upgrade sure, but they went and made everything more "touch-friendly" at the expense of usability. Look at how much vertical space the toolbar uses. Look at how wide the console faders in their standard width (not that narrow mode) and how few you can see on a standard 1080p screen. Now compare those to other DAWs. They started taking features from Studio One like the Browser, and docking/one-screen workflow, but they did it in a very haphazard way. Click and drag an instrument from the browser to a new track? Do you get a new track? Not until you answer a few questions in a pop-up window first. Why didn't they get rid of that for the X-Series? Want to dock your console? Yes! The console doesn't resize! You have to scroll around. How do you build a dockable console without having the faders et all resize? And then portions of the GUI just weren't touched at all. For my money, Sonar 8.5 was their best release with a relateively good balance between stability (for Sonar) and GUI.

But to be fair, there were things Sonar did pretty well that I'm still waiting for Studio One to catch up to. Their Smart Tools were pretty good once you got the hang of them. I liked working with the PRV. I could quickly flip over to a [very] basic notation view when needed. Just overall, it had a fairly mature MIDI feature set.

I always hoped that Cakewalk would one day have ripped up the DAW and started over entirely from scratch on a new codebase. I understand why that would've been a terrible business decisison (at least in the short to medium term) and wouldn't be feasible, but it felt like building up that existing codebase wasn't quite the right way to go either IMO. Maybe Bandlab wants a Mac version and can begin offering the current developers the room to do just that. Who knows. I do very much appreciate them keeping Sonar alive.

[dellboy]

Can't help thinking that most of the Cakewalk grumblers are harking back to old versions of the program, "15 years ago".....blah - blah - blah.

The program is currently free, the Bandlab app is now unobtrusive, (you can sign out). At least take time to download and test the latest build before posting negative stuff.

[ruslan.st]

Can't help thinking that most of the Cakewalk grumblers are harking back to old versions of the program, "15 years ago".....blah - blah - blah.

The program is currently free, the Bandlab app is now unobtrusive, (you can sign out). At least take time to download and test the latest build before posting negative stuff.

Probably because program got such reputation during long time. And people have "pleasant" memories to share. With many of them I agree. At the moment those small positive Bandlab updates do not outweight decades of frustrated experience of many (former) users. Maybe after 10 years of hard work by Bandlab and constant positive changes Cakewalk will be treated more positively.
That happens not only with Cakewalk. Reaper used to be poor at midi some time ago. Despite Reaper's midi improved significantly few years ago it still has "poor midi" reputation to these days.

[whyterabbyt]

Probably because program got such reputation during long time. And people have "pleasant" memories to share. With many of them I agree. At the moment those small positive Bandlab updates do not outweight decades of frustrated experience of many (former) users.

I owned Sonar from V1 to CW's demise. I dispute that 'many'; in these forums and others there's always been a small but very vociferous core of vitriolic complainants who flood every thread possible. That skews the picture, doubly so because the level of venom just means that anyone with a different view just gets tired of being abused for trying to paint a more balanced picture.

[dellboy]

Probably because program got such reputation during long time. And people have "pleasant" memories to share. With many of them I agree. At the moment those small positive Bandlab updates do not outweight decades of frustrated experience of many (former) users. Maybe after 10 years of hard work by Bandlab and constant positive changes Cakewalk will be treated more positively.
That happens not only with Cakewalk. Reaper used to be poor at midi some time ago. Despite Reaper's midi improved significantly few years ago it still has "poor midi" reputation to these days.

From what I've seen, as a new user of Sonar, and from reading the Sonar forum,many of the Sonar veterans are still on board. And Bandlab is probably not sorry to see the old time users with a negative image of Sonar go. They will soon be replaced by new, fresh input.

[THE INTRANCER]

I was a long-time Sonar after having used Pro Audio 9 and the very first Sonar release. I don't care about the politics of Cakewalk and who owned it when and what they did with the company. I only cared about my experience with Sonar as a DAW.

Someone mentioned that Sonar did a lot of things "first." Ok. Credit due. They also did a lot of things poorly. From my [end-user] perspectice, Cakewalk hitched themselves to Microsoft. So whenever Microsoft did anything new, Cakewalk would be the first to adopt it. Examples like: DirectX plugins, MME, WDM, and the other driver modes, etc. VST support was aquired by buying the FXpansion VST to DirectX wrapper and building it into the DAW. Not sure if that was ever fully undone (which is probably why Sonar is known for being very "sensitive" to certain plugins). Touch support was introduced earlier than other DAWs but was really only big deal for a small percentage of users (and I'll touch on the impacts of that later). And finally, the promised Mac support? If you knew the history of Cakewalk, you probably had a feeling that proper Mac support just wouldn't be possible with all the WIndows specific code built into the DAW.

Bugs? Every version of Sonar I had would disappear to desktop with some regularity, leaving the little Sonar icon lingering in the System Tray. This is across multiple PC's. Your bog standard Windows crashes were frequent enough to be a problem too. The other one that would randomly appear and drive me nuts? The "Disk may be full" error message that would sometimes appear when trying to record audio. But most worringly, projects were easily corrupted. I had quite a few over the years that would get corrupt and refuse to open. The last of these was the final straw. Those were the big bugs for me. The functional bugs weren't so bad. I mean, there would be things that would pop up here and there, but I could work in the DAW when it wasn't crashing.

The X-series GUI overhaul was a big step backwards for me too. Aesthetically it was an upgrade sure, but they went and made everything more "touch-friendly" at the expense of usability. Look at how much vertical space the toolbar uses. Look at how wide the console faders in their standard width (not that narrow mode) and how few you can see on a standard 1080p screen. Now compare those to other DAWs. They started taking features from Studio One like the Browser, and docking/one-screen workflow, but they did it in a very haphazard way. Click and drag an instrument from the browser to a new track? Do you get a new track? Not until you answer a few questions in a pop-up window first. Why didn't they get rid of that for the X-Series? Want to dock your console? Yes! The console doesn't resize! You have to scroll around. How do you build a dockable console without having the faders et all resize? And then portions of the GUI just weren't touched at all. For my money, Sonar 8.5 was their best release with a relateively good balance between stability (for Sonar) and GUI.

But to be fair, there were things Sonar did pretty well that I'm still waiting for Studio One to catch up to. Their Smart Tools were pretty good once you got the hang of them. I liked working with the PRV. I could quickly flip over to a [very] basic notation view when needed. Just overall, it had a fairly mature MIDI feature set.

I always hoped that Cakewalk would one day have ripped up the DAW and started over entirely from scratch on a new codebase. I understand why that would've been a terrible business decisison (at least in the short to medium term) and wouldn't be feasible, but it felt like building up that existing codebase wasn't quite the right way to go either IMO. Maybe Bandlab wants a Mac version and can begin offering the current developers the room to do just that. Who knows. I do very much appreciate them keeping Sonar alive.

That echo's some aspects of my experience with Cakewalk Sonar over the years... and general feelings about it, even if it wasn't what I was mainly, or currently using.

From 2001 to 2014, Reason was my main daw, stopping at version 7.02, I could count the number of times to be less than that of 10 in that time it crashed, and since RE's made their appearance the potential of that increased. I could bring it down though by creating a feedback loop in the wiring in the early days though.

Cakewalk Sonar crashing to desktop in an instant it loaded... really made me feel, that the program was just unstable garbage. Why would anyone want to buy it when there are far more rock solid programs out there that simply worked....( around the 2005/2006 years )

I noticed Bandlab's version of Sonar, had similarities to Studio One also..I found the browser to be vastly inferior to that of Studio One 3's, and the general experience (GUI experience) to be pretty clunky despite it's aesthetics. Making Studio One look pretty isn't a problem for me...

But yeah...if anyone was going to take this program seriously again, it should have been rewritten from the core years ago...it is pretty much too late now though... Bandlab, can attempt to put as many plasterers on the Sonar body as they can, but those wounds, will never heal...it is after all quite a Frankenstein of a daw now.

Presonus did a complete overhaul of Studio One from version 2, over the course of 3 years... since then.. it's had a steady growth of development with very few bumps along the way, many of which I've managed to avoid and just get on with producing music without fear that my work won't open in the future.

The smart tool feature, I rarely use anyway... that just adds more complexity in my mind so I just stick to what I've learned and is common to the other applications I use. Cakewalk not being one of them...

Studio One 4 seems to have adapted something like the drum programming thing I found in Sonar and Impact XT seems to have evolve the clip launching thing as well as an alternative method for that.

I think for anyone who's not a cheap-asterd coming from the Cakewalk camp, Studio One seems to be steadily filling in the holes. From my understanding from what I've read from users posts, notation was pretty bad in Cakewalk Sonar. I dunno but I'm getting a weird sense that notation maybe arriving in Studio One 4.5 that will probably come in May of next year, particularly with how they have been focusing on that area in the past year or so.

[Chris Walton]

I actually switched to Cakewalk now.

Dad used Cakewalk forever (before it was called SONAR even), starting in the 90s, so I got some experience with it. Over a decade ago, I actually got a box copy of SONAR 8 or such, and fiddled with it a big; however, at the time I was still doing alot of electronic music. SONAR was clunky for that and FL just suited me better, so I forgot about it again. Fast forward to this year - I was getting more and more frustrated with FL because I've fully moved away from electronic music since about 2009/2010, and it just wasn't very convenient for recording guitar tracks and such (they've gotten better over the years, but still). I was looking at just taking the plunge into REAPER when I saw the Bandlab announcement.

Tadaa. Perfect.

Cakewalk is still similar to how I remember SONAR 8, though obviously enhanced. It works like a charm. I don't have issues with bugs, despite not having a dedicated DAW computer. The audio engine isn't more or less stable than what FL does. The VST handling is much much better than it was in the old SONAR. And - it does well at what I need it for, which is tracking guitar/bass and programming drums.

There are some things that can be annoying, but the list of things I actually miss from FL, as great a product that is, is small.

So, there. My two cents.

---

With regards to the zplane announcement in OP: That sounds really good. I don't think there are too many use cases for me, but it might come in handy at times for fixing my sloppy timing.

[dellboy]

But yeah...if anyone was going to take this program seriously again,

Huh ?

[toonertik]

Can any more experienced forum dwellers/inhabiters tell me if any other DAW creates such hatred and venom as Sonar/Cakewalk does...
I've been around computer music since late 1990's .. had crashes with lots of DAWS... BUT never never never have I had the mindset to "dis" so aggressively any DAW...
BTW, your Reason designs sucx @Intrancer... I guess we all want different things from a DAW...
OH and I am quiet enjoying my re_found experience with Sonar/Cakewalk.. I have not experienced any of the probs you posted here and on Yuoutube...
Maybe I just know how to set up my DAW PC>>>