Cakewalk Sonar Platinum is now free!

[lanfear]

Following with that example, both Live and Cakewalk have a cell matrix, but while Live's matrix is more comprehensive and is designed for live (duh!) use, Cakewalk's is not. So, if you look at CbB Matrix view from a Live's user point of view, it is easy to just dismiss it, like I did for a long time, and I never used Live's Session view that much, anyway. It took me a long time to find out that I could do something with it, that really cannot be done with Live's Session view and that is more useful for me.

So, right now for me Live is more of a sound design platform, but I do all my midi programming, recording and mixing in Cakewalk, while some time ago I relied much more heavily on Live when Sonar did not make me comfortable, and I would not mind doing it again if the need arises.

Thanks for the detailed examples Jose, very informative.

I'm a long time Sonar user and I've never even explored the matrix view! I think I will, now!

[starise]

One suggestion here- Check for updates regularly. CbB isn't sitting still.The updates have been monthly or less. Better than many paid daws.

As someone who uses both Live 10 and recent versions of CbB. I find it difficult to make direct comparisons of features. I use Ableton mainly to play backing band tracks. One feature that I LOVE in it is the ability to lasso and drag a group of say 20 tracks in an audio folder hit the CTRL button and they all line up horizontally across the top. Name the track, add the time signature and the BPM and the tempo automatically adjusts to it.

So say you might have a set of 5 songs to be played sequentially at different tempos. Each song has 20 or more tracks. Once you park those tracks in a folder Ableton can see, it's simple drag and drop. In less than 5 minutes you can have that set loaded and named complete with bpm timing.
Another thing I like is the warping feature. It can warp both the key and the time easily after you know how to do it. Triggering with any controller is a cinch. I use a QuNeo to trigger tracks. triggering with a midi keyboard is just as easy.

I have used the matrix view in Cakewalk. It can be told to do some amazing things. CbB accepts
both rex and acid loops.One of the few left who have bitbridge built in to continue to use 32 bit plugins. Ableton is strictly 64bit. Cakewalk exports pretty much everything you can imagine. I know people who have both built and played entire shows live using only Cakewalk. This includes triggering midi lighting and other stage effects. I don't know why a person couldn't trigger the matrix view with midi. Cakewalk has more composition and mixing tools IMHO, the matrix isn't something a lot of people use, but it's there and it acts a LOT like Ableton. I personally prefer Ableton for live backing track work mainly because it's a time saver for me. More efficient on that end of things.Yet live work could be done using backing tracks on almost any daw.

I'm not a DJ looper beatz kinda guy. Push is basically the MPC of Ableton and if you do that, yeah you probably want Ableton. If you can't buy Ableton right now CbB is still free and you could download it and play with matrix. RTM though. It's there and has a lot of info in it. I wouldn't know where to begin in Reaper. Never tripped my trigger and didn't need it so...

Cakewalk has very good midi editing tools in it. Might make sense to build midi in it and export to something else.

[zzz00m]

I think Ableton is a very good complement to any linear DAW such as Cakewalk. I don't think I would attempt to directly compare the two, because they each occupy a different niche in the DAW ecosystem. Having both would be a win/win, without a ton of overlap.

Live would never fully replace a linear DAW for the sort of tracking and editing that linear DAWs are good at. And I don't think Cakewalk would ever replace Live for flexibility in performance use and launching clips, warping, and recording directly into the session view.

Cakewalk does offer a lot of features to work with, so it can be used for a lot of things. But realistically it will not be best of breed in every feature it offers beyond its core. It is a competent DAW and you can create music in it, what you get out of it just depends on what you want to do. For the price though, Cakewalk is definitely worth grabbing!

[chris.r]

After giving this a daw a miss for being unreliable I thought I would have another try after a few weeks. But its the usual problem that I had a while back, the daw not seeing my midi and usb controllers. It seems to be hit or miss on the day.

Is there some sort of way to get it to recognise them ?

Or does this daw have known problem with midi devices ?

Other daws I use have no problems in detecting them.

Sorry if my reply is way to late. There seems to be an issue between how Cakewalk and how Windows are handling usb controllers. Look on cakewalk forum for solution, use google search and site:forum.cakewalk.com to find posts like this http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3762447 or this http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3767679

Hope that helps.

I wish CbB had CTL-D, though.

Me too, Sonar is really missing that, amongst many other things! Don't get me started...

In case you didn't know, in Cakewalk you can use Paste Special and set the Repetitions amount.

Cheers

[JoseC.]

I wish CbB had CTL-D, though.

Me too, Sonar is really missing that, amongst many other things! Don't get me started...

In case you didn't know, in Cakewalk you can use Paste Special and set the Repetitions amount.

Cheers

Yes, I know, that but a simple shortcut like CTL-D to duplicate what is selected in a single go would be very convenient.

[classic]

They did not also take over the vstís of Sonar Platinum?
Just the DAW?


Cheers
classic

[zzz00m]

They did not also take over the vstís of Sonar Platinum?
Just the DAW?


Cheers
classic

No big deal. The main point is that the core DAW is free now. Most Sonar users preferred 3rd party VSTs anyway. There are plenty of good free ones available if you are just getting started.

Here is a list of the included plugins: http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?p ... ins.1.html

Sonar and Cakewalk version feature comparisons chart: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

[gabgue]

Hi, any way to get a offline installer? thanks.

[zzz00m]

No.

[Jace-BeOS]

After using the downloader to get the installer packages, you can copy them to another system and install from there. I’m fairly sure I archived my installers via this method.

[zzz00m]

After using the downloader to get the installer packages, you can copy them to another system and install from there. I’m fairly sure I archived my installers via this method.

Yes you can archive the installer package, if you are quick enough to copy it from the download folder that the BandLab Assistant uses, before it deletes it.

But you will need to be online with BandLab Assistant to activate an install. It needs to phone home the first time, and then again about every 6 months.

[Jace-BeOS]

After using the downloader to get the installer packages, you can copy them to another system and install from there. I’m fairly sure I archived my installers via this method.

Yes you can archive the installer package, if you are quick enough to copy it from the download folder that the BandLab Assistant uses, before it deletes it.

The trick is to not continue the process until copying the installers away from where the Bandlab Assistant puts them (and you can configure this location to make it easy, like the desktop).

But you will need to be online with BandLab Assistant to activate an install. It needs to phone home the first time, and then again about every 6 months.

Didn’t know this. That’s annoying. Thanks for specifying this detail.

[zzz00m]

But you will need to be online with BandLab Assistant to activate an install. It needs to phone home the first time, and then again about every 6 months.

Didn’t know this. That’s annoying. Thanks for specifying this detail.

Yup, it's free to use, but not completely free like open source. Being connected as a service is appearing more and more these days as a new trend in modern software. My guess is that they are collecting usage data as in number of installs, etc.

[BBFG#]

Been trying to install on a machine (64 bit Win 7) but the assistant comes up with a blank box during install and stops there. So I installed Platinum which had no problems until authorizing. Cakewalk no longer recognizes my password? So it runs great but only in demo mode.
Contacted Cakewalk and Bandlab and haven't received any return from them on the multiple attempts for over a month now.
Running Cubase 10AI now.
Feels like Sonar is dead in any form for me ATM.

[chk071]

Wonder when Cakewalk will pull the plug for existing accounts anyway. Like, when i'll stop being able to log into my account on Cakewalk.com.