Your experiences with Cakewalk by Bandlab?

[Tricky-Loops]

For many years I was a REAPER fan because of the ultimate flexibility of routing everything into anything and to put audio and MIDI on the same tracks.

But now I've seen that Cakewalk (former SONAR) by Bandlab is free and I downloaded it and it looks pretty professional IMO. It even has a German introduction and manual. (But I didn't have any problems reading the Californian manual of REAPER, either.)

What's your experience with Cakewalk by Bandlab? Is it worth to work with it? What are the pros and cons? Should I go back to REAPER as soon as possible or dig deeper into it?

[SneakyBeats]

It's the same as Sonar Platinum.. It's a full pro DAW if the workflow suits you. I'd stick with Reaper but you can't tell which one suits you better unless you try both. It's free, you'll lose nothing by digging deeper.

[Saffran]

Cakewalk have been very stable for me.
Reaper have also been very stable for me.
I do make small projects. Never had more than 20 tracks.
It's down to what taste you have.

[rlared]

Great DAW and they are releasing big updates with tons of bug fixes every few months

[lfm]

I switched to Cakewalk again since using Sonar before. Walked Reaper, Samplitude, Cubase and StudioOne in between.

I had a handful of feature request for StudioOne, but found I had it all in Cakewalk.

Dispite being free, they made major new features like arranger recently. Haven't used it yet, but been requested since 10 years for Sonar.

Manual is quite good as well, major leap they did on that compared to old times.

A couple of things I appreciate over other daws
- multi out VST instruments also have their own audio tracks, not only automation tracks like Cubase and StudioOne.
- freeze of instruments is the best I ever saw - you get visible audio right on these audio tracks and as easy to unfreeze. Cubase completely hide audio from a freeze to mention one, todo automation later that is a drag just having midi to look at.
- control groups - are true control groups, not only all pan knobs, or all faders - you rightclick and set any control to a group. Not the full track to a group, and then which controls for all those. I like this approach. You also have ability to flip like inverted, so some tracks can be mute on and others off in the same group, and flipping one flip them all to other state. And pan control can be assigned as inverted etc to have two tracks be handled as one stereo.
- getting peaks as numbers on each track, I missed that in StudioOne. Easy to spot a playthrough with any overs.
- I like the looks of the themes they have, both gray and dark theme. Reaper was a drag on this never liking the look of it.

Overall Cakewalk has been stable on Windows 7, even though from this year not officially supported anymore.

[planetearth]

I switched to Cakewalk again since using Sonar before. Walked Reaper, Samplitude, Cubase and StudioOne in between.

I had a handful of feature request for StudioOne, but found I had it all in Cakewalk.

Dispite being free, they made major new features like arranger recently. Haven't used it yet, but been requested since 10 years for Sonar.

Manual is quite good as well, major leap they did on that compared to old times.

A couple of things I appreciate over other daws
- multi out VST instruments also have their own audio tracks, not only automation tracks like Cubase and StudioOne.
- freeze of instruments is the best I ever saw - you get visible audio right on these audio tracks and as easy to unfreeze. Cubase completely hide audio from a freeze to mention one, todo automation later that is a drag just having midi to look at.
- control groups - are true control groups, not only all pan knobs, or all faders - you rightclick and set any control to a group. Not the full track to a group, and then which controls for all those. I like this approach. You also have ability to flip like inverted, so some tracks can be mute on and others off in the same group, and flipping one flip them all to other state. And pan control can be assigned as inverted etc to have two tracks be handled as one stereo.
- getting peaks as numbers on each track, I missed that in StudioOne. Easy to spot a playthrough with any overs.
- I like the looks of the themes they have, both gray and dark theme. Reaper was a drag on this never liking the look of it.

Overall Cakewalk has been stable on Windows 7, even though from this year not officially supported anymore.

+1 for this.

Looooong-time Sonar user, and Cakewalk before that (for DOS and Windows!)...and now Cakewalk by Bandlab. It's been great for me, and I've tried Reaper (which is also nice) and FL Studio. I also tried StudioOne, and while I found it very close to Sonar/Cakewalk in its workflow, it didn't seem to have as many features as Sonar (which I was using in late 2018).

CbB has fixed several of the issues that were left in Sonar, and they've improved the DAW while they've had it, with several nice touches and useful improvements.

One interesting thing CbB offers is the app for sharing files with others. Makes it very easy to collaborate with others, and it's free.

Steve

[antic604]

For many years I was a REAPER fan because of the ultimate flexibility

Then you'll love it. That's why I hated it

[jamcat]

multi out VST instruments also have their own audio tracks, not only automation tracks like Cubase and StudioOne.

Sounds like you just didn’t enable multiple outputs in the VSTi slot.

[oneway]

multi out VST instruments also have their own audio tracks, not only automation tracks like Cubase and StudioOne.

Sounds like you just didn’t enable multiple outputs in the VSTi slot.

Correct, both Cubase and Studio One require enabling the additional outputs in the Console.

[chk071]

I'm thinking about trying Cakewalk as well. TBH, I'm not happy with the release policies of the companies whose DAW's I used before (Cubase and Studio One), with such a quick release cycle that it simply leaves a taste of selling a couple of features to grab money, which also leads to a massive bloat, even though I want the DAW to stay streamlined (Studio One, looking at you).

So, ya, might dare a peek, and see if it may be for me. Last version I tried was Sonar X3, which was pretty buggy TBH.

[chk071]

Is sidechaining as easy as in Studio One?

Edit: OK, seems pretty straight forward...

[chk071]

Oh well... no way to use custom installation locations for Cakewalk and the onboard plugins, so, I'll pass for now. I really don't want all my audio software and plugins plastered all over my system drive when I usually have it all on my D: drive.

[sping]

Oh well... no way to use custom installation locations for Cakewalk and the onboard plugins...

True, but there are ways using mklink. See this thread:
https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php? ... -cakewalk/

[Erisian]

I love CBB. It's been very good to me.

[lfm]

multi out VST instruments also have their own audio tracks, not only automation tracks like Cubase and StudioOne.

Sounds like you just didn’t enable multiple outputs in the VSTi slot.

But you don't get audio tracks at all - just automation tracks in arrange view, for the extra outs.
In Cakewalk you get full audiotracks for every out which can hold audio - like from freeze.

You get audio channels in mixer/console in Cubase and StudioOne - so yes you get multi out audio - but that is not quite what I meant.