Bandlab Cakewak vs Cubase

[Musical Gym]

When and why did Cakewalk become free? I used Sonar many years ago.

[FapFilter]

must have been in around 2018 or 2019 when Gibson or whoever was owning Cakewalk at that time decided to ditch it.
Bandlab got the rights for it and decided to continue development and make it free

[Musical Gym]

thanks

[JoseC.]

OMG, Cakewalk was and always will be a UI nightmare (and a mishmash of legacy upon legacy code). While Cubase 11 certainly has its UI Frankenstein moments (and legacy bloat,) it's nowhere near as bad as Cakewalk. Plus, Cubase is maintained by a top notch team. Who only knows what's driving Cakewalk these days.

What an inane comment.

I wouldn't call it a "nightmare", but, the GUI is very busy, and, Cakewalk also has loads of legacy stuff, which would make sense to scratch, and thin out the DAW.

I am curious. In what way is the GUI "busier" than other DAWs? I do not see much difference.

[chk071]

The top bar, the inspector, the mixer... there's a LOT more going on there than in Studio One, for example. In Cubase, you can at least collapse the sections of the inspector, which makes it a bit less "busy".

The mixer also doesn't really resize. Even on full HD resolution, it's pretty hopeless, if you still want to see a few tracks at the same time. It's so BIG. And busy.

[Danilo Villanova]

I've just tried using alt-mousewheel and the track height increases, not just the waveform zoom. To be fair, there is a weird jump when you downscale after hitting the bottom of the track pane, but that might be something I've done or a genuine bug I've found

I've got all zoom in/out settings as "At Cursor" and unticked "Simultaneous horizontal and vertical zoom"; zoom factor is 1.5 in both directions.

Yes I see what you mean, but it's not what I meant though. I mean adjusting the height of all tracks simultaneously using Ctrl + Scrollwheel like you can in Reaper, S1, Reason, etc. You can do it with Ctrl + up or down arrows in CbB but not with the scrollwheel.

Ah - I see. Never even thought of doing that (given I'll run out of vertical screen space soon enough).

Yeah, that’s the same answer I’ve gotten from users and even the developers, although you can do it in every other DAW. So I have zero hope that it’ll ever be addressed . Studio One Artist it is

[zzz00m]

When and why did Cakewalk become free? I used Sonar many years ago.

A brief history of Cakewalk software, which was previously owned by Roland, then by Gibson. In 2017 Gibson announced an end to development on the Cakewalk software. This left several thousand users stunned and saddened. Just when all seemed lost, enter Bandlab, who purchased the intellectual property rights for Cakewalk software and continued the course. The producer version of Cakewalk (Sonar at the time) was approximately $400 dollars. Bandlab made an announcement that they would not only be releasing regular updates and development with the software, they would make it FREE! Many of us couldn't believe this award winning professional recording software was going to be FREE!

http://www.homerecordingwizard.com/cake ... ab-review/

Sonar now free, renamed ‘Cakewalk by BandLab’
https://www.soundonsound.com/news/sonar ... lk-bandlab

Announcement from BandLab CEO: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Cakewalk-By-B ... 43935.aspx

[zzz00m]

New Cakewalk features 2018-2021:

http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?p ... s.001.html

Release notes: Cakewalk features, optimizations, and bug fixes since version 2018-04:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aFO ... 3OjlA/edit

[JoseC.]

The top bar, the inspector, the mixer... there's a LOT more going on there than in Studio One, for example. In Cubase, you can at least collapse the sections of the inspector, which makes it a bit less "busy".

The mixer also doesn't really resize. Even on full HD resolution, it's pretty hopeless, if you still want to see a few tracks at the same time. It's so BIG. And busy.

You can actually collapse the control bar to half size (see the pic I posted above) with CTL +C, or hide it completely just using "C". The Inspector is an "I" press away to toggle it and of course its sections are collapsible. And even though the mixer strips are not continuously resizable, you have the option of regular size, or narrow.

I still don't get the "busy" thing, I don't see many things there that should not be, or that are not in other DAWs, and even if there were, you can still hide many things using workspaces.

[Musical Gym]

@zzz00m - thanks

[kperry]

I've just tried using alt-mousewheel and the track height increases, not just the waveform zoom. To be fair, there is a weird jump when you downscale after hitting the bottom of the track pane, but that might be something I've done or a genuine bug I've found

I've got all zoom in/out settings as "At Cursor" and unticked "Simultaneous horizontal and vertical zoom"; zoom factor is 1.5 in both directions.

Yes I see what you mean, but it's not what I meant though. I mean adjusting the height of all tracks simultaneously using Ctrl + Scrollwheel like you can in Reaper, S1, Reason, etc. You can do it with Ctrl + up or down arrows in CbB but not with the scrollwheel.

Ah - I see. Never even thought of doing that (given I'll run out of vertical screen space soon enough).

Yeah, that’s the same answer I’ve gotten from users and even the developers, although you can do it in every other DAW. So I have zero hope that it’ll ever be addressed . Studio One Artist it is

Can you explain a use case then (I'm not trying to be difficult - obviously different ways of working we all have)?

[Danilo Villanova]

I've just tried using alt-mousewheel and the track height increases, not just the waveform zoom. To be fair, there is a weird jump when you downscale after hitting the bottom of the track pane, but that might be something I've done or a genuine bug I've found

I've got all zoom in/out settings as "At Cursor" and unticked "Simultaneous horizontal and vertical zoom"; zoom factor is 1.5 in both directions.

Yes I see what you mean, but it's not what I meant though. I mean adjusting the height of all tracks simultaneously using Ctrl + Scrollwheel like you can in Reaper, S1, Reason, etc. You can do it with Ctrl + up or down arrows in CbB but not with the scrollwheel.

Ah - I see. Never even thought of doing that (given I'll run out of vertical screen space soon enough).

Yeah, that’s the same answer I’ve gotten from users and even the developers, although you can do it in every other DAW. So I have zero hope that it’ll ever be addressed . Studio One Artist it is

Can you explain a use case then (I'm not trying to be difficult - obviously different ways of working we all have)?

No particular use case. I just like to zoom in and out using the scroll wheel. In CbB you can do that horizontally but not vertically. For that you need to use Ctrl + arrow keys.

[kperry]

Fair enough - I can understand why it works as it does (so you don't, say, zoom partially on 3 tracks rather than fully on one, which I could see annoying people), so I don't feel it's wrong as such. I tend to use Z-drag to zoom so I can choose exactly what I want to zoom in on (one track or multiples)*.

* Yes, there are some oddities with track folder headers when you do this

[enroe]

When and why did Cakewalk become free? I used Sonar many years ago.

Haha, yes, yes: when Bandlab bought Cakewalk in 2017, Cakewalk made
it free software. And not only that: Development was also accelerated -
bugs were fixed faster than ever before.

[starise]

Many continued improvements on CbB. This isn't an operation that is sitting still and frankly it has to have the others just a bit concerned.
Not to diminish that many of the other DAWs are great too.

Things have come full circle for me. I am beginning to work with more midi tracks. Could I do it in Cakewalk? Probably but I can get Cubase for a good price which does not happen very often. Cubase is tops in midi. If I don't buy it I'll probably always wonder if I could be working more efficiently in making midi compos.

I won't ever stop using Cakewalk. Mainly because I know it fairly well by now. Really the only motive for me is moving from a good PR in Cakewalk to a slightly better PR roll in Cubase from everything I'm reading.
Is it worth the extra quid even on sale? For you maybe it is. For me I'm on the fence. Until now I have had no problems with PR in Cakewalk. The main problem was the user in most cases.

Since I haven't invested in the pro version of Cubase, this is going to cost me even on sale.

If I have an idea and want to put it into a reality fast, for me there's nothing like Cakewalk. I have recorded, mixed and mastered tracks in CbB in less than half a day. Sometimes within only a few hours.

I doubt I will have this kind of success in Cubase.