Your experiences with Cakewalk by Bandlab?

[crickey13]

1. I found it a PITA for midi editing (too many clicks and too few tools that do what you want quickly). It actually got in the way of quick editing IMO. Probably cos I got so used to Cubase - maybe if I'd come to it new, it wouldn't have been so awkward?

MIDI editing is indeed Cakewalk's Achilles' heel. I truly like the workflow and the sound of Cakewalk, but as far as actual MIDI goes, it is a bit of a pain in the butt, ngl. Duplicating MIDI clips can get messy with dozens of overlapping notes appearing in one place for no reason whatsoever.

Other than that, I like the workflow. Maybe a bit chaotic at times, but on the other hand, this helps me break muscle memory.

maybe they have a proper manual now? They def need one.

https://bandlab.github.io/cakewalk/docs ... 0Guide.pdf

[dickiefunk]

I’m a Cubase 11 Pro user here and have been trying Cakewalk this past few days as I would like a DAW on my laptop that doesn’t use a dongle.
Whilst it’s very early days, I have to say I really like Cakewalk a lot. I can’t quite believe and comprehensive the features are for a free DAW and I would have any issues for using this as a main DAW for professional work. In fact so far I’ve found all the features that I use in Cubase are in Cakewalk and I’m partly tempted to switch. However, there are two major reasons that would put me off from doing this which are :-

1/ Longevity of the product development and support. As Cakewalk is a free product I don’t feel as confident about it still being developed and supported in the future compared to a Cubase.

2/ No MAC version. Quite a few of my colleagues work on MAC’s and I often collaborate with different producers who all use Cubase.

I’m very interested to see how new dongleless future of Cubase will pan out when Steinberg make the change as my gripes are cpu useage and loading time! Also Cubase is becoming seriously bloated and the workflow could be a lot more efficient.

[Saffran]

I’m a Cubase 11 Pro user here and have been trying Cakewalk this past few days.

1/ Longevity of the product development and support. As Cakewalk is a free product I don’t feel as confident about it still being developed and supported in the future compared to a Cubase.

2/ No MAC version. Quite a few of my colleagues work on MAC’s and I often collaborate with different producers who all use Cubase.

> 1/ There's really no guaranties that any daw continue forever.
> 2/ Cakewalk keep developing the integration with the Bandlab online daw. It seems MAC users would benefit of that because you can upload a project from Cakewalk to Bandlab as wave tracks and then download them to the MAC.

[dickiefunk]

I’m a Cubase 11 Pro user here and have been trying Cakewalk this past few days.

1/ Longevity of the product development and support. As Cakewalk is a free product I don’t feel as confident about it still being developed and supported in the future compared to a Cubase.

2/ No MAC version. Quite a few of my colleagues work on MAC’s and I often collaborate with different producers who all use Cubase.

> 1/ There's really no guaranties that any daw continue forever.
> 2/ Cakewalk keep developing the integration with the Bandlab online daw. It seems MAC users would benefit of that because you can upload a project from Cakewalk to Bandlab as wave tracks and then download them to the MAC.

1/ Yes this is true but I would expect a big company like Steinberg to be more secure and reliable than a free product? I would love to be proven wrong though as Cakewalk is great!
2/ I haven’t investigated the online Bandlab DAW for collaboration projects. I will definitely check this out

[tactile_coast]

1/ Yes this is true but I would expect a big company like Steinberg to be more secure and reliable than a free product? I would love to be proven wrong though as Cakewalk is great!

Bandlab, of which Cakewalk is a part of their service, announced a few months back that they had grown to 30 million active users so I dont think they are going anywhere soon.

[chk071]

You know what I find attractive about Cakewalk? They don't have the need for a paid upgrade per year, which adds gazillions of features nobody needs, and which are just added to justify the upgrade costs, to keep people buying, as if it's a subscription model.

Yes, that is very attractive. And, I will definitely keep an eye on it, should Studio One 4 stop working, or something else happens one day. Kinda sick of pumping and pumping more money into stuff I don't need.

[enroe]

... a paid upgrade per year, which adds gazillions of features nobody needs, and which are just added to justify the upgrade costs, to keep people buying, as if it's a subscription model.

... kinda sick of pumping and pumping more money into stuff I don't need.

Well, tcha, the software developers want to go on living. So it is clear that at least
alibi features will then be programmed ... ... as a small justification that they can
go on living. It's understandable.

[chk071]

It is. But, that doesn't mean that one has to like it.

[AnX]

mainly disappointment

[dickiefunk]

1/ Yes this is true but I would expect a big company like Steinberg to be more secure and reliable than a free product? I would love to be proven wrong though as Cakewalk is great!

Bandlab, of which Cakewalk is a part of their service, announced a few months back that they had grown to 30 million active users so I dont think they are going anywhere soon.

Wow that’s very impressive and reassuring

[planetearth]

I’m a Cubase 11 Pro user here and have been trying Cakewalk this past few days.

1/ Longevity of the product development and support. As Cakewalk is a free product I don’t feel as confident about it still being developed and supported in the future compared to a Cubase.

2/ No MAC version. Quite a few of my colleagues work on MAC’s and I often collaborate with different producers who all use Cubase.

> 1/ There's really no guaranties that any daw continue forever.
> 2/ Cakewalk keep developing the integration with the Bandlab online daw. It seems MAC users would benefit of that because you can upload a project from Cakewalk to Bandlab as wave tracks and then download them to the MAC.

1/ Yes this is true but I would expect a big company like Steinberg to be more secure and reliable than a free product? I would love to be proven wrong though as Cakewalk is great!
2/ I haven’t investigated the online Bandlab DAW for collaboration projects. I will definitely check this out

FWIW, CbB has just made collaborating easier by integrating the project-sharing feature within CbB itself. Previously, you had to use the BandLab app to share projects. But with the latest release, sharing your project (or opening one shared with you) is now an option on the File... menu, which is very convenient.

Now if only I could find someone to collaborate with....

Steve

[AdvancedFollower]

... a paid upgrade per year, which adds gazillions of features nobody needs, and which are just added to justify the upgrade costs, to keep people buying, as if it's a subscription model.

... kinda sick of pumping and pumping more money into stuff I don't need.

Well, tcha, the software developers want to go on living. So it is clear that at least
alibi features will then be programmed ... ... as a small justification that they can
go on living. It's understandable.

Different developers have different business models, though, so the price you pay for upgrades varies. Some are definitely cheaper than others yet presumably the developers are still able to pay rent and buy food.

Obviously Bandlab have found other revenue streams to fund continued development of Cakewalk, instead of asking existing users for €150 every year for an "update".

FL Studio also provide lifetime free updates, and the initial price of the DAW isn't that high (unless you get all the bundled plugins). I suppose they rely on enough new users buying into the software to fund continued development.

A Reaper license is valid for 2 major versions. If you bought V4 when it came out, you would have received 8 years of free updates for $60 (if you make under $20k annually from the software) or $225.

The other major DAWs typically have a (paid) update cycle of between 1 - 3 years, where you have to pay €99 to €150+ for the update.

[crickey13]

Apart from all the aforementioned reasons, Cakewalk now constitutes the best kind of advertisement for their collab social media platform, which is most likely their main paid gig and where their primary business focus lies. It makes sense for them to continue to develop Cakewalk because it boosts their brand recognition, so it definitely makes a lot of sense from that perspective as well.

[Danilo Villanova]

I wouldn’t worry, I’ve been following closely and they’ve been at it for two years and the amount of features and bug fixes it has gotten in that time is impressive. They just sent me a message about a bug I found a couple months back telling me that they’re doing everything they can to fix it...

The only thing that is stopping me from using it as my main DAW is some weird behavior when midi overdub recording with loop enabled. Some notes don’t get recorded at the beginning of the bar. I’ll make some gifs at some point and share them on their forum and I’m sure they’ll get solved.

In the mean time I’m using Studio One 5 Artist which I strongly recommend. Can be had for very cheap here in the forum.

[Coloneltreavy]

I have been using Cakewalk extensively for the past 3 years and it really is a full featured DAW in all aspects.

The new update with the arranger track was a great addition which I used extensively for arranging. I really like the take lane feature for recording and comping multiple takes. For mixing, it comes with a prochannel which is pretty good, if you don't want to shell out money on third party VSTs. Cakewalk also supports 32 bit plugins so one can run basically everything.

Some caveats I have are that the interface comes very cluttered and one has to set it to their needs, so it's not so beginner friendly (but definitely more so than Pro tools). Cakewalk also doesn't have such good controller support as other DAWs but one can manually set it up or use the ACT learn function which can get you far.