Introducing the new SONAR: New lineup, new features, plus membership

[bosone]

New membership scheme could mean that we will never see special upgrades prices!!
I'm still on sonar 8.5p and I received a 70$oder for x3. But I did not upgrades cause I thought it would be better to wait for x4... Now probably I will never have the same opportunity at such a low price! :-/

[lfm]

I have to refraze myself - quite a few nice things in there:

Mix recall - snapshot of mixes easily adapted what to recall - how I always wanted that
Control bar - quite clever collapsable by choice level of tools, not only on/off
Sends/inserts adaptable - is neat too, not so much fixing with mouse to make more room in console
And wizard that creates the bus and even the effect in the same process as the send.

All in Artist version as well.

Now please take my bugreport seriously so I can get going....

[luxgud]

I hear a death knell, Sonar RIP.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Its been knelling for a while, so many DAWs these days

[anisotonic]

What really fills me with rage is that after all this time, so many versions, and endless feature requests from the users, Cakewalk still hasn't improved the signal routing! I mean, seriously, is it that difficult to allow the output of one audio track to be sent to the input of another? If so, they have some serious flaws in their basic architecture!

Insert the gate in an audio track, set its output to Sidechain, done.
actually save that as a track template so you don't have to do it again. done.

[riley4reason]

Has anyone mentioned the "R" word yet? that'll add another 100 pages or so. maybe some more kitty cats too.

[GeorgK]

**** EDIT ****
I was obviously confused by the information on the Cakewalk homepage. Therefore my general comments on the prices are incorrect. Sorry.

I leave the orginal text to preserve the context.
*****

Absolutely laughable. Full Cubase, regularily updated costs less per year than the small "Artist" version of Sonar would. Ha!
It is a small, closed community over there, that is problay why they have lost touch with reality. I mean, in the forum everything that Cakewalk does is always "great" and "fantastic job", while anyone who dares to critize is quickly run over by the die-hard afficiandos. "Rock solid" in the Sonar world would translate into "barely usable" for most other serious hosts.
The had artificially blown up the user base with X3 by giving away the basic version for almost nothing to everybody who owned some kind of Cakewalk product. This bubble will now implode, much to the annoyance of Gibson.
But it is nice to read how people here repeat 100% the marketing blah from the Cakewalk site.

G.

[jsp1979]

Absolutely laughable. Full Cubase, regularily updated costs less per year than the small "Artist" version of Sonar would. Ha!

What are the figures here? (Cubase vs. Cakewalk Artist)

[GeorgK]

**** EDIT ****
I was obviously confused by the information on the Cakewalk homepage. Therefore my general comments on the prices are incorrect. Sorry.

I leave the orginal text to preserve the context.
*****


Cubase update (every two years) is max. 150 Euro (much cheaper in US, but can also be found for less in EU), so 75 Euros per year. Sonar is minimum 99 Dollars per year ("starting from", which I interpret as "valid for existing customers", new customers will pay more).
Right, if one buys Cubase now new, and sells it next year, it will cost him a little more (although Cubase kept its value very well so far). But over a span of a few years, Cubase Pro will be cheaper.
500 bucks per year for the "big" Sonar is ridiculous. Obviously they hope for a lot of professional user who simply cannot afford to switch DAW on a short-term.
G.

[SODDI]

"Membership"? What a con.

I can scratch that one DAW off the "for consideration" list, joining Cubase and Studio One.

[Numanoid]

SONAR is more than just a digital audio workstation - it's the most advanced music production experience available today. We've completely changed the way our software is developed by introducing a Membership program that offers continuous updates to the program including new features, improvements, fixes, content, and video tutorials that guide you along in the process.

OK, so lets say you are having a big gig, arriving fashionably late, quickly firing up the laptop, and expecting Sonar to launch in an instant, but no, you get the message "Sonar will start after installing these updates, improving your user experience"

And in the meantime the punters start pelting you with bottles....

[Jim Roseberry]

Cakewalk "Command Center" works similar to the Apple App Store.
You have to manually open/run it to update Sonar.

[LawrenceF]

500 bucks per year for the "big" Sonar is ridiculous. Obviously they hope for a lot of professional user who simply cannot afford to switch DAW on a short-term.
G.

No offense, and I'm no Sonar fan (or owner) but man, KVR is sometimes just "disinformation central". Did you even read the pricing web page? The membership renewal fee listed there is $199 a year for the top version, not $500 per year. $500 would be like buying a new full daw product every year, at the full price, which wouldn't make any sense at all under any circumstance.

[cryophonik]

500 bucks per year for the "big" Sonar is ridiculous. Obviously they hope for a lot of professional user who simply cannot afford to switch DAW on a short-term.
G.

No offense, and I'm no Sonar fan (or owner) but man, KVR is sometimes just "disinformation central". Did you even read the pricing web page? The membership renewal fee listed there is $199 a year for the top version, not $500 per year. $500 would be like buying a new full daw product every year, at the full price, which wouldn't make any sense at all under any circumstance.

What?! You expect KVR members to read AND comprehend something this complex?!

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

I don't use everything that X3 does, I see no compelling reason to upgrade. Doesn't look particularly evil, though.

At least they haven't pulled an Adobe or Autodesk...