Gibson Brands announced the end of Cakewalk

Although I'm not happy at all, I would imagine anyone can still grab the latest version of Sonar/Cakewalk and use it for at least 5-7 years before Windows stops supporting the OS or whatever. I have Sonar 6 on one of my old Laptops and it still works fine. So you don't 'have' to change...but it will obviously become outdated in years to come.
 
BBN said:
Although I'm not happy at all, I would imagine anyone can still grab the latest version of Sonar/Cakewalk and use it for at least 5-7 years before Windows stops supporting the OS or whatever. I have Sonar 6 on one of my old Laptops and it still works fine. So you don't 'have' to change...but it will obviously become outdated in years to come.
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The issue is Gibson made Cakewalk change from only having to type a serial number and registration to online activation, so if and when their servers go down, we'll never be able to install again. I bet there's a torrent that can already hack the online activation but I hate running things like that on my PC because you never really know what it does in the background and if it's installing viruses, spyware or any other kind of security issues.
 
GotMetalBoy said:
The issue is Gibson made Cakewalk change from only having to type a serial number and registration to online activation, so if and when their servers go down, we'll never be able to install again. I bet there's a torrent that can already hack the online activation but I hate running things like that on my PC because you never really know what it does in the background and if it's installing viruses, spyware or any other kind of security issues.
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Damn it! Good point!
 
I used Cakewalk from the Pro Audio 5 days as my first DAW. (I did this on tape years ago. LOL) Over the past year or so I have transitioned over to Studio One, but was still staying up to date with SONAR and got in cheap when they first announced the lifetime offer for probably $99. I think I got my money's worth over the years.

I'm really bummed for the gang at Cakewalk and I've been a member of the forum over there since they started it. It's kind of like watching it happen to an old friend.

Mostly I'm really pissed at Gibson over this. They have a way of killing companies that they buy. I had one very old lower model Gibson SG that I ended up giving to my old bass player, and I picked up a Les Paul Tribute a few months ago, but I won't ever consider another Gibson. I won't be unhappy to see them go under in the year's to come. There are enough used Gibson's floating around to keep the masses happy for a long time.
 
GotMetalBoy said:
The issue is Gibson made Cakewalk change from only having to type a serial number and registration to online activation, so if and when their servers go down, we'll never be able to install again. I bet there's a torrent that can already hack the online activation but I hate running things like that on my PC because you never really know what it does in the background and if it's installing viruses, spyware or any other kind of security issues.
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From their release:
So what does this mean for you, our loyal customers who've been with us all these years? Cakewalk's servers will continue to operate, you will still have access to all of your online assets, and your software will continue to work normally. A dedicated team has been established during this transition period to continue to serve the Cakewalk community. Monthly updates to SONAR from Cakewalk will however cease during this time. We will continue to post notifications to keep you informed with any relevant developments. A sincere thank you to everyone in the Cakewalk community.

The only thing that I don't like about that statement - 'during this transition period'.
Transition to what...and when is that?
 
End of a long era.

I was also a Cakewalk user going way back to floppy disk install on Windows 3.1. Used Sonar for a while, eventually got fed up enough with bloat, bugs, various design stupidity for the sake of legacy compatibility that I gave up my comfort zone to try some new DAWS. Cubase had different iterations of similar problems, Reaper was OK.. but the jewel in the DAW haystack was and remains Presonus Studio One. GREAT software IMO.
 
Rexgtr said:
Gibson buys and shelves several companies. Opcode, Maestro, Steinberger... and now Sonar.
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So you're saying Gibson is basically the Electronic Arts of the music world. I don't think we'll completely see the end of Gibson guitars, but I do think they're a-hole CEO needs to go and some proper leadership takes over. I could see them being acquired at some point, but with their crushing debt I'm not sure who'd touch them.
 
My first DAW was Cakewalk LE on Windows 95. I got it as free bundleware. Got my feet wet with making music digitally. It had an awesome Staff View. I wrote everything one note at a time on staff (I'm a dinosaur), and epic wavetable instruments. I couldn't get the hang of Piano Roll because I needed to "see" the music. Building a new PC warranted an upgrade to Sonar X2, which ultimately had a poor staff view. Then I had an affair with Reaper, then left X2. Finally learned Piano Roll out of necessity, but it has actually improved my workflow, lol.

Fond memories DAWing around with Cakewalk LE, before I even knew it was called a DAW. I'm sad to see Cakewalk go. Not happy with what Gibson is doing.
 
The debt needs to get black hole like gravity to force a leadership change by the debt holders.

Then perhaps we will see the end of this buying to shutter activity and see them develop the great stuff they bought and sat on like Opcode, Cakewalk, Steinberger, Modulus, Spector, etc.
 
GotMetalBoy said:
I think we all knew this was coming but it angers me that I paid for the lifetime updates and it didn't even last 1 year!

https://reverb.com/news/gibson-brands-announces-the-closure-of-cakewalk

Here's more links about it:
* http://www.cakewalk.com/Gibson-Announcement
* http://www.cakewalk.com/announcement
* http://blog.cakewalk.com
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Yeah, so did I. Plus upgraded a zillion times since early 90's. Really sucks. Gibson is a joke and I hope this buries them. Yeah, I'm a Fender guy anyway..............
 
I have reaper also (paid for a license a while ago - thru 5.99. But everytime I open it I do NOT like it.. If things go bad and they drop the servers so we cannot reinstall (short lifetime I guess) I will probabl look to Studio One 3.5 Pro. I am on windows. Presonus right now is only $199 from Sweetwater. On sale.
So I will hope for someone to buy Sonar.
I do plan to slowly learn Reaper bit by bit, but fo me it's tough getting past the interface.
 
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Stratman68 said:
I ave reaper also (paid for a license a whule ago - thru 5.99. But everytime I open it I do NOT like it.. If things go bad and they drop the servers so we cannot reinstall (short lifetime I guess) I will probabl look to Studio One 3.5 Pro. I am on windows. Presonus right now is only $199 from Sweetwater. On sale.
So I will hope for someone to buy Sonar.
I do plan to slowly learn Reaper bit by bit, but fo me it's tough getting past the interface.
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I have both Reaper and Studio One, and I've been using Studio One more than SONAR for about a year. I tried to like Reaper, but it seems like it was written by tweakers for tweakers. Seems like they tey to make iy eveeything for everyone.

Really adapted to Studio One pretty quickly and with the new latency feature in 3.5 there is no going back to anything else.
 
Do any other DAW's have a feature like SONAR's MIDI Groove Quantize? I use it to correct velocities because most of my MIDI drums are recorded on my V-Drum Kit. I use Groove Quantize to correct timing, duration and velocity for drum beats created by hand, so they sound more human.

If you don't know what Groove Quantize is, you can copy the timing, duration and velocity from a MIDI clip and apply it to a different MIDI clip. I use it to correct Hi-Hats, so they're not all the same velocity and have an accent on the down beats.
 
Well, for me it's quite different. Did some research since my last post. I am in a home studio and besides my vocal tracks and my guitar tracks, everything else is midi and softsynths. So I really need a top notch midi program. From what I have read, Studio One Pro 3.5 is not heavy on midi. Supposedly Cubase and Sonar are tops for this.

My main concerns for Sonar come down to authorizing it and the many plugs purchased. That is what really sucks. I have a ton of softsynths ( I mean full paid for versions, not bundled stuff) so any daw is fine for me in that respect.

But trying to import a project from Sonar to anywhere when it's loaded with midi. audio, softsynths, tempo maps, volume maps, etc is near impossible. So they need to be recreated. Yikes.

I still will look at Presonus. I want to see the midi for myself.
 
GotMetalBoy said:
Do any other DAW's have a feature like SONAR's MIDI Groove Quantize? I use it to correct velocities because most of my MIDI drums are recorded on my V-Drum Kit. I use Groove Quantize to correct timing, duration and velocity for drum beats created by hand, so they sound more human.

If you don't know what Groove Quantize is, you can copy the timing, duration and velocity from a MIDI clip and apply it to a different MIDI clip. I use it to correct Hi-Hats, so they're not all the same velocity and have an accent on the down beats.
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Most modern DAWs have a version of groove quantise
 
Stratman68 said:
Well, for me it's quite different. Did some research since my last post. I am in a home studio and besides my vocal tracks and my guitar tracks, everything else is midi and softsynths. So I really need a top notch midi program. From what I have read, Studio One Pro 3.5 is not heavy on midi. Supposedly Cubase and Sonar are tops for this.

My main concerns for Sonar come down to authorizing it and the many plugs purchased. That is what really sucks. I have a ton of softsynths ( I mean full paid for versions, not bundled stuff) so any daw is fine for me in that respect.

But trying to import a project from Sonar to anywhere when it's loaded with midi. audio, softsynths, tempo maps, volume maps, etc is near impossible. So they need to be recreated. Yikes.

I still will look at Presonus. I want to see the midi for myself.
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I use MIDI and soft synths quite a bit and I don't find Studio One to be lacking anything I need.

In fact, since they added the new latency optimization features it blows away anything else I've used. You essentially set your buffers as low as needed for running soft synths, and then set the protection setting to High or Maximum so that you are really only utulizing the low buffer setting on tracks that you are recording in real time. Other tracks play back with lower CPU since they don't use the low real-time latency. It syncs up well with what you are playing along with on soft synths, amp plugins, really anything you are monitoring thru plugins as you play or record them.
 
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