Gibson Brands announced the end of Cakewalk

"According to a statement posted by Gibson on the Cakewalk website, the corporation hopes to refocus its energies on consumer products rather than software"

Then why did you buy it you stupid assholes?

I spent thousands with Cakewalk/Sonar. I bought the fancy V-studio console/rack recording rig..that they abandoned a year later...thankfully that was (pretty much) the last straw for me. I still use Sonar X3 as my main DAW...but it sucks that they are just letting the whole deal go away.

Reaper it is, I guess.
 
I just bought Reaper a couple months ago because of how bad Sonar was turning out. I've been using Cakewalk for 20 years. It's really hard learning a new DAW when there's so much to learn. I got to learn Cakewalk slowly. It's ironic because yesterday I wrote a list of things I do in SONAR that I need to to figure out if I can do in Reaper and was going to post in the Reaper forum today.
 
Oh MANNNNNNnnnnnn. So disappointing. This is the end of an era, and one that was significant for me. My first ever music productions were on Cakewalk for Windows 3.0 (the one with the dots!) That must have been 24 years ago! I used to watch my friend use Cakewalk for DOS. That said, I switched to Logic about 10 years ago and cannot imagine having ever wanted to go back to using what Sonar had turned into, even by then. Still, I feel for all of the very talented people who gave it their best to make the Gibson venture work. Some of them are friends of mine.
 
squealie said:
the corporation hopes to refocus its energies on consumer products rather than software"

Then why did you buy it you stupid assholes?
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Agreed !
Sidenote: The last time I checked "software" is a consumer product. What a statement!

squealie said:
I spent thousands with Cakewalk/Sonar. I bought the fancy V-studio console/rack recording rig..that they abandoned a year later...thankfully that was (pretty much) the last straw for me. I still use Sonar X3 as my main DAW...but it sucks that they are just letting the whole deal go away.

Reaper it is, I guess.
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GotMetalBoy said:
I just bought Reaper a couple months ago because of how bad Sonar was turning out. I've been using Cakewalk for 20 years. It's really hard learning a new DAW when there's so much to learn. I got to learn Cakewalk slowly. It's ironic because yesterday I wrote a list of things I do in SONAR that I need to to figure out if I can do in Reaper and was going to post in the Reaper forum today.
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Same boat here guys, last version of Sonar I used was X1 and just never got around to upgrading to X2 or X3
I have had Reaper for a little under a year and still learning myself. Its been a demanding year so recording has been put on the back burner.
However don't get discouraged!
At the time I installed Reaper I still had X1, Reaper just ran so much better and it found all the plugins from Cakewalk. It even ran with less latency than Cakewalk on the same machine. I do struggle with the interface a little, not that its bad but I was just so use to Cakewalk of which I knew a fair amount of the keyboard commands. So now I have to commit new ones to memory. But it is worth it.

John
 
I switched several years ago from Cakewalk...it became to bloated and confusing. This was before Gibson bought them. Maybe if they had innovated Gibson would be in a better position.
 
There was no question of if, only of when. The time-frame is about what I originally estimated.

I predict Gibson will no longer produce guitars within five years. The top execs will pocket what they can and leave the ruins behind them.

Sonar died for me even before the Gibson buyout. Bloat and an insane number of critical bugs pushed me away by Sonar 2. And I had used it since version 1.0 for DOS on an IBM clone 8088. Once Gibson took over, the end was sealed.

PS: Reaper ran circles around Sonar, even back then. Far more responsive. Far more efficient. Far better business model. And FAR less expensive.
 
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Now that Cakewalk uses an annual subscription, I wonder if anyone will get any money refunded. They should definitely refund all of us that bought the $200 Lifetime updates because we didn't even get a years worth and were charged double than a normal years subscription. I knew I should have just downloaded the torrents! :mad: This is why I hate buying and depending on software especially ones that have to authorize online because if the companies ever go under, you can't ever re-install your software again. I'm really upset about how much I've spent on Cakewalk the past 20+ years. Now if I want to use Melodyne ARA (Audio Random Access), I have to waste money buying PreSonus Studio One. I'm going to go play guitar really loud to blow off some steam!
 
This sucks BIGTIME. I’ve been a Cakewalk user since Pro Audio 9. And I’ve had nothing but good - GREAT - things to say about Sonar since X3. In fact my current 64-bit Sonar Platinum Installation is damn near indestructible...


Damn it....
 
This is a trend.

I remember when Opcode put out Studio Vision and nobody could touch their pitch to midi functionality. Super neat stuff at the time.

Gibson bought them and not 3 years later shuttered them.

I hoped history wouldn't repeat with Cakewalk, but it looks like it has.

I wish all those talented people luck in the future as I hope they land in much greener pastures.
 
Wow cakewalk was my first DAW too.

I've long since become a Pro Tools user, but hate to see the end of cakewalk. Many fond memories of that software.
 
Gibson buys and shelves several companies. Opcode, Maestro, Steinberger... and now Sonar.
I had a bad feeling Sonar was heading towards trouble when they adopted a pay per month business model similar to Pro Tools.
I buy a DAW out right not pay every month like rent.
Years back I purchase Sonar 8 but quickly switched back to Cubase. I found using the drum editor a lot easier in Cubase.
 
I started using Cakewalk in 1997 as my first DAW and I think it was Cakewalk Pro Audio 7. I bought my 1st PC to use with it for around $3K. It had Windows 95, Intel Pentium 2 400mhz 100mhz bus, 256mb ram, 4x CDRW, 11gb IDE hard drive and a MOTU 2408.

I'm dreading learning a new DAW. My brain doesn't retain info like it used to. I think I have a few bad sectors haha.
 
Sad, Started w/Cakewalk Dos and had all versions since. I bought the Platinum upgrade for a year but never used it. X3 works fine here, but may look at Reaper. Gibson continues to disappoint.
 
Great timing just as I'm getting back into recording with Sonar :(
Been using various versions of Cakewalk / Sonar on and off for many years.

Any recommendations for a replacement? I have no experience with any other DAW.
 
norpe said:
Great timing just as I'm getting back into recording with Sonar :(
Been using various versions of Cakewalk / Sonar on and off for many years.

Any recommendations for a replacement? I have no experience with any other DAW.
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I've been learning how to use Reaper. They have some really good tutorial videos on YouTube. Users can program their own plugins from a few different languages, so there is tons of user created content but there's a lot of trial and error to find what you want. It's common for users to ask for a feature and another user creates it for them. Their forum is really friendly too.

I really like the search features in Reaper. It makes it really easy to find preference settings, plugins and tracks.

My biggest issue is trying to figure out what something is called in SONAR and then trying to figure out what it's called in Reaper or how to do something in SONAR in Reaper.

I do a lot of MIDI drum editing and I'm struggling to get up to speed. Audio editing is pretty straight forward. Signal routing had me a little confused but then I realized you can drag and drop.

They have a manual for SONAR users moving to Reaper but it's a little outdated but it's still very helpful. I have to figure out how to capture video of my screen bc I've seen a lot of people make video examples of things they do in SONAR and then post them to the forum to find out how to do the same things in Reaper.

I have no clue how to use Melodyn autotune without ARA, so I may have to keep using SONAR
 
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