A NEW ERA FOR CAKEWALK (AN OPEN LETTER FROM CTO NOEL BORTHWICK)

Hi Noel,
 
I certainly appreciate your presence and contributions here on the forum.
I think it 's great that you keep in contact with the users.
 
Thank you.

I look forward to the future of cakewalk

Been very happy with where Cakewalk has been heading.

Noel,

I love the role music has in my life. It is the root of great friendships that last decades. It is a way to connect with people far and wide. It keeps my body and mind busy learning.

Sonar has contributed by helping me capture sessions great and small. I practice songs with sonar on loop. I translate music dragging Melodyne clips to midi tracks so I can steal favorite riffs.

Interestingly, Sonar may have reduced my budget for this hobby while also reducing clutter. Years ago, I stopped buying new pedals for my guitar and worked with in-the-box simulations. One midi pedal replaced my pedal board.

My understanding of music and music mixing has slowly grown. I now record more than I have time to mix. LANDR helps me get work that wouldn't otherwise make it off the shelf to be listenable for the ears of the players.

I don't use lots of daws. I use two, but sonar is my certain favorite. I don't want to learn a new daw. I only want to plug in and play. I want to connect with people using sound. Music is to sound what optics are to light.

I can imagine that selling more copies of Sonar by including the Mac community would infuse the org with cash. I imagine that lifetime upgrades may increase revenues from an aging population of dedicated users who are more our less happy with what they have.

I want to thank you and Cakewalk for all that you have done for me. Recording music, mixing and dare I say mastering brings so much joy into my life.

I sometimes wonder when or if all this love will fade into a dream. When I will stop picking up my guitar or hefting my gear into bars for another mediocre gig. Someday, not today, it will surely happen. When that day comes, I can pick from many hundred recordings, rest in my easy chair, and turn it up louder than the grandchildren will like.

Thanks, Noel. Thanks Cakewalk.

It's been over 25 years since I first used Cakewalk. What a long way it has come. I look forward to seeing more to come. Good job Noel etc.

Tony

The first software I used was Guitar Tracks in 2000.  I've used Cakewalk ever since, and now with the lifetime updates for Platinum I don't see any reason to use anything else.
 

dan le
There is one point that caught my attention, and that is Sonar going MAC.
When that happens, does it mean that MAC users will get a better audio engine, since it is written from scratch, and us, on the PC side keep using the old audio engine, improved, but somehow, never brand new and redesigned from scratch.
dan

No. The engine will be the same. According to a post from one of the devs a couple of weeks ago, Sonar's internals will be the same on both PC and Mac. Video handling and the way Sonar interfaces to the hardware will be different. Plus, there will be AU support on Mac, of course.
 
Regards,
Dan

I welcome all this news, but I must ask...are musicians still feeling that they must buy Macs?  I mean really, I have a what...6 year old old Asus with a passable 17" screen, 4TB of internal SSD and HDD storage.  It will be time soon for a new laptop, so I'm looking only at manufacturers who still make machines with big screens and also can be upgraded with massive stores of internal memory and disk storage.
 
But not Apple.  Lack of innovation from Apple has made me de-consider an MBP purchase.  It hurts to say it, but there it is.  My next machine will probably be a Windows machine.  Apple could surprise us all, but I think Apple is too busy with their new spaceship and "no hardware updates" announcements.  Will Cakewalk really see a vast influx of new Mac users?  I think most Mac (or maybe MBP) users by now have a more modern PC anyway.
 
Also, lifetime updates are good and my budget thanks you.  But I'm curious, is this really a sustainable business model?  I mean, we don't see Adobe and EastWest doing it.  Even Netflix, which Noel mentions, still charges a $ub fee.  Everybody seems to be attached to that monthly/annual $ub$cription model.

Positively Charged
I welcome all this news, but I must ask...are musicians still feeling that they must buy Macs?  I mean really, I have a what...6 year old old Asus with a passable 17" screen, 4TB of internal SSD and HDD storage.  It will be time soon for a new laptop, so I'm looking only at manufacturers who still make machines with big screens and also can be upgraded with massive stores of internal memory and disk storage.
 
But not Apple.  Lack of innovation from Apple has made me de-consider an MBP purchase.  It hurts to say it, but there it is.  My next machine will probably be a Windows machine.  Apple could surprise us all, but I think Apple is too busy with their new spaceship and "no hardware updates" announcements.  Will Cakewalk really see a vast influx of new Mac users?  I think most Mac (or maybe MBP) users by now have a more modern PC anyway.
 
Also, lifetime updates are good and my budget thanks you.  But I'm curious, is this really a sustainable business model?  I mean, we don't see Adobe and EastWest doing it.  Even Netflix, which Noel mentions, still charges a $ub fee.  Everybody seems to be attached to that monthly/annual $ub$cription model.

This is definitely in their best interest. Studio One comes to mind where you can use iPAD to control the DAW and also integrated with their 192 audio interface software. Presonus is kicking serious but.
 
I would not stop at iPAD but create a CAKEWALK SONAR APP for Android as well that can control SONAR. This
is a very attractive selling point and so useful in the studio and for mixing live!
 
I will not be moving to make. No way... but I liek that you are adding a MAC version of SONAR. Being in Los Angeles, most people use MAC and they love what I do, but as my genius musician friend Davy Brown said, now "all the Silverlake (L.A. California total hipster town) kids can rock SONAR too!" lol
 
I love what you guys are doing,t he frequent amazing updates and just a really well running program overall.
 
Make ANDROID and iPAD Apps! You won't regret it! It will definitely help sales alone in addition to how great of
a tool it will be for new and current SONAR users.
 
Cheers
 
 

The guys running live sound are definitely working with gear that links to iPads and enables them to move around and mix. They do a really great job, and I can say I envy them a bit.
 
I sometimes imagine what gear I would get if I wanted to try to run live sound regularly.
 
I don't own speaker stacks or monitors (my back hurts thinking about it).
 
So, when I try to help someone, I'm helping them with their equipment. I don't really know what I'm doing. I make it up as I go... notching and hoping for the best. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not so well.
 
I can say my friends who I record often encourage me to get interested in it. They'd love it if I took it on.
 
So, if there were some way for me to take what I have learned using Sonar and convey it into the bar scene to be able to get a great live sound all the time, I would. It is true though, that when recording live, I mostly use RME DigiCheck. I rarely use Sonar. Sonar is nice because it shows me the wave forms over time, but this is really the only reason I can think of to use Sonar during a live - record-only session. Obviously, if you want to use the Sonar Synths, you have to run Sonar.
 

I sent the email below to Cakewalk Pre-Sales Support on June 10. My case number is 319407. There was no response so I followed up again on June 18. I still have not received a response to my questions even though the acknowledgement email from Cakewalk says most responses are provided within 3 business days. I'm hoping I might get a response via this forum. I have owned Cakewalk flagship products since 1998 with my purchase of Pro Audio Deluxe 7. I believe I may even go further back than that. My email:

When you say lifetime updates for SONAR Platinum, what exactly does that mean? For example, what happens if I purchase a lifetime update and you discontinue SONAR Platinum production in 2017 and I've already purchased updates through 2017? If you change the name of your flagship product to something else (as you've done before), do the lifetime updates end? Is there a minimum number of years that the term lifetime encompasses. I'm a long time owner of your products and have purchased updates which are good through July 1 2017. I would be very disappointed if I paid for the lifetime updates only to find lifetime was a year or two. Please advise.

Thank you for your response. I was not able to find answers to my questions anywhere on this forum or through emails to Pre-Sales Support which is why I decided to post my questions here. If there have been numerous postings, perhaps users are still confused or have questions. I have also read the FAQs several times and did not find answers to my questions. Again, thank you for taking the time to respond.

The reason for my concern is based on my experience with Cakewalk products. I have purchased Pro Audio 7 and 8, SONAR Producer 3, 5, 7, and 8.5, SONAR X2 Producer and SONAR X3 Producer, and now SONAR Platinum (not to mention lots of other products by Cakewalk). Each of these products were, at the time, your flagship DAW. For various reasons, the names were modified. The SONAR brand, as you call it, has gone through name changes at the top level with the latest change going from X3 Producer to Platinum. Am I to take your response to mean that if the name were to change from SONAR Platinum to something else, say SONAR Platinum 2 or SONAR Diamond, the lifetime updates would still apply? If so, I'm ready to purchase.

Thanks in advance for your patience while I try to get a better understanding as to how the lifetime updates work!

Thank you! I have purchased the lifetime updates.

BTW, I was unable to complete the transaction using PayPal, either through the initial Web page or through the PayPal link in the email confirmation. After going to PayPal and selecting my payment method, the return to Cakewalk would go to a File Not Found page. I ended up using a different payment method.

Thanks again!

I think the idea is that we can take the money we save over the next few years and have custom mugs made... 
 
https://www.custommugcup....ed-mug-white-mugs.html

Very Cool.  Thanks Noel.