I've gone through the shock and reality of what has happened.  To say the least, I felt depressed.  But that is turning to moving on.  I have no expectations that someone will buy up Cakewalk and keep it going.  If someone does, that would be fantastic.  If no one does, then so be it.  Albert Ellis wrote a book titled "How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything--yes, Anything"!  In the book it talks about dealing with tragic situations and dealing with them.  The focus of the book relies on the following statement and saying to yourself,  "I wish this had not happened, there is nothing I can do about it, but my life will still go on and I can still be reasonably happy".  
 
I realize that there is no amount of wishing that will bring Sonar back.  But there are plenty of excellent options out there.  Sweetwater has on their website a Cubase 9.5 Competitive Crossgrade for current owners of a select group of DAW owners.  The list includes Sonar Platinum/Producer.  The Crossgrade is $324.00.  Cubase 9.5 is $545.00 regular price and there is an option for 3 easy payments.  
 
So in closing, I will say "I wish this had not happened, there is nothing I can do about it, so I bought Cubase 9.5 Competitive Crossgrade for $324.00. My life will still go on,  and I'm going to be REALLY HAPPY"!

Just was trying to purchase another year of rolling updates when I was redirected to that terrible site telling me Cakewalk has become history. 
Catastrophic for the bakers who gave their best for a splendid software, catastrophic for us users who have grown to so many fine features in Cakewalk. Having to learn a new software from scratch is painstaking, so I hope "lifetime" is meant to be at least the next 20 years. 
When I saw that announcement Cakewalk had been bought by Gibson, I had a strange negative feeling. I thought, Gibson is for guitarists. A DAW isn't specialized. Apparently Gibson doesn't care about the Cakewalk users. They had them as paying clients, but now, we CW users weren't really needed after all.
My feeling is that Cakewalk shouldn't be put in the ground after all the achievements.

nzpaul

Jarsve
Should we make a petition page to ask Microsoft rescue Sonar and make it like a Office system? 

It would be great if anyone could continue it, although with Microsoft I'd find it ironic based on the fact I was stung by their dealings with Truespace. I'd invested a lot of time and money in that software, then Microsoft bought out the company, offered the product for free to use with their Virtual Earth setup, then they killed it because it wasn't making any money - Doh!


 

That's a bummer. But making a petition to make Microsoft buy out Cakewalk, and make Sonar a paid system like office and office 365. And Music Maker can be migrated to store. I think most of us gladly will pay $15-20 a month for Sonar like for Office 365. I don’t remember the exact sum in $ for Office 365 because I pay in Norwegian Kroner. And of course Microsoft will have to put their own calculated price on this. We might not get monthly updates out of this. Maybe 2 updates a year like Windows, but that is way better than other solutions. Microsoft even has a gigantic insider user base. And by this we can change how Sonar develop in the future. I’m an insider myself and has been since the start. It really works. What we say they listen to. Getting cakewalk under this is a golden opportunity. They might rebrand it. Change file endings *.cwp and *.cwb too. But as Cakewalk did before. Make it backward compatible.

nzpaul

Jarsve
That's a bummer. But making a petition to make Microsoft buy out Cakewalk, and make Sonar a paid system like office and office 365. And Music Maker can be migrated to store. I think most of us gladly will pay $15-20 a month for Sonar like for Office 365. I don’t remember the exact sum in $ for Office 365 because I pay in Norwegian Kroner. And of course Microsoft will have to put their own calculated price on this. We might not get monthly updates out of this. Maybe 2 updates a year like Windows, but that is way better than other solutions. Microsoft even has a gigantic insider user base. And by this we can change how Sonar develop in the future. I’m an insider myself and has been since the start. It really works. What we say they listen to. Getting cakewalk under this is a golden opportunity. They might rebrand it. Change file endings *.cwp and *.cwb too. But as Cakewalk did before. Make it backward compatible.

I agree, anyone taking over would be a good thing. Just reflecting on my previous post about petitioning Gibson, I suppose the problem is if they're that close to bankruptcy, then we'd just be flogging a dead dog :(
 
I'm sure the lifetime subscription offer can be dropped as part of the deal. 
 
We could set up a petition on change.org
 
It would of course need both parties to come to the table. 
 
 

i made one here Microsoft. Please rescue Cakewalk and Sonar out of Gibson.

stratman70
Well I sure would NOT be happy to pay per month for a software I have paid for for almost 3 decades. 
Best idea is let us re authorize and take our chances with OS. I can run Win 8.1x64 forever (well in my lifetime, I'm old) I can put win 10 on my laptop if i feel a need to. which I don't.

I understand that. But that is between Gibson and you. And they have to pay you back.

Jarsve

stratman70
Well I sure would NOT be happy to pay per month for a software I have paid for for almost 3 decades. 
Best idea is let us re authorize and take our chances with OS. I can run Win 8.1x64 forever (well in my lifetime, I'm old) I can put win 10 on my laptop if i feel a need to. which I don't.

I understand that. But that is between Gibson and you. And they have to pay you back.

No, I do not want\need a refund. I need just what I stated above. Thats all. I also can see how some would pay a subscription price. Just saying. To each his own. I get it...

****
 

Yep

Matron Landslide

noynekker
 
nice advice, thanks for responding . . . live long and prosper Alex

 
JFYI, I am neither Doktor Avalanche, nor am I Straummy, but I don't mind what I am called or what anyone thinks, it's all good

LMAO!
 
I can definitively confirm that the good Matron is not me.
 
And 'she' certainly doesn't seem to fit the persona for CakeAlexS...
 
 
 
 
... which is nice.
 
 

Matron Landslide
 
 
 
doh . . . . the secret is out

 
It is now

If the product will continue to work, then why am I suddenly in Demo mode!? The only reason I'm reading this is because I came here to find out if any one else was having the same problem. I paid a lot of money for this package over the years. Is it all going to end like this?

Anderton

LJB
I'm a little shocked right now - being a professional engineer who runs my studio totally on Sonar for projects this now forces me to look at other DAWs, learning curves, decisions about how to transition to another DAW, never mind all the Sonar specific plugs that I know like the back of my hand.... wow... much to contemplate.

Same here. I found out Friday that Cakewalk was officially closed down from contacts at other companies, and called Noel on Sunday just to make sure. To me it's like a death in the family.
 
On the bright side, there are still people using ancient versions of SONAR, so I think it's probably safe to assume I'll get plenty more years out of it before Windows changes to the point where it's unusable.
 
On the other hand...as I've mentioned before, I also use Studio One Pro for the mastering-oriented Project page functions and Ableton Live for live performance. I've always felt SOP was closest to SONAR, so I guess it's time to learn the Song page functionality and move on.
 
I'm downloading the Studio One Pro soundsets in the background...
 
BTW someone might want to hip Gibson to the typo in the "Annoucement" headline.

Thank you Craig, I was reading.. hoping to find input from you. I’ve looked at several DAWs and S1 P certainly looks like the best bet. I can’t tell if Muxbus is 64bit or just works with it. Cubase, from what I can tell is 32, but I’m not sure S1 P says it is 64bit, that matters to me. Also it’s the most affordable of the bunch though I have not looked at Reaper.
Something I read on a FB Cakewalk users group that jumped out at me is that Gibson is about 350
Million in debt and Cakewalk May have more value to them as a write off loss on their taxes than it would have for them if they sold it. That is something to think about. If someone could get the code, then there are those who would run it but that may not be an option, I dont know.
I do know that I’m glad to know you’re using S1P. I think you’re more of a traditional musician. I’m not looking for something to make beats or electronic music but some synth, VSTs, program drums, play guitar, sing, record. S1P sounds like a deal at $99..I think it’s $199. Cubase is about $350 for a crossgrade and Mixbus (if you get everything) is $300 IIRC. I heard somewhere that Prosonus is talking about a special crossgrade price for SPLAT users. I dont know if it will beat the $199 but I hope it shows in the next 5 days.
Thanks for the help. I’m sticky my with Sonar but going to spend time, more time in S1.
Julien

You know.. November, just before Christmas may seem a lousy time to hear you don’t have a job BUT it is better than January when you’ve just spent a lot on a nice Christmas because you thought everything was going along fine. Maybe it’s better this way. Now they know to cut back and plan wisely, I dont know.. just a thought. Certainly not defending Gibson. I’ll never buy another Gibson or Epiphone, they used to make great guitars.., in the 50s but those days are LONG GONE and the crappy guitars they peddle now, for too much money (Agile is better), will not sustain them in this time of remixing and loops. Bye Felicia (Gibson)!

deswind
If Gibson has a business loss in general, they do not need a deduction for a loss on Cakewalk. 
But Gibson, which I think is doing really well with guitars (they are better than they use to be), should care about its reputation.  And working with other companies to share the Sonar codes would be very helpful.

Good, sounds good. I hope they care but I doubt it, after all they are GIBSON! Some people just don’t learn or learn everything the hard way. I hope that isn’t the case. I have X3 and current SPLAT but I may jump for S1P because I feel insecure over all this. I’m in the process of setting up (finally) a dedicated studio room and am glad to know this now. I hate change and I really hate surprise change that I don’t understand... but there’s lots of things that I don’t understand but it’ll be ok. It’s just life.
J

Starting a kick-starter campaign sounds like an excellent idea.   The intellectual assets for this product have to end up somewhere.