I completely understand the OP question.  I am currently using the last published version of Sonar Platinum, including my so-called "Lifetime Upgrades".  My question is this:  Is the final version of Sonar Platinum and the first release of Cakewalk by Bandlab exactly the same except for the third party packages that came bundled with Sonar Platinum?  Would it be wise for me to now discontinue using Sonar Platinum and get on the CbB bandwagon?  It's obvious that I want to continue to get new developments because I purchased "Lifetime Upgrades" for just that reason.
 
I have been a Sonar Producer/Platinum user for many, many years, beginning with Cakewalk v9.0.  I was happy to see that Bandlab was making CbB available to the Sonar masses, and offering fixes and improvements.  I had no way to know this fact until I stumbled upon this forum.  
 
So, a little patience with us "masses" please, until we become acclimated as to what's changing and what's staying the same, and what proper name we must call it in order to not be patronized by the more informed among us.  When I saw the way Gibson sold me out, I was pretty disgusted with this product, so much so that I came perilously close to ditching Sonar completely in favor of a competitive DAW, before I accidentally became aware of the ongoing effort to continue Sonar in the form of CbB.  So, only tonight did I learn not to refer to the continued development of my DAW as Sonar.  For me, it's purely semantics and nonsense to argue about that.
 
Best wishes to all fellow users,
Wade C.

sdwest61275
... Is the final version of Sonar Platinum and the first release of Cakewalk by Bandlab exactly the same except for the third party packages that came bundled with Sonar Platinum?  Would it be wise for me to now discontinue using Sonar Platinum and get on the CbB bandwagon?  It's obvious that I want to continue to get new developments because I purchased "Lifetime Upgrades" for just that reason...

The first release of Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) was what Sonar Platinum 2017.11 should have been, plus a few more bug fixes, and as you say without the 3rd party plugins.
 
CbB has had more or less monthly releases since then, with both enhancements and bug fixes. It's without doubt the most stable incarnation of Sonar to date.
 
If you install CbB, don't uninstall Sonar. They'll happily live side by side, and all your Sonar plugins (including 3rd party) will work with CbB.

.

msmcleod
 
The first release of Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) was what Sonar Platinum 2017.11 should have been, plus a few more bug fixes, and as you say without the 3rd party plugins.
 
CbB has had more or less monthly releases since then, with both enhancements and bug fixes. It's without doubt the most stable incarnation of Sonar to date.
 
If you install CbB, don't install Sonar. They'll happily live side by side, and all your Sonar plugins (including 3rd party) will work with CbB.

Mark,
Thank you, that was most helpful to me.
Wade C.
 
 

Kamikaze

msmcleod
 
 
If you install CbB, don't install Sonar. They'll happily live side by side, and all your Sonar plugins (including 3rd party) will work with CbB.

Is that a typo?

Yes - well spotted ... don't uninstall Sonar
 

Anderton

I need to learn to type as fast as Mark 

But without the typos!!
 

Scook was not being testy or agumentative, just precise. As usual. we can all be thankful for that.

Oh do I love these threads. It's like stepping into an alternate Universe where tech product manufacturers let the world know way in advance when new versions of their products will be coming out and what new features they will include instead of closely guarding that information so as not to, y'know, give their competitors a chance to scoop them, disappoint the user base by making promises they are then unable to keep, etc.
 
I mean, I've never owned a license for any software where the developers could or would want to publicize their plans for new features, release schedule, etc. This is the first place I've ever even heard of such a thing. Instead, I join beta teams where the agreements require you to forfeit a toe if you even drop too strong a hint that you're on the beta team.
 
The only thing I can think of is that this expectation was born when Gibson was trying to finagle people into buying the lifetime licenses. I guess you would need to stoke desire to do that by convincing people that it would get a new release every month and that committing their coders to developing specific new features rather than leaving them some breathing room to fix errors was a best practice.
 
I saw a thread, yesterday was it? where someone earnestly asked if BandLab could perhaps provide them with email notification every time there was an update to Cakewalk by BandLab. You want to know why that is such a pants-wettingly hilarious idea to me? Because Bandlab, from the very first version of Cakewalk by BandLab, have distributed it via their very own tiny footprint program called BandLab Assistant that among other cool things like delivering free loops, will check the version of Cakewalk you're running and let you know whether it's up to date. In real time. It talks to their server on the other side of the planet to get this information.
 
And when it first shipped, there were people who howled because I think maybe you had to use Task Manager to turn it off if you wanted to free up the 110MB of memory that BA gobbles when it's running in the tray and had to know how to disable an auto-start program if you wanted it not to start when you booted your system.
 
Good lord, I can only imagine the kind of tin helmet conspiracy theorizing that would flare up if the company offered optional email notification.
 
"This is it!! I've been waiting for this moment, when BandLab would eventually reveal that all they wanted from this was our precious bodily email addresses to sell on the black market for thousands of dollars! I just know this thing has a software switch in it to turn my computer into an automated spam-bot! Nothing's free! Nothing, you hear me! Wake up you fools before it's too late!"
 
Followed a week later by Henry Hearsay, to whom the idea of reading existing forum posts feels like using "existing" napkins at a restaurant: "I heard about the new BlandCake by LabWalk but I keep running SONAR X1 because my friend told me it floods your inbox with email about updates...."
 
My suggestion is that anyone who's worried about the future of the company or how fast the updates are going to come or is dismayed by not being shown a "roadmap" of new features for the next year, just go to the forum of whatever other DAW looks good to you and ask to be informed about those things before you cough up your money and invest your time and effort on that product.
 
If Yamaha don't kick down with the 411 on their business plan for making sure Cubase and Nuendo get enough financial backing, what with all those dirtbikes and drumkits and auxiliary generators vying for resources, or PreSonus won't give you a definite on what schedule the StudioOne updates are released, or Ableton aren't able to show you a roadmap of new features that will be included in the next few upgrades of Live, then you know you ain't gonna be satisfied.

Thanks for this Noel and thank's for everyone's work on CbB - much appreciated

Thanks Noel. I'm just a little perplexed that no information has come forth about Rapture Pro, Z3ta etc. I hope Bandlab got those nuggets in the deal from Gibson and they will be available for purchase in the near future.
Also hoping with having Jesse back on board the Matrix will get some love.
 
 

Thanks Scook. Funny I guess I did read that back then but my old mind just forgot. I just want then to get started with the new site, forum and add-on sales so I can give them some of my money for keeping Cakewalk alive. I don't need the mug I have Rapture Pro, Z3ta but missed some of the prochannel add-ons and would like to buy them.
 
Also a personal thank you Scook for all your help on this forum. I hope when the new forum takes over that you will be a Forum host

During this transition I think the frequent updates, as well as addressing stability issues, help reassure the user base that the program is in good hands and worth investing our time in. Once the forum and accounts are migrated, I think the sense of security will be more assured. It's been nice getting monthly updates butI can see the frequency reducing as things get fully settled. Personally I'd prefer more frequently than annually, I think quarterly would be a nice balance. I don't think we need a road map, for the products, but an idea of when the migration is expected would be welcome.
 
The main reason I hope we didn't get an update, was so that Noel gets a holiday every now and again.  

Kamikaze
During this transition I think the frequent updates, as well as addressing stability issues, help reassure the user base that the program is in good hands and worth investing our time in. Once the forum and accounts are migrated, I think the sense of security will be more assured. It's been nice getting monthly updates butI can see the frequency reducing as things get fully settled. Personally I'd prefer more frequently than annually, I think quarterly would be a nice balance. I don't think we need a road map, for the products, but an idea of when the migration is expected would be welcome.
 
The main reason I hope we didn't get an update, was so that Noel gets a holiday every now and again.  

Haha thanks for the reminder. Jesse and I are headed to Singapore after thanksgiving but I'm taking a week off after that.

marled

Euthymia
Oh do I love these threads.

I love them also. But I do not feel superior to someone else on this forum!

Okay, mea culpa.
 
Don't get me wrong, all CbB users going forward have a lot to thank everyone who bought licenses under the old payware model, especially the ones who kept matters afloat toward the end by trusting the company enough to buy the perpetual license. And I'm glad that they still benefit from getting to use all the great ancillary software that came with the SONAR Platinum Suite and that they got to benefit from having been able to use the program for all those years and months that the CbB users didn't.
 
What I save my bemusement for is the odd sense of entitlement that is expressed in this forum, from users who seem to think that they're doing BandLab a favor by using this software for free, that BandLab has something to prove to them before they will either switch from SONAR Platinum (or older) or whatever DAW that they fled to when Cakewalk folded.
 
The "cold dead fingers" SONAR people are the ones I find most puzzling. They prefer to run a slower, buggier, feature-poorer version of the program for what reason? Because they met the terms of that license by exchanging money for it instead of just registering for a BandLab account and installing the BandLab Assistant? Or to spite the new owners for making their program freeware?