There won't be any fixes. I doubt there's any developers left at this point, and if they are, it's just to tidy up and archive stuff most likely. If you've never seen a company closed down by a parent company and been a part of it, then you can keep hoping. But I've seen it and when they kill it they kill it. If they were going to sell it they would have already done it and they wouldn't have announced it was closing. 75 to 90% of the sonar user base will be gone within a few weeks. The ones that hang on will be the hobbyists or diehards.

But some things are much better. I'll give one example. Being able to drag in a clip and increase or decrease the gain right there just for that clip and seeing it visually in the waveform size, is something that many applications have, including my video editor believe it or not, that I wish sonar had for years and that Studio One does have.

aconte22
As a former VP of Sales at Cakewalk for 12 years, and now VP of Sales at Acoustica for the last five years, we would greatly appreciate your kind consideration to take a serious look at Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio. It is maturing with each new version and will surprise many of you. At $179 (on sale this weekend for $99), it includes side-chaining, VST3 and MP4 support, 64-bit and 32-bit, automation and sub-mixing, live recording to performance panel grids and professional video editing. Beautiful pristine sounding VI's emulating Steinway, Moog and many other vintage analog synths, acoustic instruments and orchestral strings. Includes integrated Melodyne Essentials directly into the sound edit tab, and one-click simultaneous publishing to soundcloud, mixcloud, youtube, FB, tumblr and your other music and video sites. Check it out at  the Acoustica website.
 
Please allow me to point out the intangibles. We are a small software-only company focusing on the PC (like the early days of Cakewalk). We have a CTO who came from Sonic Foundry and was part of the senior development team that created Acid and Vegas, which is why you will see that the Loop Library asset management (over 7800 loops and samples with integration of freesound.org into the sound edit tab with instant access to thousands of more free loops) and video editing are far superior than any other DAW on the market today. Mixcraft 8 is for real!

What's Mixcraft like with MIDI - you didn't mention it at all.  Sonar, because of its origins, has always been the best DAW for heavy MIDI users like myself.  I don't know of any other DAW, for example, that has the 'Instrument Definitions' function so outboard MIDI hardware can be talked to/driven from within Sonar.

Again.... whats is the panic?  Sonar works great as is, is extremely robust as is and will work for many more years to come.   Just ask all the Sonar 8.5 users still out there running fine.   Don't upgrade your windows version if you are that concerned because that's really the ONLY thing that could break it.   Advances in connectivity (i.e Thunderbolt) is where the future is right now, not in new DAW features.   We already have more capability than Electric Lady had so making music is not the issue.  You all own the SW and if you are really that worried, get a new computer now and future proof....

Sad sad sad...I jumped the ship as soon as I heard Gibson bought Cakewalk. Was waiting this out and in the meantime have been using Studio One 3 Professional along with Sonar Platinum.
 
I never liked Gibson the company and never trusted them. Always was mad at them because I could never afford their high priced guitars. That is one reason why I am a Fender man. Now I can afford whatever I want but as a kid there was no way I could afford a Les Paul. Hated them for that.

For those who aren't familiar, Gibson has a history of sitting on the property and not giving it up. There were several attempts to buy Opcode, and they wouldn't budge. Tom Oberheim still hasn't been able to get his name back.
 
When it's dead, it's dead. 
 
If it works longer for you, that's great. It only took one Windows 10 update to break use for a lot of people, and speaking statistically, it will happen again. The only question is when.
 
Steinberg just announced a half-price sale for Cubase Pro to all Sonar refugees. Get on it...

I'm sure I'll use SPLAT for quite a while.  I did pick up Harrison Mixbus 4 yesterday because it is on sale for $29.  I don't do much with midi and I think for my purposes it will be interesting to get familiar with.  I don't expect Sonar to stop working any time soon but I need to make sure I can continue to work on music either way.

MagicMike
Studio One: NO Track Templates  . I have the demo installed and have been playing around - quite like what I'm seeing but this is a deal breaker for me.
 
I use Track Templates extensively and have built up a useful library. Try setting up a 13 mic drum setup from scratch all the time and see how boring that gets. I know you could have a song template with the setup and routings but I love the flexibility of including any template within a project file.
 
Will stick with SPLAT for as long as possible.

So you can create your own track templates in Studio One Professional. If you google this "how to make track templates in studio one" you will see 3 videos on this and I am sure there are more.
 
Good luck!

Congratulation to me- I just became new official Cubase user. Steinberg has Welcome Cross-grade- offer for limited time full version of Cubase 9.5 at $255. It should be available in USA today, I had to call Sweetwater to ask them to update their web site because on their site it was still $325. In Europe it available from Steinberg web shop. 
 
So here is the link: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/CubaseP95CG
 
I am planning to use Sonar for the older songs- I have about 7 songs needing mixing and finalizing, and will start learning and adjusting Cubase. I used Sonar for 12 years, paid every year for their new versions and had Lifetime Update for Platinum. I think there should be class action law suite against of Gibson. They did not deliver on services we paid for. But I am moving on. If Cakewalk resurects, it would be great, but I was interested in trying other DAWs any way. I also considering Abelton.  

I'm absolutely sticking with sonar. However if PreSonus or somebody comes up with a fantastic deal for sonar users I'm going to take it. It doesn't mean I'm going to start using that software right away. I just want to have it in my back pocket at a great price. I can take my time on how to use it. I think Platinum is going to be usable for a long time.
Quite frankly, if you didn't pay for the updates you are in the same situation as you would have been. You're using a software that is locked and will not be updated.

MagicMike
Advice? If I disconnect my PC from the internet, can I create a very basic virtual PC machine that resides on my PC and use that to connect to the internet? Does my internet adaptor have to be enabled on the host PC?

Good question. The answer is yes, you could limit your internet connection to a VM and leave the host offline. At least, it's possible in the VM I use (VirtualBox from Oracle).
 
However, that may still not be an ideal solution.
 
First of all, some of your third-party software (e.g. Waves) is going to have licenses that are tied to your hardware configuration. The most-used piece of hardware for that is the network card, because it's guaranteed to have a unique ID (its MAC address). Disable the NIC and the license will fail. 
 
Second, the reason people leave their DAWs online is for convenience when authorizing new plugins. You're probably not going to be able to do an online authorization from within your VM. Products that use a simple license file won't be a problem, but challenge-response authentication requires that the plugin have a direct connection to the server.
 
Which is not to say your idea isn't do-able. Nearly all plugin vendors support offline authorization, even if some of them make it maddeningly difficult. Shopping, purchasing and downloading plugins could still be done in your VM. 

For those who still love Cakewalk and Sonar, here is my petition!
 
Cakewalk and later Sonar has been our favorite DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for many years. It is the home we go to when being creative. From writing songs, record songs, mixing songs to master songs and albums. We deeply love Cakewalk and Sonar.
 
Gibson is now stopping developing and service of Cakewalk and Sonar. So they are basically giving it up.
 
Dear Microsoft.
 
Please rescue Cakewalk and Sonar out of Gibson. You can make Sonar a system like Office and Office 365. And Music Creator to an app in the store. And please make it under insider, so that we, the users can have a say in the development. You can rebrand it if you want, but please make it backward compatible with current Sonar, Music Creator and plugin base.
 
https://www.ipetitions.co...ewalk-and-sonar-out-of

I think the Mac people are going to be the biggest losers out of this. If I were one I'd jump ship asap! The way Apple changes their OS and makes older versions incompatible. It's only recently that Sonar became Mac compatible. I had WIN XP Pro and Sonar went 64bit and dropped compatibility with their new version (I forget) but had to upgrade my OS and motherboard to 64 bit to make the new version work. Yes Sonar was ahead of other DAWs with 64bit and it was a big improvement over 32bit. I never had a CPU slowdown.  As I said before, Sonar will NOT release any new versions and unless MS comes with a new OS that makes older products incompatible like Apple does time and time again, PC owners are safe. 
 
Someone had mentioned about commercial facilities and Sonar. I don't know too many, not because of it being inferior, but it was the buzzword of Pro Tools that clients ask and judge a studio by the popular candy of the day. I closed mine because it wasn't worth it. Just like I had ADAT only because all the musicians had it and thought they be an engineer and recording studio only to F#up the music. Yeah D88s were better no question but everyone had ADAT and they paid for themselves 100 times and over with new business. Pro Tools is the same today. I closed my commercial facility and when I need a tracking session with drums and bass, I go to a large studio and save my .wav Pro Tool files on a flash drive and dump them into Sonar at home and work on the dubs in my project studio.
 
If I were to go to a new DAW my number one request is: manual punch-in/out on the fly. No friggin' programming! I'm old school. Funny I purchased the Presonus FaderPort only to find out from Sonar support that it didn't support the FaderPort... Huh!  I keep a Tascam DP24SD just for that.