Exit Strategy

Been using Cakewalk since the beginning so no need to rehash how I feel these past few months.


I have Cakewalk Professional.  I have all the install files of course.  What else do I need to ensure I can manually install if I move to a new workstation.  Serial numbers?  Will there be any issues with not being able to use any software once the support server goes away?  My studio is currently down, as in I'm in the process of building a new one.  My clients projects are of course backed up, but if I need to access something 5 years from now will I be able to.  I know to some that seems like a lot, but just last year I needed to bring up some tracks that were over 10 years old for a project. 
 
Thanks in advance.

hey alex, which daw did you change to? (sorry if i missed this already)

i'd agree regarding ease of switch, i also swapped to s1, back during the x1 mess... i also have live9 but it doesn't get so much use, depends on how loopy i'm feeling

mileskb


Will there be any issues with not being able to use any software once the support server goes away? 

if the Servers go down a serial number wont do much but put you in demo mode.
So you have a right to be concerned.
I would personally install it as soon as possible, do an off line activation.
That's really the only way to have a back up plan right now.
 
Cakewalk has said they would make sure we have a way to authorize the software but at this point I don't trust anything.

^^ This.

Go into CC settings and use verbose mode, that will basically run each installer manually and give you all the options.

Once everything is installed go to the downloads folder and back up the installer .exe's.

I've been blindsided by this. I've been a user since Pro Audio 8. The amount of time and money I've sunk into the platform is one thing. The abruptness and timing of the shutdown has been even worse. I've been working on an album, almost complete, all in Sonar, and I'm going to have to move to another DAW. I may even move from Windows to Mac.
 
So I've been trying out every option. I already had Pro Tools, but never used it as primary. On the positive side, it has the most rock solid audio engine and low latency of any DAW. On the negative side, its interface is very non-intuitive, and it has bare bones tools for creation. It's not made for musicians or producers. It's made for engineers and studios. Studio One is very promising, but it also is clearly not as polished and mature as other platforms. It had trouble detecting my interface settings, and virtual instruments that work on other platforms showed up as unauthorized. I had to run it with higher buffers than Sonar or Pro Tools (the lowest) to avoid stuttering. I like the interface, and I hate losing ARA with Melodyne. But I'm concerned about moving to a less mature platform after this experience with Sonar. I don't want to go to something that's going to evaporate again. I've tried to install Cubase Elements, but I can't even get it to launch...so that will have to wait. Which leaves the possibility of getting a Mac and going to Logic. I'm tempted, because it is stable, and has a very large user base and long history. 
 
I know everybody has biases on this subject, but I wouldn't mind objective opinions about other platforms. One thing that trying others has shown me is how good Sonar is/was. It had continuously improved over time, and was in a very good place. it looked like they were continuing to innovate and move forward. And then suddenly, they're shut down. This is brutal.

subtlearts
I would give Reaper a closer look. People have this strange idea that because it isn't expensive and doesn't come with 500gb of bundled bloatware it can't be a serious contender. Nothing could be further from the truth. I spent some time with a few things including Mixcraft, Mixbus, Samplitude and Studio One, and I already have Live and Reason, and I have to say it was Reaper that started getting me excited. It's staggeringly deep, incredibly fast and stable and efficient, starts up in about 3 seconds - literally - on my 10-year-old machine, and has a thriving and helpful community, who have contributed not only hundreds of skins (a number of which look superb) but also many hundreds of add-on scripts, plugins, macros and such to extend the program's functionality even further.

I may sound like a fanboy but I'm very much not, I'm just very very impressed with what Reaper can do, how clean and bug-free it seems to be, and how intelligently it's been developed. And I like the business model - no copy protection at all, no marketing at all other than word of mouth, a fair and reasonable pricing system, and above all fast, continuous, responsive development. There's an infamous thread where someone suggested an idea for a way to achieve VCA fader control (before it was fully developed as a core feature), and Justin had a working version up and running in 25 minutes. Think about that.

The workflow is different than Sonar to be sure, but that said it's also very flexible, you can use it in a number of ways, and it does 97% of what anyone is likely to have been doing in Sonar out of the box, plus a whole lot that Sonar can't do (check out the subprojects feature and ponder the possibilities for a while), and when you add scripting and macros from the community (or roll your own) it's an absolute beast. I'm really surprised more people aren't migrating there. For me it was no contest once I realized what a heavy hitter it's become, and that without becoming bloated and buggy in the process.

+1 I think that for all the same reasons, I'm moving over to Reaper. For those who agree that it's not nearly as visually impressive/stunning as Sonar (yes, we've been terribly spoiled by such an attractive interface) take heart in the fact that you can easily skin Reaper with options out there that's meant to look like nearly anything! Check out the Imperial theme by White Tie, or Imperial Dark Side.

aahladas
I know everybody has biases on this subject, but I wouldn't mind objective opinions about other platforms. One thing that trying others has shown me is how good Sonar is/was. It had continuously improved over time ...

I do totally agree to that, but in respect of objective opinions it would be helpful if people would add why they think a particular DAW is preferred. Because as you write "everybody has biases".
 
After testing some other DAWs that is also my conclusion "how good Sonar is/was". I was doing an evaluation some years ago, before I purchased Sonar X3 (now Platinum LT). Back then I was clearly drawn to Sonar and even today I have the same opinion.
 
For me the main purpose of a DAW are: Recording (only 1 track at a time) vocals, guitars and bass, vocal comping, intensive use of Melodyne for adjustments, recording VST instruments (I am doing a little MIDI in the DAW, but I enter most of my MIDI data in my own programs), mixing and a base mastering. In my workflow I do those things above in minimum 3 projects per song, i.e. I record do comping/Melodyne and then export the results as single audio tracks (also the VSTi tracks). This is also a good way for backup purpose. Then I create a new project for mixing with those audio files and in the end I create another project for mastering.
 
Up till now I have tested Studio One, Live, Cubase, Samplitude Pro, Tracktion and Reaper and for my taste only Samplitude Pro and Reaper are left in evaluation.
 

mileskb
Just to be clear... All of my software is up/running and activated (I used command center).   Am I correct in assuming as long as it's activated already, I'm all set as long as I don't uninstall or try to move to another PC?  In other words it will continue to work on my studio PC as long as my studio PC remains my Studio PC ?  

Well that's the key question, and the answer is there isn't really an ironclad answer. For the present and immediately foreseeable future, the answer is 'yes, but...' - and it's a big but. Basically (and there are many threads here discussing it, and others likely more qualified than me to speculate) everything should be cool for a while anyway, but there is always a chance that Microsoft will make a change to Windows at some point that will break something crucial in terms of Sonar's ability to install or function. I don't know what OS you're on, or if you are in a position to cut your studio PC off from the internet or freeze it from updates, but while those are one avenue that some here have talked about, it doesn't strike me as a perfect solution for anything other than the immediate future.
 
Now, the dev team at Cakewalk worked pretty hard to future-proof Sonar as much as possible with regards to core Windows interactivity, and were in contact to at least some degree with people at MS working on things like the audio stack, so there's a good chance nothing will bring the program to its knees next week or next month or maybe even for the next year or couple of years. People have noted that earlier versions of Sonar, and many other programs, still install and work very nicely in the most recent Windows builds. And Craig has even speculated that quite possibly, since it was built to play nice with some of the emerging technologies at the OS level, performance might even *improve* for a little while as these technologies improve and mature. Someone else also pointed out that while no further development means no new features and no bug fixes, it also means no new bugs, so if everything you use is working for you now you can relax about it getting messed up in a future update.
 
But it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to grock that there's a limit to this and at some point Sonar will be left behind, which is why many of us are exploring options for a future mainstay DAW that is still in active development.  
 
 

subtlearts

mileskb
Just to be clear... All of my software is up/running and activated (I used command center).   Am I correct in assuming as long as it's activated already, I'm all set as long as I don't uninstall or try to move to another PC?  In other words it will continue to work on my studio PC as long as my studio PC remains my Studio PC ?  

Well that's the key question, and the answer is there isn't really an ironclad answer. For the present and immediately foreseeable future, the answer is 'yes, but...' - and it's a big but. Basically (and there are many threads here discussing it, and others likely more qualified than me to speculate) everything should be cool for a while anyway, but there is always a chance that Microsoft will make a change to Windows at some point that will break something crucial in terms of Sonar's ability to install or function. I don't know what OS you're on, or if you are in a position to cut your studio PC off from the internet or freeze it from updates, but while those are one avenue that some here have talked about, it doesn't strike me as a perfect solution for anything other than the immediate future.

 
Well, I guess that's encouraging.  I mean I'm running Sonar 2, 3, and 4 Producer Editions (mainly because they had some cool plug-ins and features that were used on projects and I don't want to re-invent the wheel if I have to revisit them.  I recall I had to do something wierd with one of them to get it to install properly, but they are all running on Windows 10 just fine.  I've always used AMD processors going back as far as I can remember and never really had latency issues that I couldn't work out easy enough.   Frankly although technically AMD chips seem to be a little slower, if it wasn't for those waits for processing or saving...  I wouldn't eat or go to the can when I was working in the studio.   I always go back to the fact that I was able to record 8 Tracks audio at once on a 486 machine back in the day.   But I digress.   

subtlearts

azslow3
For those who move toward Reaper.... keep your projects in CWP and till you actively used ProChannel modules (other then EQ), do not rush with exporting everything. A simper way to move projects is under investigation (by me)

Sounds promising! I would use that for sure, though I have used some PC stuff over the years but nothing I couldn't recreate pretty easily if the basic project info could be ported without heavy lifting.

"Basic project info" is what I am investigating at the moment. I have already understood that even "basic" is huge to make any sense (many project parameters, almost all strip parameters,  all clip parameters, MIDI, FXes, automations... uh... endless).
 
Also note that I plan to make the result at least donationware. Related projects are not free (f.e. http://www.aatranslator.com.au/ ) while they do not cover FXes, MIDI, etc.
At the same time I like Reaper concept of "endless Demo"
 
The show stopper can be legal issues. If CWP format is not allowed to be parsed, I will be unable to publish the converter
On one side, what we produce in Sonar is in general "our". And we are free to do with it what we want (WAV, MIDI). At the end, generating output which is not restricted nor a property of someone else is the primary purpose of any DAW. CWP is not "encrypted" and so a parser should not break any locks (which is always illegal). Parsing does not involve Sonar nor any other CW programs RE (that is forbidden by EULA).
But CWP is not a public format, so there can be some complications, I am not a lawyer.
 

Are you still planning to get your control plugin set up to work with Reaper? I'm hoping that's still in the cards too ;-)

That was my primary condition when I was choosing the new DAW. But it will take (a lot of...) time.

subtlearts
Not to discourage you, because it would be awesome to have working, but I can't help wondering if it's worth it? Why not just focus on the plugin port?

If I am forced to strictly follow my priority list, I should suspend everything else and continue with Sibiac. That project, unlike my other activity, can be a game changer for a lot of people (far above music community). But I am not a "company", so I am not force.
 
But there is a list of reasons to look toward the converter:
1) as many "programmers", I like challenges. The driving force is the question "is that possible?". With controllers, I have checked: yes, it is (but see below). With Sibiac I have checked: yes, it is. With the converter, till I have the first working prototype, the answer is unclear
2) "strategic" thoughts about Sonaries. Many Sonar power users still not consider Reaper as a serious alternative and look toward other DAWs. Guess what will happened in case they can download Reaper demo (without registration, 11MB download), download the converter (without registration <1MB download), click on own Sonar project and get it "as is" (or close to that) in Reaper. I mean they will be able to see how what they have already done is mirrored in Reaper. I guess that can be more convincing then watching some videos "how to do this and that" or "is this feature exists". Also when someone has 100+ real projects in Sonar and there is only one other DAW which can open them (and this DAW works on Mac,Win,Linux+Wine and probably Linux in the future!), it can be hard to choose something else.
3) in Reaper, there is one Control Surface case which is not well covered (unlike in Sonar): MIDI keyboards with extra controls. To make AZ Controller work in such case as good as in Sonar (even better), I need some modifications in Reaper. If I can present such useful add-on as CWP projects converter, I hope there is better chance Justin or John perceive my requests and questions as serious.