Technology! Best Frequently Loses.

And so it happens again. I feel like this is the story of my life when it comes to the technology I love.
 
My first experience of this was back in the 90s when I first got into making music. I needed a great keyboard with great sounds and an awesome onboard sequencer. I looked at the obvious contenders from Yamaha, Roland and Korg. But the one i loved was from Ensoniq. So the Ensoniq TS10 was my music creation and live performance tool for almost a decade. Until, of course, the day it stopped working. That's the day i discovered that in the meantime Ensoniq had been bought and then killed by EMU I think. The result was that service or repair was not possible. Game Over.
 
As much as i loved my keyboard, I had already moved to creating music on the PC when in 1998 I got my first computer. I wanted my music to sound more real - like it was being played by real instruments (never been into synths). So when I heard about GigaSampler that was a massive game changer and became the basis for most of my music creation. I invested in some great libraries from the likes of Vienna, Garritan, etc. But of course GigaStudio was bought and subsequently killed by Tascam. In fact much of this post is going to be about Big monsters swallowing and then spitting out smaller very talented innovators.
 
My audio interface back in the early part of this century was the Aardvark Aark 24. I had two of them.  I had a great 20 in, 20 out setup. Guess what happened. Yes, you're correct. They were bought by someone else who decided to kill the product. No more driver updates. The result is I have two big black bricks that I cannot use or sell. That's not exactly true. I could use them if I wanted to run Windows XP.
 
And while we're on the subject of no drivers, how did I hook up all my midi gear? Well, pleased you asked. I had a couple of great little Edirol boxes. They worked great for years until I upgraded to Windows 10. Turns out Edirol got bought by Roland. So I went to their site to download the latest drivers. Seems you can get all the drivers up to Windows 8. I asked the question and they said they have no intention of making Windows 10 drivers for these boxes. Really? How difficult would that be? Roland are now dead to me. Their emails go straight in the trash.
 
Oh yes, and I have no shame or embarrassment in saying I absolutely love Windows Phone. I was an iPhone user for about five years but when i upgraded to Windows Phone four years ago I fell back in love with my phone. The Lumias always had better cameras than the iPhone and the Live Tiles interface is a vastly superior UI to the other two in my opinion of course. But none of that matters. It's all about apps. The day Google decided to make all of it's apps for it's main competitor the IPhone, but refuse to make any for Windows Phone was the day the first nail went in the coffin and 90% of app developers followed suit. And of course Microsoft bought and pretty much killed Nokia. I'm very stubborn on this one. I shall continue using my Windows Phone until the day the platform is completely dead and unusable. Because that's the day that I know I will have to switch to a phone I don't like.
 
And so, to perhaps the biggest kick in the guts yet. The death of the software from which I make my living. I remember a few years ago I went into my local music store to buy guitar strings. The strings I bought came with a free gift - a Gibson guitar T shirt. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth I wore it a few times despite it being a Large and therefore a bit baggy. Does anyone fancy popping round for a few drinks while I light the bonfire and we watch it burn? ☺
 
So what has been the one key factor in the death of SONAR? Might I suggest that it was Cakewalk's decision all those years ago to not make a Mac version. I like many of you, I suspect, watch lots of online videos of the top pros demonstrating their mixing techniques. They almost without exception use ProTools. It's bad enough knowing that the "industry standard" DAW (what a joke) is such a feature lacking backward piece of software. Not only does Best frequently lose, but in this case one of the worst is the standard. I can't count the number of times I've stared at the screen watching the top guys in the industry take five minutes of faffing about to do things that is a couple of clicks in SONAR. But that's not the worst thing. How many times do you watch these guys who at some point during the video say something like "... And this can apply to any DAW, this will also work in Logic, Cubase, Reaper, Ableton" you can predict the names every time. They without exception never ever ever ever say SONAR. And why is this? This is because all the pros use Macs. They were all sold the lie that you can only do professional work on a Mac.  So of course as far as they are concerned SONAR doesn't exist.
 
I don't know if any of you have a Puremix subscription. Those that do will know that earlier this year Andrew Scheps did a video showing how he created his mix template in great detail. When this video was announced on the PureMix site and in the email it said, and I quote, "you can download Andrew's mix template for ProTools and all major DAWs". I think you know where I'm going with this. Turns out all major DAWs means ProTools, Logic, Cubase, Studio One and Reaper. So I challenged them on their use of the words "all major DAWs" asking why SONAR was not there. Their reply basically said that by 'all major DAWs' they mean the ones that most people actually use. And they don't know anybody who uses SONAR.
 
I rest my case. The lack of a Mac version led to SONAR having virtually no visibility in the pro market. And there is in a nutshell the reason for SONAR's demise. If it had have been there on Mac these guys would have known what a serious contender it was. Instead It's just something they've vaguely heard of so assume it's a lightweight toy DAW.
 
A few days after the announcement I did a search on YouTube to see who was talking about it. I found a video podcast I hadn't come across before despite it already being past episode 500. Four guys in different locations discussing recording technology news. Not one of them had any first hand knowledge of the modern SONAR because, oh let me try and think why, they all use Macs. They said it was sad news, but the takeaway for me was that It's not like it was a major DAW. Maybe I'm doing them a dis-service.
 
Anyway, three weeks ago I decided that the one thing my studio's website was lacking was video. I know how important video can be in promoting yourself. So i decided to make a mixing video showing me mixing a song from start to finish complete with three cameras, one on me, one looking down at my Mackie Control, Extender and C4 and of course the screen capture of the star of the show - SONAR. I thought this would show potential clients the quality of my work as well as showcase the many great features of SONAR. I have five hours of video to edit. But now what do I do. How professional am I going to look using a defunct DAW. That will be really great for drumming up business.
 
Hey ho. So I, like the rest of you, have a decision to make. I'm probably leaning towards Studio One. I couldn't bare to buy Cubase. I hate Steinberg. For many years I owned WaveLab for my mastering. The process of the upgrade to WabeLab 7 was a total nightmare. I could not get it to authorise and their support was non-existent. They make the process incredibly difficult. I notice some of you saying that Studio One isn't deep enough. I'm not sure what is lacking there, but it currently looks like the only contender for me.
 
Anyhow, I've been sat here too long. I have work to do in my obsolete software. Here's to a painless transition for us all. Now where did I put that Gibson T shirt? Can I bum a light off anyone?

Sounds like you have a friend names Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
 
Because of this Cakewalk situation and like the one's you mentioned I will never use just one DAW or count on anything being viable for any length of time.

Betamax was better than VHS....

I have two Terratec EWS88D ADAT lightpipe cards with drivers that go up to 7 x64.
Can't give em away.
 
 

I have  a Fast DV master digital video transfer card that cost $5000 in the 90's and had working drivers for 1 year! It is basically an enourmous predecessor to the firewire card, and I keep it as a reminder that I should wait:)