Same expectations back here!

I have a yamaha 01v96 ver 2 and i would LOVE better integration of it in SONAR 6

But, since Yamaha and Steinberg are walking hand in hand now... I'm not sure if I should hold my breath...

Cheers and good day to all.

Hmmm - I guess I'm not too excited about upgrading to Sonar 5 for $179 and then getting another buggy product (sonar 6) in a few months that I'll have to wait for a couple service packs before I can install. I had just gotten a notification for a $99 upgrade to Sonar 5 that I was considering but unfortunately, I got the notice about 5 days before it expired and I missed it. :-(

I wonder why there apparently HAS to be a new version EVERY YEAR... Why is that? I'd rather see a SOLID program being released once in 2 or 3 years or so... Or a SOLID patch that will remove all bugs before Cakewalk even considers working on a new version... Standard annual releases make me think of dollarsigns in greedy eyes... (btw not talking solely about Cakewalk here!)

ORIGINAL: Rick McNab

ORIGINAL: Carl Jacobson [Cakewalk]

Hello,

I see a few people here are upset about purchasing SONAR in July, because we now have the "Free upgrade to Version 6 with your SONAR 5 upgrade" offer going on in August. We have an offer coming for you that should make you feel a little better.

Anyone who purchased in July got SONAR 5 at a discount that ranged from $20-$50. If you notice, those discounted prices are now gone, and the upgrade prices have been raised to their pre-July levels. The special offer on SONAR 6 that we will be making to SONAR 5 customers who purchased in July will be to sell you your SONAR 6 upgrade for the difference in price. So if you purchased SONAR 5 last month at a $50 discount, you will get an offer on SONAR 6 for $50.

This offer will be sent out when we start pre-selling SONAR 6.

What a great company. Very impressive. That's how to acquire and retain customers. I'm sold.

I have to agree. Cakewalk has a damn good upgrade program. I just upgraded from Home Studio to Sonar Producer 5 at what I consider a pretty fair price ($50 off the usual price) and they are now going to offer me an upgrade to 6.0 for $50. That's more than fair in my opinion. Well done Carl and Cakewalk; I'd be delighted to upgrade to 6.0 for 50 bucks.

Keep up the good work, gentlemen!

i don't want sonar 6. I just want sonar producer 5 for the $99 price. Anyone know a retailer selling the upgrades for under $100?

ORIGINAL: harmony gardens

I doubt retailers would sell them without 6, until after the free upgrade period is over. After that, you may be able to pick up a leftover 5, cheap. Then I again, I could be proven wrong.

That's probably the way to go...

ORIGINAL: rm5700@optonline.net

After all this stuff going on... questions back and forth....it makes me want to just stick with (reinstall) version 4 for some reason,
seemed like the good old days....
.............but will still probably get v.6 (haha)I can't wait! =)

I'm all excited, and I don't know exactly what I'm getting in the long run. I'm going from 4, and after watching the V Vocal video, I'm wondering why I waited so long. It looks like a pretty cool app. I had been wanting the effects editor and track templets, the REX player is going to be nice, so there are some definate things to look forward to in version 5. Anything over that is going to be gravy, so this now seems like a no brainer to me. I'm hoping it gets here soon!!

Are you willing to pay $500-$600 for that upgrade every two years?(opportunity cost of the delay plus double development time) I think the impression that SONAR is "buggy" is so dependent on your particular workflow and hardware. Are there bugs? Yes. Is CW pretty responsive at addressing them? I think so. No program that cannot completely control the OS and hardware will have "all bugs" eliminated. It is simply not possible. The only people who code projects with the type of requirements you are asking for is typically the military and the financial industry and their products are feature limited and generations of technology behind...but the few things they do they are guaranteed to do....and even then there are still sometimes bugs! What 80% of the feature set are you willing to give up to get "bug free"? Another thing to consider is that SONAR is at MOST only as buggy as it's competitors. Many who have used everything on the market have stated in here multiple times that everything from ProTools to Logic has bugs and crashes.

BTW, this is more a "understand software development rant" vice a SONAR fanboy rant... Having worked in software development, I bristle everytime I hear the "why can't there be bug free software that has thousands of interactive features that runs on litterally millions of combinations of CPU/Motherboard/Ram/Soundcard/driver/OS revisions/plugins on the market while at the same time being amazingly inexpensive?" Maybe I'm misreading you. If so, I apologize. I agree with you that we deserve a solid program...but to be honest, for most of us, it is. Any serious bugs get fixed quite rapidly IMO. 5.0 was actually pretty stable and useful for me right out of the box(I've been upgrading since CWPA7). I also agree that bugs should be addressed. I just think that, from an industry standard, reasonable man perspective...they are.

AndyW,

Can you define "large clip"? I'm planning on importing wav files from my Korg D32XD unit to work on vocals. I would only be working on 1 track at a time, but am now concerned since your post.

Thanks,
Chamlin

ORIGINAL: AndyW
The only people who code projects with the type of requirements you are asking for is typically the military and the financial industry and their products are feature limited and generations of technology behind...

Disagree slightly... more like military, medical, and commercial air travel, maybe a couple of others. The slider on that automated radiation dispensing front-end better do what it says it's doing! Coming from somebody who has about 8 years woking in financial services -- believe me, all but the most mission-critical systems (i.e., mainframe customer DBs, transaction systems) are riddled with bugs. These buggy apps aren't exactly chaff -- they are often customer-facing and often directly visible to company CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, presidents, etc. There's nothing quite like the meeting where you're informed that the CEO is looking for a time-to-fix for a sev 1 production bug you're responsible for.

The source of the bugs generally come down to a few general factors -- not enough time, not enough resources (or not enough useful resources), too many "important" feature requirements, unrealistic schedule expectations, incomplete requirements analysis and/or functional specifications, incomplete test coverage, buggy 3rd party wares, etc., etc. If I had a dollar for every time I've uttered the words "how did QA not catch that?" over the past 13 years... The resulting bugs are not intentional, and not due to not caring about the end product, but are a natural consequence of a complex, human-centric process. Software development requires machine-accurate precision... unfortunately, humans are the weak link.

I bristle everytime I hear the "why can't there be bug free software [...]"

We can put a man on the moon, but we can't... you get the rest. Speaking of buggy space travel: http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=ApolloComputer

Any serious bugs get fixed quite rapidly IMO.

There's certainly been some serious bugs that took a while to be addressed (and some that are still out there), but again your earlier point regarding other vendors applies here...

...so of course I upgraded on July 31st....

ORIGINAL: keith

ORIGINAL: AndyW
The only people who code projects with the type of requirements you are asking for is typically the military and the financial industry and their products are feature limited and generations of technology behind...

Disagree slightly... more like military, medical, and commercial air travel, maybe a couple of others.

OK...you got me...my list wasn't complete...

We can put a man on the moon, but we can't... you get the rest. Speaking of buggy space travel: http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=ApolloComputer

Wow...great link!

ORIGINAL: vicsant

ORIGINAL: Carl Jacobson [Cakewalk]

ORIGINAL: vicsant

The price at the Cakewalk store for a first time buyer is $799, while it's only $499 at Sweetwater.

Are purchases of Sonar 5 PE made at Sweetwater also entitled to the free upgrade to Sonar 6 PE?

Yes you are not only entitled to the free upgrade, but when you buy the full price version (not-upgrade) of SONAR 5 Producer Edition from a US retailer in the month of August or September you also will get a $100 Rebate. See the item from the news section of our home page below:

Get SONAR 6 Free + $100 Rebate from any US Retailer
Buy SONAR 5 from a U.S. retailer in August or September, 2006 you’ll get a free upgrade to Version 6 + a $100 rebate on SONAR Producer Edition or a $50 Rebate on SONAR Studio Edition. Download the rebate form.

Carl,

I hope I get this right....

....so a first-time buyer of Sonar 5 PE will get Sonar 5 for only $399 if he/she buys from Sweetwater or audiomidi.com? plus the free upgrade to Sonar 6 PE? That's a really fantastic deal!

If this is so, why would anyone want to make a purchase at the online Cakewalk store, or is there an advantage to buying direct from Cakewalk?

We sell SONAR at Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price to protect our retailers. You will always find a new copy of SONAR cheaper at Guitar Center, Sam Ash, Zzsounds, Sweetwater, or Audiomidi.com. Customers typically should only buy SONAR direct from Cakewalk when they are purchasing an upgrade

ORIGINAL: Carl Jacobson [Cakewalk]

ORIGINAL: perple

ORIGINAL: rscain


...so of course I upgraded on July 31st....

ORIGINAL: Carl Jacobson [Cakewalk]

...you are not only entitled to the free upgrade, but when you buy the full price version (not-upgrade) of SONAR 5 Producer Edition from a US retailer in the month of August or September you also will get a $100 Rebate. See the item from the news section of our home page below:

Get SONAR 6 Free + $100 Rebate from any US Retailer
Buy SONAR 5 from a U.S. retailer in August or September, 2006 you’ll get a free upgrade to Version 6 + a $100 rebate on SONAR Producer Edition or a $50 Rebate on SONAR Studio Edition. Download the rebate form.

Click the rebate link. The upgrade and rebate are good on purchases from July 21 to Sept 30. You're good, man. Cool, eh.

This is incorrect. The rebate is only good on new purchases of SONAR from a US Retailer, not upgrades.

Rscain will receive the reduced price upgrade offer for individuals who purchased upgrades in July from Cakewalk. I mentioned this special priced upgrade earlier in the thread.

Right. My mistake. My main point, tho, is that the offer is good from July 21, not just in August. I missed the upgrade part.

I upgraded from 4 to 5 when it first came out. I won't make that mistake again. I'll wait until 7 comes out and then get the "Free Upgrade to 7/$100 Rebate" to buy 6.