Steev
 
The only thing that mildly disappoints me about Bandlab is it's lack of support for Edge/Internet Explorer, and Firefox browsers. I cannot decide to remove or even disable Edge/Internet Explorer from Windows 10, I can only decide not to install software that interferes with it and the smooth operation of my system.
 And that's why I do kind of understand Bandlab's reluctance or at least difficulties supporting other browsers(?).. I could never get the Chrome browser to stop interfering with my Windows 10 based home, studio, and office network, so I can understand how the Edge/Internet Explorer, and Firefox browsers could create complications and have a bad effect on Bandlab's preferred Chrome browser functionality and networking across the entire PLANET!

That's the first I have heard of that. 
 
It would really surprise me that any modern web app would be limited to one browser.  If a web developer codes in compliance to the modern standards for HTML and CSS, it should work in any browser that supports modern standards. It's been years since Microsoft tried to create their own version of web standards.
 
Web developers these days are encouraged to write apps that are both cross platform and cross browser.  This philosophy is at the core of 'Responsive Web Design'.  https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_responsive.asp
 

Responsive Web Design makes your web page look good on all devices (desktops, tablets, and phones).
Responsive Web Design is about using HTML and CSS to resize, hide, shrink, enlarge, or move the content to make it look good on any screen

cparmerlee
 
If all this effort does is to placate the people who have loved Cakewalk for 20 years, the enterprise will be a failure.

Sad, but true!
 
Being 'right', or 'best' is not all that it takes.  You also have to attract new customers to make a business profitable. 
 
Hopefully Sonar can change and evolve to attract new customers, otherwise the alternative is for it to fail forever.
 
I prefer the first option. 

abacab
Web developers these days are encouraged to write apps that are both cross platform and cross browser.  This philosophy is at the core of 'Responsive Web Design'.  https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_responsive.asp

Responsive Web Design makes your web page look good on all devices (desktops, tablets, and phones).
Responsive Web Design is about using HTML and CSS to resize, hide, shrink, enlarge, or move the content to make it look good on any screen

Pages - yes, but apps, especially which responsive "GUI" and hardware integration, have hard time to work equally. Most browsers are PAGES oriented. There are good reasons why some apps recommend (or even restrict) to Chrome.
I mean they could probably make it FF "compatible", but whats the point if you will be really disappointed by the result?
I hit the problem at work, by coincidence just several doors away from "the place where the Web was born"
 

cparmerlee
The market has spoken  It just doesn't matter which product was in theory "the best".  Customers have not been buying it.  The media has not been covering it.  Stores weren't selling it. 

Then all musicians can look for a new job... When I try to find ANY song from not "top 100" on ANY radio station, I usually fail. And that "top 100" list has nothing to do with the quality, it is "popular" just because it was specially made popular, by investing money to collect more money, using predictable way. Does that mean I HAVE TO like it? No. I do not.
 

Starise
I didn't know I wanted an Alexa until I heard about it.

After the first time I have heard about Alexa, I was sure I do NOT want it. Every time I am forced to see yet another ad about it I just hate it more and more
 
I had more or less the same feeling about Reaper when it was mentioned in this forum. Especially after some "ads"  at the end of the last year. But since that is the only other DAW with binary API, I had no choice. And I am so glad I was forced to look at it. So who knows, may be my daughter will bring Alexa and I can write the same about it  The probability is low... after I have bought Apps capable phone for my wife, I hate WhatsApp more then any other program during my whole life.
 

Steev
Very cool post spacey. I honestly have no ill will or grave concerns with Gibson or Bandlab, nor believe Gibson had any evil intentions, they screwed up, and as much as I hate to admit it, I for one can really relate to that much more than I'd like to elaborate on.
 And I feel confident to say I truly wish and believe that Gibson will survive. They have indded reached the peak of the mountain top in their times, and there is only one way to go from there. It would really and truly be a sad thing if they crashed and burned.
 

Thank you Steev.
 
I agree- I think Gibson will survive. They're big and even if it takes it -it may be new owners that keep Gibson alive just as we're seeing if new owners can keep Sonar kickin'.
As with it all, time will tell.
 
 
 
 
 

Thank you back spacey,
 As do I, Gibson might survive if Henry Juszkiewicz starts to act more like a "QUALITY" guitar builder than he does a Vulture Capitalist, than I don't see why not. For more on that please CLICK HERE
 
I honestly believe Bandlab buying Cakewalk could be the best thing that happened in many years, and the positive proof of that is, they already did.
 And there is nothing to even remotely suggest any negative aspect. 
And as the saying goes........
 
"Paranoia strikes deep, into your heart it will creep." ~ Stephan Stills 
(Excerpt from FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH by Buffalo Springfield)
 
"There's nothing to fear but fear itself." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt 
 
" I'm making a point of living my life to the fullest until the day I die." ~ That'll be ME!

slyman
Cakewalk could not survive on it's own and sold to Roland.

It became tougher as lots of products came to market, passing SONAR 7 by.  Rolan'd game plan was (apparently) to create some synergy with its hardware lines.  That never happened as far as I know.  And I'm not sure that Roland even did much with co-marketing (e.g. free SONAR starter version when you buy an upscale Roland product.)

slyman
Roland could not make it profitable and sold to Gibson.

Gibson'd game plan was to create a rich software division and integrate that with the TASCAM/Teac products, making both Teac and Cakewalk stronger.  As far as I know, none of that ever happened.

slyman
Gibson could not make it profitable and pulled the plug. 
Now Bandlab is at the plate with 2 strikes and no one on base. 

Bandlab's game plan is presumably to integrate SONAR into an end-to-end chain of products that range from mobile devices, to the cloud, all the way back to the traditional studio.  And presumably pieces of the Cakewalk technology can migrate to the cloud and mobile layers over time.  We'll see if any of that plays out.  If SONAR remains an island, as it did with Gibson and Roland, it will be dumped again in a couple of years.

Great bankster theories and presumptions boys, but very doomsday, dark, negative, and well, I'm thinking extremely, ahhh, PRESUMPTUOUS to think Bandlab has a master plan to drag us deeper into our hellish existence than we already are.............  
 Got any spread sheets to back up these theories, or did you just figure this out all on your own sitting alone in the dark of your man caves, only light shining in your face from the monitor as you sit at the helm of your procrastination stations? Hmmmmm??????????
 
Sorry I'm NOT buying of that lure... Nobody invests millions of dollars into a failing company just to be nice
 
 I'm theorizing that Cakewalk was not only profitable it rated the best of the best when Roland bought it from 12 Tones Inc.
 I shall also theorized that the folks at Roland did NOT invest in Cakewalk out of the goodness of their hearts because they felt sorry it couldn't make it on it's own... If it wasn't profitable they most assuredly wouldn't even acknowledged it's existence.  
 It was going so good, they offered CEO and founder Greg Hendershott an obscene amount of money which he of course took and retired FOR LIFE with. That's my theory, and I shall assume or presume nothing else.
 And really why should I even care about how much money anyone else makes but ME?
 Being I make money making music with using their most excellent and bodacious tools they have to offer, I'm not only happy for them, I want them to continue to make money to provide me with more goodies and tools to make it easier for me to make more music with.
 
Cakewalk had a great run with Roland.
 
 NOBODY at Cakewalk got fired, and when on to make Sonar even better, better, and better, and very profitable, just not as profitable as Roland's hardware.
 
 So they sold it to Gibson Brands, which by the way, wasn't in the habit of buy ANYTHING that wasn't profitable.
 And so it remained so, right on up until the day Vulture Capitalist and CEO and owner of Gibson Henry Juszkiewicz fired everyone at Cakewalk and shuttered it just around the time Tascam was introducing their new Track Factory Porta Studio which consisted of SONAR Professional preloaded and preconfigured into an Intel i5 Nuc, a set of Tascam headphones, Tascam large diaphragm condenser mic, and Tascam 2x2 audio interface for a retail price of $1300 (us).
 Goodbye Cakewalk, Hello Tascam Porta Studio that doesn't need any elaborate tech support, and it's limited warrantee expires in a year..... But..........  being Henry owed so much money to creditors, he became a questionable risk, his credit was downgraded, and couldn't get the money to finance the Tascam Track Factory..
 And that's part of my theory, and the other part has a much happier "Beginning" than you obviously 'Presume"  or least insinuate Cakewalk future to be with Bandlab....

Steev
Thank you back spacey,
 As do I, Gibson might survive if Henry Juszkiewicz starts to act more like a "QUALITY" guitar builder than he does a Vulture Capitalist, than I don't see why not. For more on that please CLICK HERE
 
I honestly believe Bandlab buying Cakewalk could be the best thing that happened in many years, and the positive proof of that is, they already did.
 And there is nothing to even remotely suggest any negative aspect. 
And as the saying goes........
 
"Paranoia strikes deep, into your heart it will creep." ~ Stephan Stills 
(Excerpt from FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH by Buffalo Springfield)
 
"There's nothing to fear but fear itself." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt 
 
" I'm making a point of living my life to the fullest until the day I die." ~ That'll be ME!

On the Gibson side I know that timber became a serious issue for them in the '80's. Not good for them and I can't imagine what headaches came from that...and that issue is only getting tougher.
On the software side I can't imagine how hard it is to deal with a customer base that can't tell the difference between a payment plan and a subscription...hell, if BandLab has a handle on that they could have smooth sailing...and what got me is that I know not all of them were drummers! LOL, LOL (couldn't resist and all in fun)

cparmerlee
Even billions of dollars don't change the laws of physics.  To do commercial-grade music production as we know it today requires a whole lot of data movement, and you really cannot tolerate much variation in the data flow.  For example, if you are mixing 30 tracks, that may require something like 60 Mbit/sec of data bandwidth, not including the data access for any sound libraries and such.  This is well within the data rates sustainable on local disks, but few people have access to networks that can reliably maintain that speed 24 hours a day.

I guess you misinterpret what cloud computing is... ALL your data and sound libraries ARE in the cloud when you start mixing. And they do not need to be transfered to your computer during the whole mixing process, all you get is the "PICTURE" of the DAW and stereo sound to send into your monitors. That can be done even with 1-2MBit connection.
 
So the only time you may need a good speed is when you record 30 tracks at once into the cloud or transfer pre-recorded sounds. So, for real-time recording with "throw the DAW" almost zero latency monitoring, cloud is "no go".
 
But in the cloud you can theoretically mix 80 tracks project with 240 plug-ins and 40 Synth... using your phone or tablet.
 
That is the general concept: locally you have only GUI + sometimes sound. The rest, including all files and programs, is "somewhere", sometimes on the other side of the glob. Inside powerful farms with water colling and 100s of GB/sec storage connection.
 

abacab
In other words, 'thin client' computing...
 
A big step up from 'dumb terminal', but a nod to the mainframe supercomputers of the past. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client

As in wiki, 'thin client' is normally used for hardware+special OS to provide 'remote desktop' with local connectivity. Except "teleporting" local connections to the server, the client is in fact 'dumb terminal'.
 
Here the hardware is "usual" and OS is local. So that is just a "client + server" based system. In current BandLab form that is a Web application. In such concept the workload can be freely distributed between client and server. F.e. the whole graphics works locally. Nothing prevents local audio processing as well. There are web applications which work just locally, so can continue to work "offline". I mean that approach is much more flexible and usually more "responsive" then a thin client.

cparmerlee
 
Absolutely.  We have come full circle.  The beauty of mainframe processing was that all the precious assets were in a central location (or multiple central locations) under the careful management of a professional IT staff.  

 
I was among that staff 35 years ago ... good times!  Full circle indeed! 
 
Then I trained on Novell servers while we were trying to figure out how to make the client/server thingy work.
 
So today we are back to the mainframe, except it is now called "cloud".  And the browser on a high end workstation is now a mighty "thin client"! 
 
The potential for a iPhone or iPad to interact with the cloud could be interesting, but I think there will always be a place for a solid workstation.  The issue of latency and bandwidth on a global scale could be a real challenge for large projects.

Theoretically a company could be making $50 profit a week and call itself profitable. I don't think Cakewalk was losing money, it just wasn't profitable enough. I should think its core base paying for upgrades was probably keeping it afloat, but what it really needed was a steady stream of new users, and an honest appraisal of the forums and various user groups was always enough to make you realize that this was just not happening. The "newbie" activity on the forums has always been pretty lacking IMO. The vast majority of activity is from long time users and has been since I joined the forum in 2012. BandLab's focus has to be about attracting new users, and I think they're probably all geared up for that. Kind of makes me laugh to think back to the (recent) time when so many here were begging Microsoft to buy it. 

cparmerlee
I realize that this is a site for music enthusiasts, not financial analysts, but I don't think people here appreciate the dire financial shape Gibson is in.  They are almost certain to enter bankruptcy, and that probably will happen within the next 6 months. 

With people posting links to articles on their financials left and right, I think most people here fully understand that Gibson has problems.  I haven't seen an office pool for when they go bankrupt yet, but I don't go into the coffee house that often either.

Larry Jones

sharke
...what it really needed was a steady stream of new users, and an honest appraisal of the forums and various user groups was always enough to make you realize that this was just not happening. The "newbie" activity on the forums has always been pretty lacking IMO.

Agreed. Thinking back and trying to make sense out of today's DAW market, I think all the major DAWs, including Cakewalk's, were an outgrowth of the recording studio industry as it was, say, from 1965 to 1990. I'm an example, coming from a "real" physical studio environment. I sold my operation and didn't do any recording for several years, but when I looked at Cakewalk Pro Audio for the first time, I knew exactly what I was seeing, because it was graphically designed to look like the hardware I'd been using. It even had "transport" controls! I -- and I'm guessing thousands of my peers -- jumped in and started using the DAW, exactly the same way I had used my studio.
 
I could still do good work and make high-quality recordings, and the software itself kept improving, becoming more powerful and versatile, but I was basically using the DAW like an old-fashioned recording studio. When I got stuck with the technology I came here and found help, mostly, it seemed, from people just like me. (And I stayed for the community, by the way.)

Somewhere along the way the newbies arrived -- non-musicians who didn't know how the studio is "supposed" to be used, but who intuitively grasped the power of laptop-style digital recording with drum machines and loops, and went to town. These DJs and producers gravitated not toward old standards like SONAR or Cubase, but to newer, non-legacy software. I've never used Ableton Live, but my guess is that it looks a lot less like a tape machine and a console. Because, who needs that? So we never saw them here in any great numbers, and Twelve-Tone/Roland/Gibson never saw them at the checkout screen, either. Most of us would have complained vehemently if SONAR went all hip hop, and the "kids" still wouldn't have bought it anyway. My era was more or less over. (I just didn't know I was dead, so I was able to keep writing, performing and recording new music.)
 
I'm not going to change my basic style of recording and music that I've done my whole career, and I'm not worried that all the old-fashioned, standard DAWs are going to disappear before I do. One of the benefits of The Gibson Fiasco is that I went out and explored several different DAWs for the first time since I started with Cakewalk Pro Audio, and was pleasantly surprised. If Bandlab some day dumps SONAR or drastically changes it so I can't use it, I'll find something to use that I'm comfortable with.
 
Meantime, hats off to the next generation, even if I have no idea what they're up to.  

I don't think there was any ever real need to make DAW's look like real mixing consoles outside of a marketing perspective. In other words, I don't think the lack of a "console look" would have ever stopped analog guys from adopting the world of digital editing and mixing. Let's imagine that the full editing and mixing capabilities of today's Sonar had been available in 1984. Back then, computers couldn't handle a GUI like today's DAW's, and the resulting program would have probably looked nothing like an analog studio. It would have been quite utilitarian, but it wouldn't have stopped anyone from using it. In fact I think most analog guys would have been excited beyond belief to use it. 
 
So it was definitely a marketing ploy used at a time when a) digital recording and mixing was becoming affordable and b) computers had powerful enough graphics capabilities to handle such a GUI. I should imagine that if computers had powerful graphics cards back when word processors were becoming popular among writers, then we probably would have seen word processors with GUI's designed to mimic typewriters (makes me cringe just thinking about it). But since word processors became popular back when computers were very modest, that whole angle never took off. So the utilitarian look became "the norm" for word processors pretty early on, and any attempt to introduce a skeuomorphic look for them later on would have been met with ridicule. 
 
I must admit I'm definitely leaning away from the skeuomorphic look, not just in DAW's but apps in general. I can really appreciate a design like the Valhalla plugins, or the stock synths in DAW's like Ableton and Bitwig which are purely functional and look nothing like real synths. I have no desire to imagine that I'm sitting in a real studio with real gear. In fact the less unnecessary clutter in a GUI, the better as far as I'm concerned. Just give me the functionality in the clearest way possible!