Is there any way to buy Sonar 8.5?

Cakewalk stopped selling SONAR 8.5 at their store in late 2010.

Becuase of what has happened anyone who hasn't kept up to date is left sitting at the dock and the ship has sailed. Sorry if you just desided to go shopping for a product that is now taken off the shelves' 
 
And as said 8.5 is long gone. Why don't you just buy something like Mix Craft it's more or less the same thing, was just on sale so you probably missed all those deals too. 
 
And XP? that's hurtin. 

Amazon in the UK have Sonar Studio 8.5, don't know if they'd ship to the US though.

JonD
X1 is backwards-compatible (will read v8 projects) and will run on XP.  There's an unused copy of Sonar X1 on Ebay right now:
 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Cakewalk-by-Roland-Sonar-X1-Producer-Unused/253289915652?
 
Minimum bid is $199, but the seller may be open to offers now that CW is done.  Wouldn't hurt to contact him.

 
Thanks Jon!  I managed to get it for 100.  

Cactus Music

$199 for X1?? the most buggy version of Sonar ever? 

Got it for 100.  What I need is the tracking features.  All of my material over the last 20 years is in Home Studio 2, some older than that version.  You don't get take lanes and comping on that version.  I need to be able to open those, do new drum tracks (will lanes and comping) and then export the audio to Mixbus or something for actual mixing.  I'm not really interested in the FX and mixing features in X1. If all goes well, I will only be tracking in X1 while everything else is done in something newer.  
 
My alternative is to get something like Studio One 3 (if it will even run on XP) and export the audio from my old Sonar project into Studio One...track some drums...and then export all of that audio AGAIN into Mixbus, and etc...if I just install a good tracking version of Sonar I can eliminate that first export step and all the issues that come with it.  There's about a hundred songs to do this on.  
 
Yeah I could upgrade my machine, go Win 10...and then buy all new software, all new hardware, won't be able to run Home Studio 2 so I can kiss all of my music good bye and start all over. 
 
 

I wouldn't bother getting Sonar 8.5.
I just reinstalled my old versions of Sonar 4 and Studio 8.5, just in case SPLAT goes down and I need to fire up a project, and I can tell you - it's a labour to use after the smoothness of SPLAT. A real step back.
I agree with Cactus Music, get Mixcraft - it's newer, smoother and will be updated and de-bugged going forward.
Sonar Studio 8 was sold as a CDR version - 8.5 was only available as a download if you already owned Studio 8 (it doesn't work without Studio 8 being installed), and all the updates and fixes (3-4 if i remember) will not be made available to you by Cakewalk now.
Waste of your time and money. You'd be better off upgrading to a newer computer.
 
Also, XP software works in Windows 10. There is a compatability mode - I'm still using old software from pre 2000 with few bugs.
 
 
 

You can download the updates and just keep them on file.
I would do that now before its too late.

chuckebaby
You can download the updates and just keep them on file.
I would do that now before its too late.

Ah, didn't know that was an option. I shall take your advice.  Thanks, really.  
 

Cactus Music
I take it your building a new computer to do all this? I'd be curious to see if you can actually install XP on a new MoBo. There won't be drivers. 
Have you tried your old software on W7 32 bit? 
I still run XP on my little Asus Netbook. It was made for XP. I put in an SSD drive and re did it using the original CD. What you really notice with XP is the real slow boot time even with the SSD. W XP takes a good minute to boot. W7 on an SSD is 2x as fast and then W 8.1 and W10 boot in under 10 seconds. But once they are all running to tell the truth I see no difference in W 7, 8.1 and 10 but XP is just plain slow at everything. Mind you it is a pathetic little Atom processor. 
The other thing we all forget about is XP had a RAM limit of 4 GB which would rule out most of us now. 
 
So just sayin, I'd be thinking about W7 if your re building anyhow. 

Yep, I'm planning on Win 7, 64 bit.  I threw out the XP idea when I found out about the 4 GB memory limit.  I am a little concerned about the Win 7 installation issue that I read here on another thread, but I haven't changed plans yet.  X1 will run on it.  Mixbus will run on it.  Plugins should run on it.  The Soundcraft board shouldn't have any USB issues with it. It's almost too good to be true, ha ha.  I may have a sweet and humble set up for myself here. It will remain an isolated recording box.  
 
Edit: Deleted my previous post and I have no idea why.

Updates have indeed improved with W7. They even have some new (or improved old) tools to speed things up. If you optimze for music creation that also helps a lot. Also, W7 Pro beats HS by a mile. But still, a new install is going to take some time, no doubt about that.

hi i heard cakewalk ceased producing sonar is it true?

SmilingCrow

mohammadstrhi i heard cakewalk ceased producing sonar is it true?

 
They still sell Punctuation Upgrade kits though! 

so... what this link says? \ i found some videos on youtube about this

Being a computer geek, why are you running xp? that technology is so very old! do not connect to the Internet whatever you do!

Voda La Void

Cactus Music

$199 for X1?? the most buggy version of Sonar ever? 

...
My alternative is to get something like Studio One 3 (if it will even run on XP) ... 
...

Studio One 3 requires minimum win7 SP1, whereas Studio One 2 manages with XP.