Euthymia
No, there will never be anything new and exciting for Cakewalk.
 
BandLab bought the product and are paying their developers solely to tinker with the code until every bug is eliminated and to implement an endless series of minor cosmetic and convenience features that are unlikely to ever interest anyone searching for a modern, capable DAW.
 
Their reason for doing this? To promote their new web-based DAW by making a mockery of the very idea and paradigm of standalone, computer-based DAWs. Cakewalk was one of the first, and by parading around what is left of this once-proud program so that all may see how the new way of doing things has prevailed, they are demonstrating the victory of the new over the old.
 
"Oh, we kept Cakewalk alive" they can say, "but there was no interest! We couldn't even give it away for free!"
 
Well of course there wasn't when all you did was allow us to tart up its track colors as if it were some pathetic old painted lady of the night! And allow theming of the Piano Roll to resemble the darkness of the tomb itself!
 
Forget the new "features" that come in every month. Those are just a distraction from their true agenda. They bought Cakewalk and resurrected it so they could kill it again, deader than before.

 
This above post makes no sense to me...   Except maybe for Chord track like Cubase has, Sonar / Cakewalk has most features other DAWs are just recently catching up to.  (64 bit, unlimited inserts, off line bounce).   The issues with Cakewalk are more about bugs.   I don't think there is ANYTHING cakewalk is lacking to prevent it from being a great and extremely powerful vehicle for creating fully realized pro recordings.   A little more stability will help.   I have not been limited in anyway by cakewalk to create the best recording I am capable of making.  The above post seems to imply that without sparkling new features, no one else will want it.   Fact is, CBB is already overflowing and possible overstuffed (beyond its own good) with features and that is part of the issue.   Fix as many bugs as possible and CBB will be an (or maybe even THE) unstoppable and unrivaled DAW.   If Bandlab chooses to somehow integrate into a more collaborative on line platform without diluting its main purpose which is a powerful self contained standalone recording platform, that will only be a good thing because as bandwidth and connectivity become ever cheaper and faster, that will be (and already is) the wave of the future.   Seems to me, via bandlab, Cakewalk is well positioned to be the premier online pro recording tool and perhaps that is why it is being given away for free.   To establish a large base upon which to build the next generation of collaborative tools.

msmcleod
 
Now BandLab has taken over, but with a much smaller development crew. These guys are having to:

• Work on new Cakewalk features and bugs
• Support all the issues people are having
• Finish off the new forum....

The last item, at least, is something that I doubt that the Cakewalk devs have much to do with. BandLab was already a social media site with its own web developers before it acquired Cakewalk.
 
Actually, I don't even know what a Chord Track is, and my biggest issue is trying to get up to speed in this amazing feature-deep DAW, so aside from my own pet enhancement of having an FX menu item for Replace Effect like we do for Replace Synth, my fondest wish is for a new forum to go live.
 
I've found that one of the best ways to learn about a DAW is to skim a forum where a lot of new users are trying to figure out how to get basic tasks done and I think by fluke I somehow wound up as the lone "new user" on here because I happened to snag the CA-2A freebie back in 2016, so my CakeGib registration was still good. Although I did briefly run SONAR back in the early oughts.
 
Everyone who's on here now other than me is either a die-hard who stayed with the program after it got Gibsonized or the occasional embittered dark soul who dumped it and seems to have stuck around to troll those who held out.
 
Much as I have enjoyed the "you naive fools, they are up to something no good and I demand transparency before I will expose my AOL address book to their data mining" posts, I would love for you loyal die-hards to be able to share your vast knowledge of Cakewalk with a crop of enthusiastic new users.
 
I find that it's good for both parties. When I've done it in the past, it has inspired me as the veteran user to rediscover features of the program that I had neglected or forgotten about, and the new users' enthusiasm is infectious.
 
I'm incredibly psyched to have this amazing program to use, it's like Xmas morning every time I run the thing. Clicking on that little arrow to to pop out the ProChannel gives me a dopamine hit, I swear! Bang, switch on the Console, tweak the Compressor, maybe switch to the CA-2A, pop out the EQ, we're off to the freakin' races!
 
That's why when someone comes in with one of these "it's been 90 whole days, where are all of the new features they promised us?" posts I troll them a bit. BandLab are nothing but heroes in my book. So far (respect being something that is rightly earned and maintained).
 
C'mon people, the DAW once given up for dead is now freed from the financial constraint of having to have big new whiz-bang features to generate revenue every time there's a trade show. That is a GIFT. It allows the programmers to quash bugs, which, believe it or not, is something programmers love doing. Nobody likes having their mistakes out on display for all to see. It's like having a big vocal plosive in the middle of an otherwise great mix.
 
And they're still slipping in some cool usability features. Those "little things" that people use every day are things that show they care about the existing user base. The note length buttons in the Piano Roll? I'd say that it is brilliant, but it's not, really, it's something that should just have already been there, and the fact that it wasn't was unfortunate. That they took the time and effort to put it (back?) in is brilliant.
 
(disclosure: I am a decades-long veteran of the commercial software industry)

Ahhh, here we go, supposition.

Bring on the popcorn ......

Jerry

kevinwal
So your theory is that BandLab spent who knows how much money to resurrect a deader-than-dead product for the express purpose of killing it even deader? Just to show that they won the technology war?
 
lol. You need to go work on a song or something.

 
Kevin, you got the "lol" right, but it seems my irony slipped past you!
 
I was being deliberately silly because I find posts like the OP's so silly. "Is there going to be anything new and exciting?" As if the fact that the program is even back in development and the huge leaps they've already made in stability while managing to slip in some sweet usability features for the faithful users aren't "new and exciting" enough!
 
My educated guess: The "big" features will come eventually. For now they're just doing some long-deferred tidying.
 
And yes, you're right, I'm procrastinating recording this vocal. Every time I think of singing it I get "that feeling" in the pit of my stomach. I'm going to try the MD421 instead of the AT4035 this time just to see what happens.

Euthymia

kevinwal
So your theory is that BandLab spent who knows how much money to resurrect a deader-than-dead product for the express purpose of killing it even deader? Just to show that they won the technology war?
 
lol. You need to go work on a song or something.

 
Kevin, you got the "lol" right, but it seems my irony slipped past you!
 
I was being deliberately silly because I find posts like the OP's so silly. "Is there going to be anything new and exciting?" As if the fact that the program is even back in development and the huge leaps they've already made in stability while managing to slip in some sweet usability features for the faithful users aren't "new and exciting" enough!
 
My educated guess: The "big" features will come eventually. For now they're just doing some long-deferred tidying.
 
And yes, you're right, I'm procrastinating recording this vocal. Every time I think of singing it I get "that feeling" in the pit of my stomach. I'm going to try the MD421 instead of the AT4035 this time just to see what happens.

Gotta admit, your irony did indeed slip right past me, my apologies.  Still would hurt to go work on a song though. :)

Does it not leverage Melodyne to achieve much of its functionality?
 
In all my years in both using and developing software, introducing
new features has always garnered both bouquets and brickbats.
'Twas ever thus. Don't let that stop innovation.
 

Speaking of Chord Tracks in CbB...while obviously not the same as the Cubase or SO4 approach, you can use Pitch Markers to transpose MIDI groove clips and get at least partway there. 

A Polarity Analyzer/Optimizer like the one in Mixbus would be nice.