John T
I think it means that Rick is a DAW to DAW salesman.

thanks for that, i just sprayed my monitor with beer

Mixcraft had a fair number of plug ins. I'm not sure about vst compatibility though. I would look into that. Lots of folks love that DAW. I won't be buying it since a lot of what it does is too basic for what I do. 

Mixcraft 8 supports VST 3. Acoustica is offering Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio for only $99 right now thru Tuesday (45% off $179 SRP).  Check out the Acoustica pages. My name is Anthony Conte (currently VP for the Mixcraft DAW), and I spent 19 years at Cakewalk, including 12 years as the Vice President of Sales. For decades I worked with many of the brilliant, incredibly talented folks that now find themselves out of a job.  My heart aches for the current Cakewalkers and the thousands of SONAR users across the globe. Simply put, this is the end of an era in the world of MIDI and Digital Audio recording.
 
While I do not know the fate of SONAR or what Gibson’s plans are for Cakewalk, I can assure all the current Cakewalkers that their future is bright. For the last six years, I have been lucky enough to have landed at a like-minded company, Acoustica, makers of Mixcraft 8, an award-winning DAW for the PC. Not coincidentally enough, Acoustica freakishly reminds me of the early days at Cakewalk. A small but growing music software company made up of great people who are passionate, innovative, hard-working, and who have all become my family. Acoustica is committed to making Mixcraft a DAW that SONAR users will want to seriously consider adopting. Thanks, Anthony

Starise
Mixcraft had a fair number of plug ins. I'm not sure about vst compatibility though. I would look into that. Lots of folks love that DAW. I won't be buying it since a lot of what it does is too basic for what I do. 

Back in '08, IIRC, I won a free copy of Studio One Artist in a drawing at the Presonus booth at NAMM. I didn't wait until I got home but installed it on my laptop that night at the hotel. Stayed up late figuring it out, went online and watched tutorials, jotting down notes on what it got right.
 
For the most part, features fell into two categories: things they got right and things they hadn't gotten around to yet. 
 
For example, I liked how they implemented automation, but at the time S1 couldn't freeze tracks. I liked the routing freedom, but hated the crude PRV. My conclusion was that Studio One had a long way to go before it would be in SONAR's class - but if they kept going the way they were, eventually it would be awesome. 
 
Remember, S1 is the new kid on the block. It's less than ten years old, much younger than any of the major players. Now, at version 3, they've addressed many of my earlier complaints. MIDI editing is better and you can freeze tracks. In a few areas they've even surpassed SONAR, such as the ability to split signals for parallel processing within a track. They have a feature I've been begging CW to implement for years - start and end markers.
 
They've still got a way to go before they catch up on bundled instruments and effects, but they're working on it and seem determined to match features with every major DAW. For that reason, I think hitching your wagon to Studio One is probably a safe bet for the future.
 
That said, I have no intention of switching at this time. SONAR does everything I need it to do, but most importantly I know it well enough that it's transparent to the creative process. Microsoft could break it someday, but that day is a long way off and may never even happen at all. More likely is some future plugin incompatibility, but I'm not concerned about that because even after all these years collecting plugins there isn't a single one of them that I couldn't do without.
 

Hey Synkrotron, Acoustica is offering Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio for only $99 right now thru Tuesday (45% off $179 SRP). Check out the Acoustica pages. Acoustica is committed to making Mixcraft a DAW that SONAR users will want to seriously consider adopting. I am 100% certain that we will have a sustained campaign over time to invite SONAR users to the Mixcraft community. The company is so much like Cakewalk used to be in the early days that it's scary! Very cool company. Thanks, Anthony

synkrotron

pwalpwal
hi anthony, are you offering a cross-grade price for sonar users?
 

That would help... Extended quite a bit beyond all this Black Friday shenanigans...
 

I am 100% certain it will extend beyond Black Friday deals thru the rest of this year. Stay tuned.

That's a good price for a DAW Anthony. It wasn't clear to me how much of Mixcraft was proprietary the last time I visited the website.
 
I would also look at customer satisfaction. This should be the case with any daw. Cubase has had more issues than Sonar. These issues might not affect you directly if the bugs were in something you didn't use. 
Since I previously owned a copy of Studio One I was able to crossgrade at 74.00 from JRR. Less than the 99.00 asked for Mixcraft. Since I liked Studio One it was a no brainer for me. Mixcraft doesn't have a hardware line like Presonus does.
 
And here is what I think is an important point to consider- Once you buy into a daw crossgrades are always less painful. I can crossgrade a 399.00 software package to the new version for 74.00. Why would I look at Mixcraft?
 
At the price points mentioned a few dollars here and there aren't always deciding factors for something you will invest a lot of time using. 

Having a look at Mixcraft now...don't know why I didn't consider it as an option before. I guess I'd just written it off as an immature future contender. But looking at how far they've come, I'm impressed.
 

bitflipperdon't know why I didn't consider it as an option before

marketing, which, ironically, i think contributed to sonar's demise

bitflipper
Having a look at Mixcraft now...don't know why I didn't consider it as an option before. I guess I'd just written it off as an immature future contender. But looking at how far they've come, I'm impressed.
 

checking it out myself... thanks for the heads up... tried Studio One, but don't "get it" at this point... we'll see.
 
EDIT:  Mixcraft available to new users for $99 (Black Friday deal) Pro Studio v8