it's interesting it may be considered "not cricket".. but it can be argued many other things use an import function.. also the fact gibson ain't doing cakewalk users any favours.
 
as long as it's not exporting the same format.. then good luck them trying to claim against it. it could be argued also that they are trying to have a monopoly on users, if they aren't providing future updates / products.
 
remember various samplers for a start allow importing..
 
also check the libs cakewalk uses to make soner.. open source  / gpl in some cases ?
 

Fog
it's interesting it may be considered "not cricket".. but it can be argued many other things use an import function.. also the fact gibson ain't doing cakewalk users any favours.
 
as long as it's not exporting the same format.. then good luck them trying to claim against it. it could be argued also that they are trying to have a monopoly on users, if they aren't providing future updates / products.
 
remember various samplers for a start allow importing..
 
also check the libs cakewalk uses to make soner.. open source  / gpl in some cases ?
 

My guess is that it would be the "reverse engineering" clause that almost all software includes in their license agreement. In order to read a proprietary file format to convert it, there must be to some degree a bit of reverse engineering. 

the_user_formally_known_as_glennbo

Fog
it's interesting it may be considered "not cricket".. but it can be argued many other things use an import function.. also the fact gibson ain't doing cakewalk users any favours.
 
as long as it's not exporting the same format.. then good luck them trying to claim against it. it could be argued also that they are trying to have a monopoly on users, if they aren't providing future updates / products.
 
remember various samplers for a start allow importing..
 
also check the libs cakewalk uses to make soner.. open source  / gpl in some cases ?

My guess is that it would be the "reverse engineering" clause that almost all software includes in their license agreement. In order to read a proprietary file format to convert it, there must be to some degree a bit of reverse engineering.

For all that there is a separate thread: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Do-we-OWN-our-project-files-m3719945.aspx
In short:
 
Sonar EULA has reverse engineering clause, 3.2 and 3.5 (in the user guide version). But all that is about the Product. Do you think that YOUR cwp/wav/MIDI files are a part of the (Cakewalk) Product? Sorry, but according to 3.1 you are not allowed to even freely copy them in this case.
I mean if your are the owner of WAV/MIDI/CWP files produced by Sonar, you can do with them whatever you like. If you think that is not right, please give some reference.
 
But there is another view point... Even in case EULA had explicit statement "you are not allowed to reverse engineer the output from our program" (I have not found it in that particular EULA), such statement is void in EU. Like f.e. 4.3 in Cakewalk EULA about forbidding to transfer the license. There was several known precedents in court with attempts to avoid re-sales (based on EULA statements) or block input/output files conversion/use. All these attempts (all I aware of) have failed so far (based on EU regulations).
 
And finally (from Sir Les points): you (as converter USER) are accused by Gibson in using not legal converter to speedup YOUR information transfer out of CW format (everything converter produce you can get manually, just slower). You accuse Gibson in selling "Lifetime" support for a product and abandoning it in less then a year (they also had yearly membership, so "Lifetime" happened to be shorter then usual support period). You have invested your money and time into it and now have to recover invested time. Who you think has better chance, even (or especially) in US?
 

Keep up the good work, azslow3!

I'm also glad to see you all here, guys. Once upon a time we talked about Sonar, trying to improve it, now we are doing the same thing with Reaper :)

Here's my update for today using the latest alpha:
 
Still no crashes, had one huge project that didn't load at all and said there 116 conversion errors, just left a blank project in Reaper, no audio or MIDI files loaded.
 
On MIDI projects I noticed that the track name in Reaper would display the name of the soft synth that had been patched on the original track in SONAR. Since the alpha can't replicate synths or effects yet this was a good sign because it at least gives you a reference point. If you had Addictive Drums on a track the track view title would also read Addictive Drums. 
 
The tempo settings match which is good. Also the clip names display as well. Given that it may be impossible to do soft synth settings this is good because at least in SONAR if you name the clip with the synth preset, the name will be displayed in Reaper as well so you can find the preset you used.
 
It did not transfer over track volume or pan settings, but not a big deal.
 
 
 
 

emwhy
Still no crashes, had one huge project that didn't load at all and said there 116 conversion errors, just left a blank project in Reaper, no audio or MIDI files loaded.

Thanks. I am in progress of understanding audio problems, one well known in this forum user is helping me ;)
It is good to know someone else also has problems with audio. Some problems was already eliminated today, but not yet all.
 
Possible problem with MIDI I have spotted with one of my projects an hour ago.
 

Given that it may be impossible to do soft synth settings this is good because at least in SONAR if you name the clip with the synth preset, the name will be displayed in Reaper as well so you can find the preset you used.

I will be extremely disappointed if synth transfer will not work. But so far I have everything required to restore FX/Synth, with presets. In worse case, I will have to do my own "VST scan", but I hope to avoid that.
 

It did not transfer over track volume or pan settings, but not a big deal.

but uploaded yesterday b4+ versions should transfer volume and pan envelopes.
 
Fixed volume and pan will be transfered once I transfer general routing (but note my comment in the documentation, driven the way Reaper deal with volumes, when a strip has volume envelope the slider should stay at unity, I mean Sonar volume/pan/etc current value will not be transfered in such cases).
 

Follow-up to my post:
 
The project that wouldn't load had 80 plus tracks, almost all of them were in folders, many were frozen due to a lot of instances of Guitar Rig eating up CPU. All my other attempts to load projects that don't have tracks in folders work well.
 
I did load just now a 7 track MIDI project where I noted the soft synth presets on the MIDI clips and saved that way in SONAR and was able to recreate the song that way. So far everything plays back well.
 
 

azslow3
Sonar EULA has reverse engineering clause, 3.2 and 3.5 (in the user guide version). But all that is about the Product. Do you think that YOUR cwp/wav/MIDI files are a part of the (Cakewalk) Product? Sorry, but according to 3.1 you are not allowed to even freely copy them in this case.
I mean if your are the owner of WAV/MIDI/CWP files produced by Sonar, you can do with them whatever you like. If you think that is not right, please give some reference.
 
But there is another view point... Even in case EULA had explicit statement "you are not allowed to reverse engineer the output from our program" (I have not found it in that particular EULA), such statement is void in EU. Like f.e. 4.3 in Cakewalk EULA about forbidding to transfer the license. There was several known precedents in court with attempts to avoid re-sales (based on EULA statements) or block input/output files conversion/use. All these attempts (all I aware of) have failed so far (based on EU regulations).

If a user in the US were to use your converter, they are not reverse engineering anything, they are just using a ready made tool, and since you are governed by EU regulations, there probably isn't any issue anyway.  Plus it's not like you are taking potential sales from Cake since they don't sell anything now.

emwhy
Follow-up to my post:
 
The project that wouldn't load had 80 plus tracks, almost all of them were in folders, many were frozen due to a lot of instances of Guitar Rig eating up CPU. All my other attempts to load projects that don't have tracks in folders work well.
 
I did load just now a 7 track MIDI project where I noted the soft synth presets on the MIDI clips and saved that way in SONAR and was able to recreate the song that way. So far everything plays back well.

There are several fixed in b8 (just uploaded). But there is serious MIDI timing conversion approach change, so something previously working can be broken... Too tired for today to continue.
 

the_user_formally_known_as_glennbo
If a user in the US were to use your converter, they are not reverse engineering anything, they are just using a ready made tool, and since you are governed by EU regulations, there probably isn't any issue anyway.  Plus it's not like you are taking potential sales from Cake since they don't sell anything now.

That was my conclusion from lengthy thread and the reason to continue. Last years I am concerned about legal issues, I carefully read all EULAs for everything. So I think everything is clean there, but I am not a lower and so i put the warning.
I guess publishing ANY song is more dangerous in that respect, someone somewhere can find the rhythm and the melody so close to something else. And once I have went throw many US and EU regulations what can be the consequences, uh... they all are written by big music players lobby.
 

Latest alpha opened and copied 49 audio tracks with no conversion errors (as reported by the plug).
 
I had 53 tracks but 4 were AUX tracks and they did not get created.
 
I got an empty 50th track. And I got one pan automation on track 49 (which I do have).