Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

• Expose your music to fans. You can hyperlink any track in BandLab on social media your website or elsewhere. Which musician doesn't need fans? :)
• Easily invite feedback on works in progress from peers or band members. Share a BL revision with select users.
• Engage with other musicians or fans socially. Comments in your BandLab feed are a much better integrated avenue to get feedback and promote your music than a private songs forum.

Heh, these are things I've already used the BandLab integration for, and I hope to get started on the other ones as soon as I wrap my head around the potential.
 
Just last night, a user on this forum had a question about how to achieve a certain effect on a drum track, so I opened a Cakewalk project, soloed my drum track, threw on the effect, hit the Export button, sent it to BandLab, and shared the link to the forum. Everything within the Cakewalk/BandLab ecosystem.
 
This would have taken longer if I had gone through the process of File/Export, choose all the settings, browsed to my Mixdowns folder, uploaded it to Google Drive, grabbed the link, etc. Maybe not that much longer, but it eliminated some drudgery.
 
Who knows, maybe when the fabled new forum arrives, there will be an option to "post to forum." Now THAT would rock like new socks in a box.

I was invested in Cakewalk, still am I suppose, but my only association with CbB is to check this forum from time to time.
 
Now, if a Faderport 8 was integrated with SPlat/CbB the way it is with SO3, I might re-think my DAW decision.
 
 

I was extremely loyal to sonar for many years. I switched to studio one last year at this time and have since upgraded to v4. Like you, Olemon, I still check back here and I even still have cbb installed and updated to the latest.

I also have a faderport 8 and love it's integration with s1. I tried it in Mackie/hui mode in cbb and it is decent but nowhere near as deep or customized, of course.

After having complete my first song in studio one, I came back to cbb yesterday to address and old song. Wow. It's amazing how difficult it is to come back to something after having used it for years and using another daw for one year and being SO much more comfortable in it. Everything I tried to do in cbb was laborious, slow in execution, and loaded with pops and clicks at the same latency with a less complex mix.

I was actually both frustrated and saddened by the experience.

The forum is the least of the worries from my point of view, though it does seem that they need to get on with it so that the community here continues and continues to grow. At this point it is the only thing that keeps me coming back. Which is too bad as I have some unfinished mixes/songs that I feel like I am just going to pull a few parts out of and start them over in studio one.

im puzzled why ppl have left sonar gone to another daw then come back and have forgotten how to use the newly improved version and say they are unhappy. i used sonar as i worked with someone who had sonar i was on waveform and fl studio. although i was a loyal cakewalk user up until x2 sonar wasn't generative as the other daws i was using even if it was more powerful than the others i was using. bandlab comes along gives me a free platinum version without the bloat and seems to be more interesting stable and more colourful than it was. snd now i can store my mixes there share them and even work on the stems there if i wish. the cbb is better than the cakewalk version by far, and doing better work on it that i did before. ive looked at studio one liked it but felt why would i buy a program that doesnt give you vst capability unless you buy it as an add on??? been to waveform and although powerful workflow is a bit awkward then the other contenders .... well you need a mortgage just to get going. mixcraft was a high contender but felt to similar to sonar in certain ways 
. im excited with where cbb is going to be in a years time, i cant see it being free for ever but would advise ppl who left to register and keep tabs i think they will be pulled back esspecially if a mac version is produced

im puzzled why ppl have left sonar gone to another daw then come back and have forgotten how to use the newly improved version and say they are unhappy.

I could start to make a list if that would help your puzzled-ness.  Seriously.  I used Sonar through Platinum including lifetime updates, so I was even up to date until right when Gibson tanked the brand.  I understood how to work the application.  Even if not a Full-time professional power-user, I definitely knew the ins and outs of getting things recorded and mixed and dealing with the hardware and software, drivers, configurations, system tweaking, etc.
 
But when I came back yesterday and opened up an old project, it left me wanting.  Yes, I changed my audio interface, so there were things to adjust, but even that was painful, even being experienced at the same.  I also added the FaderPort 8 device since I left, but I wasn't even trying to use that in CBB.
 
Here are a few things that are quite simple in Studio One that were a pain for me yesterday:
 
1. Arranging my plugins - or even getting them to show up where they were supposed to be in groups.  I had to open the Plugins...manage layouts from the Browser (wait about 30 seconds each time for this to load), click VST, find my plugin, select the folder on the right in the correct layout (assuming that's the one I actually had selected before I got to the "manage layouts" screen), add the plugin, go out of the manage dialog, save, look in the newly saved area and NOT see my plugin.  Until I restarted CBB.  Now it's there.  Contrast in Studio One: go to the browser, select the view (folder, flat, vendor, type), drag the plug where I want it - done, or favorite it - done.
 
2. Listen to my mix - at 2.9ms latency settings via ASIO, the same as Studio One using the same audio device and same drivers (in fact the same ASIO control panel).  Pops and clicks while playing back a simple VST piano by itself.  Load up a whole mix with complex synths, lots of effects, and decent number of tracks at the same 2.9 ms, in an UI that feels FAR more stable and responsive = no pops or clicks.  I recorded, mixed, and mastered the whole project from start to end with no change to latency at all.  In CBB (or old Sonar), I got accustomed to archiving/freezing tracks and changing the latency depending on where in the track progress I was, to keep performance in check.  Studio One = no such thought process or interruption = it just worked.
 
3. Assigning my hardware to control things in CBB = a bit of a PITA.  In Studio One, I move a control, click a UI element, and click the left arrow in the UI.  Now my slider/knob controls that.  And I'm not talking about the FaderPort 8 (a Presonus product we would expect to be better in Studio One).  I am talking about an Edirol PCR-800 - a device that was made by "Roland" at a time when they owned Cakewalk, that has never been predictable or easy to use with ACT, a technology that was created during the same period as the device, with the device even having a button on it that was decidedly only for ACT (V-LINK), but to get it to control things in CBB is just an unpredictable pain - even having created a ticket with Cakewalk (pre-Gibson-breakup) that took a whopping 9 months to get taken care of that allowed me to utilize simple "midi remote" control that in Studio One (that was wierdly difficult to setup and separate from ACT because that particular function wasn't handled by ACT) has been a complete breeze in S1.
 
4. The Gui - of course this one is so subjective.  When I first got S1, I was a little underwhelmed with the GUI, but I have found it to be more functional than CBB's.  I have spent less time worrying about how a control looked or how the colors worked, or how I could spend even more time doing customizations and instead in Studio One have spent more time enjoying the immediacy, the simplicity, the intuitiveness, and the productivity. 
 
5. No reliance on the ProChannel.  I've never been a fan, believing that the modules there are loaded across every channel, whether I want them or not and except for the (enjoyable) Quad Curve EQ, the UIs are too small to be useful.  I'd rather only load on a channel what I am actually going to use to keep the busyness down and make the channels/console far easier to look at.
 
6. The console - Much more flexible in Studio One, allowing for the volume sliders (and associated controls) to be extended up, for the Insert and Send areas to be height adjusted, and to allow for (some) plugins to display their details at the channel summary level - if you want them to.
 
7.  Simple to use Audio "quantizing" in the form of Audio Bend = CBB AudioSnap. I have tried to use this facility SO many times in CBB.  It has been hit and miss at best, leaving me to just re-recording things that needed timing adjustments.  In Studio One, it seems completely accessible - a simple few clicks and drags and things are where I want them.  Done.  No hassle, no confusion, and predictable behavior.
 
8. Macros in Studio One = CAL in CBB.  Macros are FAR more accessible and make it VERY easy to put together a string of commands and tie them to a keyboard shortcut for doing multiple steps in a single key press.  CAL is antiquated and even for a "programmer", the notation is quite confusing and feels like yet another thing that is left over from many versions gone-by, held-over for the sake of compatibility but never advanced for many years.
 
9. Comping.  Without going into a huge dissertation on this, it changed too many times from Sonar 8 (layers) and the variations that happened after Skylight turning from layers to comping with various differences and little helpful web content to explain it.  On the flip side, in Studio One, it is very easy to figure out what takes you want and promote them to the live track.  Maybe it's just better video training examples online.  Maybe the proces is actually better. In the end, I was able to comp a few guitar solo takes without feeling the need to go back to school to do it.
 
10. I'll stop with this one - but it isn't the end: Mastering your project.  Being able to master the project without having to close it, open a new file, import the exported wav, etc is WAY more productive, especially when you KNOW you will be doing this process multiple times.  Master it, listen elsewhere, come back to Studio One, make your mix adjustments at the SONG, then hit, Update Master, then export again directly from there (even as MP3), knowing that the same mastering effects will be automatically applied, the same fades, the same volume leveling, etc.  Just overall a much more conducive experience to getting a song done, even when you have to come back to it days later. 
 
No, Studio One is not perfect - in fact there are elements from CBB from which it could benefit, such as sound on sound recording, better drum mapping (by a little), track icone, and a few other things in CBB that I've frankly forgotten about.  This forum is ONE of those things.  The forum at Presonus is less active, for sure, and this community is one I've been involved with since <2003.  Which brings us back to this forum topic - the Forum. :)

Blades

im puzzled why ppl have left sonar gone to another daw then come back and have forgotten how to use the newly improved version and say they are unhappy.

I could start to make a list if that would help your puzzled-ness.  Seriously.  I used Sonar through Platinum including lifetime updates, so I was even up to date until right when Gibson tanked the brand.  I understood how to work the application.  Even if not a Full-time professional power-user, I definitely knew the ins and outs of getting things recorded and mixed and dealing with the hardware and software, drivers, configurations, system tweaking, etc.
 
But when I came back yesterday and opened up an old project, it left me wanting.  Yes, I changed my audio interface, so there were things to adjust, but even that was painful, even being experienced at the same.  I also added the FaderPort 8 device since I left, but I wasn't even trying to use that in CBB.
 
Here are a few things that are quite simple in Studio One that were a pain for me yesterday:
 
1. Arranging my plugins - or even getting them to show up where they were supposed to be in groups.  I had to open the Plugins...manage layouts from the Browser (wait about 30 seconds each time for this to load), click VST, find my plugin, select the folder on the right in the correct layout (assuming that's the one I actually had selected before I got to the "manage layouts" screen), add the plugin, go out of the manage dialog, save, look in the newly saved area and NOT see my plugin.  Until I restarted CBB.  Now it's there.  Contrast in Studio One: go to the browser, select the view (folder, flat, vendor, type), drag the plug where I want it - done, or favorite it - done.
 
2. Listen to my mix - at 2.9ms latency settings via ASIO, the same as Studio One using the same audio device and same drivers (in fact the same ASIO control panel).  Pops and clicks while playing back a simple VST piano by itself.  Load up a whole mix with complex synths, lots of effects, and decent number of tracks at the same 2.9 ms, in an UI that feels FAR more stable and responsive = no pops or clicks.  I recorded, mixed, and mastered the whole project from start to end with no change to latency at all.  In CBB (or old Sonar), I got accustomed to archiving/freezing tracks and changing the latency depending on where in the track progress I was, to keep performance in check.  Studio One = no such thought process or interruption = it just worked.
 
3. Assigning my hardware to control things in CBB = a bit of a PITA.  In Studio One, I move a control, click a UI element, and click the left arrow in the UI.  Now my slider/knob controls that.  And I'm not talking about the FaderPort 8 (a Presonus product we would expect to be better in Studio One).  I am talking about an Edirol PCR-800 - a device that was made by "Roland" at a time when they owned Cakewalk, that has never been predictable or easy to use with ACT, a technology that was created during the same period as the device, with the device even having a button on it that was decidedly only for ACT (V-LINK), but to get it to control things in CBB is just an unpredictable pain - even having created a ticket with Cakewalk (pre-Gibson-breakup) that took a whopping 9 months to get taken care of that allowed me to utilize simple "midi remote" control that in Studio One (that was wierdly difficult to setup and separate from ACT because that particular function wasn't handled by ACT) has been a complete breeze in S1.
 
4. The Gui - of course this one is so subjective.  When I first got S1, I was a little underwhelmed with the GUI, but I have found it to be more functional than CBB's.  I have spent less time worrying about how a control looked or how the colors worked, or how I could spend even more time doing customizations and instead in Studio One have spent more time enjoying the immediacy, the simplicity, the intuitiveness, and the productivity. 
 
5. No reliance on the ProChannel.  I've never been a fan, believing that the modules there are loaded across every channel, whether I want them or not and except for the (enjoyable) Quad Curve EQ, the UIs are too small to be useful.  I'd rather only load on a channel what I am actually going to use to keep the busyness down and make the channels/console far easier to look at.
 
6. The console - Much more flexible in Studio One, allowing for the volume sliders (and associated controls) to be extended up, for the Insert and Send areas to be height adjusted, and to allow for (some) plugins to display their details at the channel summary level - if you want them to.
 
7.  Simple to use Audio "quantizing" in the form of Audio Bend = CBB AudioSnap. I have tried to use this facility SO many times in CBB.  It has been hit and miss at best, leaving me to just re-recording things that needed timing adjustments.  In Studio One, it seems completely accessible - a simple few clicks and drags and things are where I want them.  Done.  No hassle, no confusion, and predictable behavior.
 
8. Macros in Studio One = CAL in CBB.  Macros are FAR more accessible and make it VERY easy to put together a string of commands and tie them to a keyboard shortcut for doing multiple steps in a single key press.  CAL is antiquated and even for a "programmer", the notation is quite confusing and feels like yet another thing that is left over from many versions gone-by, held-over for the sake of compatibility but never advanced for many years.
 
9. Comping.  Without going into a huge dissertation on this, it changed too many times from Sonar 8 (layers) and the variations that happened after Skylight turning from layers to comping with various differences and little helpful web content to explain it.  On the flip side, in Studio One, it is very easy to figure out what takes you want and promote them to the live track.  Maybe it's just better video training examples online.  Maybe the proces is actually better. In the end, I was able to comp a few guitar solo takes without feeling the need to go back to school to do it.
 
10. I'll stop with this one - but it isn't the end: Mastering your project.  Being able to master the project without having to close it, open a new file, import the exported wav, etc is WAY more productive, especially when you KNOW you will be doing this process multiple times.  Master it, listen elsewhere, come back to Studio One, make your mix adjustments at the SONG, then hit, Update Master, then export again directly from there (even as MP3), knowing that the same mastering effects will be automatically applied, the same fades, the same volume leveling, etc.  Just overall a much more conducive experience to getting a song done, even when you have to come back to it days later. 
 
No, Studio One is not perfect - in fact there are elements from CBB from which it could benefit, such as sound on sound recording, better drum mapping (by a little), track icone, and a few other things in CBB that I've frankly forgotten about.  This forum is ONE of those things.  The forum at Presonus is less active, for sure, and this community is one I've been involved with since <2003.  Which brings us back to this forum topic - the Forum. :)

I've SPLAT lifetime, S1 V3.5, CbB. I  never came across those Problems with Sonar or CbB - Not your Issues with VSTs or the browser in CbB / Sonar, nor with audio-Interface Setup, no Pops or Clicks. Nothing. It was a bit tricky instead, to tell S1 to use my keyboard.
Your judgement of the GUI is extremely subjectiv, but from what i read in the Presonus Forum, there are endless Discussions about Colours, Knobs, distinction between tracks or autmation lanes and so on . . . And the documentation for comping was way better for me with sonar  than with S1. And what I actually read in the Presonus Forum, there are Problems  with VSTs, Midi, Interfaces as well. . . . . 
 
But however, I really don't understand your intention to post about your raging passion for S1. Most of your statements are highly individual and subjective.
 
Cheers :)
 
Ahh, BTW, at the moment this Forum is less active than the Presonus Forum. For sure. 

Blades

im puzzled why ppl have left sonar gone to another daw then come back and have forgotten how to use the newly improved version and say they are unhappy.

I could start to make a list if that would help your puzzled-ness.  Seriously.  I used Sonar through Platinum including lifetime updates, so I was even up to date until right when Gibson tanked the brand.  I understood how to work the application.  Even if not a Full-time professional power-user, I definitely knew the ins and outs of getting things recorded and mixed and dealing with the hardware and software, drivers, configurations, system tweaking, etc.
 
But when I came back yesterday and opened up an old project, it left me wanting.  Yes, I changed my audio interface, so there were things to adjust, but even that was painful, even being experienced at the same.  I also added the FaderPort 8 device since I left, but I wasn't even trying to use that in CBB.
 
Here are a few things that are quite simple in Studio One that were a pain for me yesterday:
 
1. Arranging my plugins - or even getting them to show up where they were supposed to be in groups.  I had to open the Plugins...manage layouts from the Browser (wait about 30 seconds each time for this to load), click VST, find my plugin, select the folder on the right in the correct layout (assuming that's the one I actually had selected before I got to the "manage layouts" screen), add the plugin, go out of the manage dialog, save, look in the newly saved area and NOT see my plugin.  Until I restarted CBB.  Now it's there.  Contrast in Studio One: go to the browser, select the view (folder, flat, vendor, type), drag the plug where I want it - done, or favorite it - done.
 
2. Listen to my mix - at 2.9ms latency settings via ASIO, the same as Studio One using the same audio device and same drivers (in fact the same ASIO control panel).  Pops and clicks while playing back a simple VST piano by itself.  Load up a whole mix with complex synths, lots of effects, and decent number of tracks at the same 2.9 ms, in an UI that feels FAR more stable and responsive = no pops or clicks.  I recorded, mixed, and mastered the whole project from start to end with no change to latency at all.  In CBB (or old Sonar), I got accustomed to archiving/freezing tracks and changing the latency depending on where in the track progress I was, to keep performance in check.  Studio One = no such thought process or interruption = it just worked.
 
3. Assigning my hardware to control things in CBB = a bit of a PITA.  In Studio One, I move a control, click a UI element, and click the left arrow in the UI.  Now my slider/knob controls that.  And I'm not talking about the FaderPort 8 (a Presonus product we would expect to be better in Studio One).  I am talking about an Edirol PCR-800 - a device that was made by "Roland" at a time when they owned Cakewalk, that has never been predictable or easy to use with ACT, a technology that was created during the same period as the device, with the device even having a button on it that was decidedly only for ACT (V-LINK), but to get it to control things in CBB is just an unpredictable pain - even having created a ticket with Cakewalk (pre-Gibson-breakup) that took a whopping 9 months to get taken care of that allowed me to utilize simple "midi remote" control that in Studio One (that was wierdly difficult to setup and separate from ACT because that particular function wasn't handled by ACT) has been a complete breeze in S1.
 
4. The Gui - of course this one is so subjective.  When I first got S1, I was a little underwhelmed with the GUI, but I have found it to be more functional than CBB's.  I have spent less time worrying about how a control looked or how the colors worked, or how I could spend even more time doing customizations and instead in Studio One have spent more time enjoying the immediacy, the simplicity, the intuitiveness, and the productivity. 
 
5. No reliance on the ProChannel.  I've never been a fan, believing that the modules there are loaded across every channel, whether I want them or not and except for the (enjoyable) Quad Curve EQ, the UIs are too small to be useful.  I'd rather only load on a channel what I am actually going to use to keep the busyness down and make the channels/console far easier to look at.
 
6. The console - Much more flexible in Studio One, allowing for the volume sliders (and associated controls) to be extended up, for the Insert and Send areas to be height adjusted, and to allow for (some) plugins to display their details at the channel summary level - if you want them to.
 
7.  Simple to use Audio "quantizing" in the form of Audio Bend = CBB AudioSnap. I have tried to use this facility SO many times in CBB.  It has been hit and miss at best, leaving me to just re-recording things that needed timing adjustments.  In Studio One, it seems completely accessible - a simple few clicks and drags and things are where I want them.  Done.  No hassle, no confusion, and predictable behavior.
 
8. Macros in Studio One = CAL in CBB.  Macros are FAR more accessible and make it VERY easy to put together a string of commands and tie them to a keyboard shortcut for doing multiple steps in a single key press.  CAL is antiquated and even for a "programmer", the notation is quite confusing and feels like yet another thing that is left over from many versions gone-by, held-over for the sake of compatibility but never advanced for many years.
 
9. Comping.  Without going into a huge dissertation on this, it changed too many times from Sonar 8 (layers) and the variations that happened after Skylight turning from layers to comping with various differences and little helpful web content to explain it.  On the flip side, in Studio One, it is very easy to figure out what takes you want and promote them to the live track.  Maybe it's just better video training examples online.  Maybe the proces is actually better. In the end, I was able to comp a few guitar solo takes without feeling the need to go back to school to do it.
 
10. I'll stop with this one - but it isn't the end: Mastering your project.  Being able to master the project without having to close it, open a new file, import the exported wav, etc is WAY more productive, especially when you KNOW you will be doing this process multiple times.  Master it, listen elsewhere, come back to Studio One, make your mix adjustments at the SONG, then hit, Update Master, then export again directly from there (even as MP3), knowing that the same mastering effects will be automatically applied, the same fades, the same volume leveling, etc.  Just overall a much more conducive experience to getting a song done, even when you have to come back to it days later. 
 
No, Studio One is not perfect - in fact there are elements from CBB from which it could benefit, such as sound on sound recording, better drum mapping (by a little), track icone, and a few other things in CBB that I've frankly forgotten about.  This forum is ONE of those things.  The forum at Presonus is less active, for sure, and this community is one I've been involved with since <2003.  Which brings us back to this forum topic - the Forum. :)

As this thread is about the forum, I'm struggling to understand why you've veered so far off topic into other stuff. Studio 1 is no doubt a great DAW, that's well understood, but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the subject matter here. There are other threads which are more approriate if you have a search for them.

Agreed, I almost replied to the above then went back to read the OP (have to do that quite often actually). As mentioned for the OP, this forum is pretty much it until replaced, barring other social media already in existence.
 
The ancillary stuff is a can of worms that has already been touched upon/pounded into the dirt all over the place already... could pretty much write a book on it by now.
 
Side comment - as some folks read things from a phone, epic quotes are really difficult to navigate.

Yeah. I get it. It was really long and probably wro gly placed. In fact I have duplicated the same on my own blog so feel free to remove it here if you feel the need. And, Please don't quote the whole post. I initially wasn't even going to post anything like that but then was asked what the problem was, so I answered in my opionon that the least of the issues is this forum.

Apologies for quoting your article in full during my response. I must have faster thumbs than everyone else...... :-). Seriously, and to be fair, most forums I’m on usually contract long quotes automatically. Seems this one doesn’t.