So how about a Sonar discount at the Landr site?

This is perfect for me.
I am lazy and crunched for time and this does do a decent job.  I tried my two free, and I am pleased.
I will try two more free ones next month and if the next two are like the first two - sign me up.
 
I think it is really neat to watch that guy on PBS doing all that word working without power tools, and I really am blown away by the skill and the mastery.  However, that is not me - I am lazy and impatient, so this fits right in my wheel house.
 
JR
 
 
 

I've never used everything in SONAR and I will probably not use LANDR (maybe).
 
Not meant as an analogy, just saying. To each his own.

joeb1cannoli
 My studio budget for the year went to upgrading my monitors and upgrading Ozone 7 from standard to advanced ...
 I'm gonna be really pissed if LANDR does a better job than me 

I doubt that you need to worry about that.  The examples I have heard were all about making it louder and the jump in dB was so great I couldn't really hear if anything was qualitatively improved.  I presume they must be doing SOMETHING besides just compressing and pushing to max volume, but it seems there isn't much insight into their process nor much control over it.
 
What would be really cool would be if Ozone could evolve to have a "wizard" mode where Ozone would offer up some settings based on an analysis of the audio.  That would be a big step forward from the static presets.  I'd pay serious money for that.
 
I think the big objections to LANDR are:
 
1) The options less than $108/year are completely worthless, and even the $108 option still gives you a compressed file.  We are spending about that same amount for ALL of Splat.  This seems way out of proportion as a value proposition.  If it were more like $25/year maybe people would feel differently.
 
2) It was forced on the users, and appears to be more to Cakewalk's benefit than the user's benefit.  Had it been presented as an option that one doesn't need to install, I doubt there would be objections.

stxx
YOU MUST NOT PEAK HIGHER THAN -5!   LANDR says this for a reason!  

I hear that comment a lot regarding mastering.  I don't get it.  Of course if the mix is clipping, that is a problem, but otherwise, why can't they just normalize the input to any level that is suitable as input to the mastering process?

cparmerlee
 
I doubt that you need to worry about that.  The examples I have heard were all about making it louder and the jump in dB was so great I couldn't really hear if anything was qualitatively improved.

 
This post uses the low setting and provides some stats.
 

1) The options less than $108/year are completely worthless, and even the $108 option still gives you a compressed file. 

 
Whether that's worthless or not depends on your gig.
 

It was forced on the users, and appears to be more to Cakewalk's benefit than the user's benefit.  Had it been presented as an option that one doesn't need to install, I doubt there would be objections.

 
It would like have reduced the number of objections, but then there would still be the objections that the concept itself is flawed, and since creating a separate installer would take more time and testing, there would still be the complaints that Cakewalk spent time on something particular individuals didn't want.

Anderton
Whether that's worthless or not depends on your gig.

Would you give a 192 kb MP3 to a client?  I wouldn't.  I didn't realize anybody worked on those levels other than for radio streaming or something else where quality isn't critical.
 
One of the pieces of advice that I have found most useful on this forum recently was to try the Sonnox encoder.  One of the features of Sonnox is a VST that will show you visually how much fidelity you are losing at different compression levels on different material.  This has been quite revealing.  I expected that the losses would all be at one part of the spectrum, (most likely the high end).  What Sonnox shows is that the encoding losses can happen anywhere in the spectrum, depending on the material.  For my stuff, 256 is really the lowest fixed bitrate that isn't extremely lossy.  And with rates under 200, I see losses all over the spectrum pretty much continuously.
 
I just don't get the point of software that is supposed to polish the sound, but then returns the product in such a lossy format.
 
I am not against the concept of using computer intelligence / automated analysis to assist in the mastering process.  On the contrary, I like that idea.  I just don't think this particular value proposition is very strong.
 

bitflipper
I'm curious...has LANDR really become "the leading online mastering service"? And in such a short time?
 
"Leading" suggests there are competitors, but I don't know of any. At least, not any with that business model. 

All the way to Abby Road Mastering.  Online mastering is extremely popular, with the mastering engineers all having fun bashing HarBal ;-D

So I was kind of excited when I saw "AI" and "Mastering" in the same sentence.   For me (as I suspect for a lot of musicians) mastering is the hardest part of post-production work.  So I was really eager to try out LANDR, I figured this "artificial intelligence" will probably know how to master my songs better than I do.
Well the first red flag went up went I realized it had to upload the song to the LANDR site.  With my Internet connection, with my son hogging the bandwidth with his video games, uploading a 4 minute wav file took way too long (over 7 minutes).  The second red flag is finding out that you have to pay the highest subscription plan, just to get a decent choice of options.

I already shelled out a bunch of money recently upgrading to Izotope's Ozone 7 Advanced.  And I get by with the dozens of presets it offers (usually tweaking them a bit to get the sound I want).  But even if I didn't own Ozone, Sonar Platinum offers many off-line mastering tools that are available within the program itself...immediately ready to use.

But the most important reason I won't be using LANDR, is ironically because I realized I do NOT want to use the AI to master my songs.  Even though Ozone comes with presets, you still have to tweak the various modules to get the sound just right for each individual song.  And working hands-on with compressors, exciters, EQ's, and all the other mastering tools, you are actually LEARNING how to master.   I have learned a lot from using not only Ozone, but with all the other tools within Sonar.  And I think mastering is an important part of the music production experience, and from what I've seen with LANDR, you are missing out on "getting your hands dirty" and learning how to do it on your own.   But I guess some folks just want to write their songs, and press the "Doesn't Suck" magic button, to  make their songs sound better.  In which case, if you don't mind waiting for the upload, and don't mind paying extra money for tools you already have, then LANDR is probably something you'd want to invest in.

I think a lot of people were surprised at the added expense, and ultimately disappointed that this new feature is not free.  Maybe to ease the sticker shock, Cakewalk should add a little footnote on the Updates page, stating that LANDR costs additional money to use.

(I haven't read all the previous posts in this thread, so I apologize if I'm repeating something that was already said)

Here's what Steven Slate had to say about Landr and this kind of technology. Spoiler: he was actually very optimistic about it. 

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/10438197-post77.html

Followed are plenty of people arguing against his statements, so have fun reading!