Anderton

Leadfoot
I hope there wasn't anything that I said that was considered dissing Cakewalk.

There seems to be a prevailing opinion that learning another DAW is really difficult if you've been using Sonar for years. I think it's true that learning another DAW to same degree to which you know Sonar or CbB is difficult, but to learn what's different so you can take advantage of what that DAW can do isn't hard at all. For years, with album projects I've exported Sonar tracks, loaded them into a Studio One Song page, then did the mastering in Studio One's Project page because it's so easy to make slight mix tweaks and then re-generate another master. That probably used about 10% of Studio One's capabilities, but it was the 10% I needed that no other program could/can do, and I learned it in a day.
 

That is a great point and very true.  All I knew on Sonar definitely lowered the learning curve when I worked with Studio One and Harrison Mix Bus.  Learning a new DAW is not nearly as bad as it's often made out to be.

I heard CbB (I really like this abbreviation) mentioned on Bobby Owsinski's podcast just the other day and how it being freely available had a potential to shake up the DAW world as far as what's "standard".  http://bobbyoinnercircle.com/214-mike-rodriguez/
 
It starts at about 19 minute mark.
 
I've updated to CbB with no trouble from Splat, but I do most things now in S1 and MixBus32C.  Even so, I still like to check in on this forum just because it's just an awesome place.  I may do some mixes soon in CbB to keep my chops up, and just for comparison.  I've found working on different DAWs really beneficial.  I learn things in one and apply in the other that I may not have been using before.  That makes me better on the first one.
 
Donny
 

I'm a songwriter who has used Cakewalk since Pro Audio 8. I want to focus on songs and not have to learn another DAW. I own X3e and though I suppose it will "always work" I don't think that's totally true as eventually I will upgrade my DAW PC and X3e may not run on that new Windows. I paid $168 or something for Lifetime Updates couple years ago and only just the other day finally installed SPLAT and CbB, opened SPLAT to have a quick look, but then went straight to using CbB w/ all SPLAT's extras because why not. As long as CbB keeps up the updates and development till the end of time I'll stick w/ CbB. Who cares what DAW snobs say about CbB, it's a means to my music, not the other way around. If some DAW snob tells me CbB sucks I'd be more interested in judging the quality of their music than engaging in a dumb back and forth like that.

My prognosis is that Cakewalk will be the undisputed king amongst DAW's in a few years time. It looks like BandLab have the resources to play the long game, it's a known successful strategy for dominance. We are 10 years into a unannounced global economic depression, and money is tight ... particularly among the young. For some, even spending $15 on a iPad DAW is a considerable expense. Here they have something that blows the socks of anything you can find on any iWhatever. With time, hopefully also a convenient bridge from the mobile world, into a powerful tool for refining material made on the go. I feel confident this will be a success story. 

CbB is my main daw program.  I like to have a  different programs to mix with. Heck I like daws and buy them because I like them. I have four and am looking at another one.
I agree with others ideas on long term possibilities of CbB. Cakewalk might not be something a few seasoned engineers use. Doesn't really matter in the end. Plenty of engineers are using the program to run 100+ tracks in well done studios. I know a few here on this forum who do it successfully and wouldn't want to change to another daw.
 
 
CbB is positioned to dominate the market or at least capture a lot of it.You might see ads for CbB in Rolling Stone Magazine.
 
Some  engineers are happy with pro tools, Logic, Cubase and similar who won't be moved....that is until paying clients show up with mixes in CbB. It always helps a studio to have what the client needs. Young clients become older clients who grow their mixing chops. Their studios get more sophisticated as they learn. CbB is set to capitalize on that.
 
 
 

I'll never put all my eggs in one basket again. I don't have the CbB installed but I may do so when it gets some killer feature I can't live without. At this point I don't have a lot of confidence in CbB management. Not personally of course, but I've seen a few bad decisions and missed opportunities that might have helped prevent all of this nonsense. I hope they thrive and learn from the past mistakes but I'll always split my time between Platinum, Reaper and Mixcraft for now. 

Here's what I think lies in store for the Cakewalk/SONAR code under BandLab's loving care:
 
You know how you can upload your finished song to SoundCloud? My guess is that CbB will soon have a tightly-integrated way to upload finished songs (and even stems) to BandLab profiles.
 
Later, users will even be able to pull "forkable" BandLab projects into CbB, work on them, and send them back up.
 
In addition to what it already is, CbB will function as an offline big brother to BandLab's browser-based DAW.
 
I'm really looking forward to this becoming a reality, because I've already done some primitive collaboration with friends using Internet tools like sharing stems and rough mixes via Google Drive, and being able to work in a full-featured DAW that has online collaboration smoothly integrated is an exciting idea.
 
For those of you who still can't figure out how BandLab can monetize something like this, there's charging for extra cloud storage like Dropbox and Google Drive do; I don't have to think very hard.
 
Millions of people around the world use Google's Chrome browser, which Google gives away for free and has spent many times the amount of money in programmers' salaries and technology licensing that BandLab has and probably ever will spend on poor old Cakewalk. Does anyone think that Google is someday going to pull a gotcha and suddenly start charging for Chrome?
 
The people on this forum who are still feeling stung may not remember, but web browsers used to cost money. Netscape (now called Firefox) was something you had to pay for. Opera was a program you had to pay for. I paid for a lifetime license for Opera before they decided to start giving it away for free.
 
Microsoft came along with Internet Explorer for free and basically killed the market for paid browsers, but you know what? For whatever reason, we have a greater choice of better browsers now that they're all free. I don't know how that works, but it somehow did. Chrome, Firefox, Waterfox, Internet Explorer, Edge, Opera, they all work great.
 
Who knows what effect it will have on the market when BandLab officially releases Cakewalk with great fanfare?
 
In the meantime, I am DIGGING the software! I am so happy to have access to such a great program I just can't believe it!

When it appeared that Sonar was history, I bought into Studio One. It's a nice program. It has a few things I really like a lot (it's appearance is not one of them.... ugly IMHO). Now that Sonar/CbB is back from the dead, I'll be staying with it and keeping Studio One as a backup, just in case. I am just so comfortable with Sonar. I love many of the Pro Channel plugins, etc. Overall, as far as I'm concerned, Sonar/CbB is just a great DAW. Here's hoping that BandLab keeps it moving in a Pro direction

Euthymia
Here's what I think lies in store for the Cakewalk/SONAR code under BandLab's loving care:
 
You know how you can upload your finished song to SoundCloud? My guess is that CbB will soon have a tightly-integrated way to upload finished songs (and even stems) to BandLab profiles.
 
Later, users will even be able to pull "forkable" BandLab projects into CbB, work on them, and send them back up.
 
In addition to what it already is, CbB will function as an offline big brother to BandLab's browser-based DAW.
 
I'm really looking forward to this becoming a reality, because I've already done some primitive collaboration with friends using Internet tools like sharing stems and rough mixes via Google Drive, and being able to work in a full-featured DAW that has online collaboration smoothly integrated is an exciting idea.
 
For those of you who still can't figure out how BandLab can monetize something like this, there's charging for extra cloud storage like Dropbox and Google Drive do; I don't have to think very hard.
 
Millions of people around the world use Google's Chrome browser, which Google gives away for free and has spent many times the amount of money in programmers' salaries and technology licensing that BandLab has and probably ever will spend on poor old Cakewalk. Does anyone think that Google is someday going to pull a gotcha and suddenly start charging for Chrome?
 
The people on this forum who are still feeling stung may not remember, but web browsers used to cost money. Netscape (now called Firefox) was something you had to pay for. Opera was a program you had to pay for. I paid for a lifetime license for Opera before they decided to start giving it away for free.
 
Microsoft came along with Internet Explorer for free and basically killed the market for paid browsers, but you know what? For whatever reason, we have a greater choice of better browsers now that they're all free. I don't know how that works, but it somehow did. Chrome, Firefox, Waterfox, Internet Explorer, Edge, Opera, they all work great.
 
Who knows what effect it will have on the market when BandLab officially releases Cakewalk with great fanfare?
 
In the meantime, I am DIGGING the software! I am so happy to have access to such a great program I just can't believe it!

You clearly do not understand the data and info that Google are obtaining from users that choose to use Chrome,Do you think they or any other company makes a product completely free of charge because they just want to be nice ?
That is a very silly way to think,nothing is free,there is always some kind of benefit to the company offering it and i don't mean a warm fuzzy feeling when they wake up each morning
Your Personal data/browsing habits and many other things obtained through your browser is what pays for its development
I can assure you Bandlab have not saved Sonar to develop and update it and keep it free for everyone because it makes them feel good inside.
 

Dan, so if they require us to purchase in order to have software, they're not evil, but if they give it away so that customers will become more familiar with their other premium services, they're diabolically evil?