GjB
Cakewalk by BandLab.
If people don't like it or use it - then wtf are they doing here?
(I don't hang around in the Mac forums and say that I prefer Windows.)

I mentioned that over a month ago. I was chastised for it. But I still do NOT get it. You wanna keep up with the news, OK, fine. READ the forum.  But why post. Mind boggling. 

dubdisciple
Song was garbage but huge. At any given point during the year there are multiple fl produced songs in top 40. Lots of them are garbage as well but very popular garbage

I think what you're saying is that song "quality" is opinion based ?
Your chosen DAW does not define you as a music creator.
"Song was garbage but huge" sounds like a sad reflection on the current state of the music creation industry.
I don't believe the "Top 40" is even relevant anymore in an internet music market. Top 40 on which site ?

noynekker

dubdisciple
Song was garbage but huge. At any given point during the year there are multiple fl produced songs in top 40. Lots of them are garbage as well but very popular garbage

I think what you're saying is that song "quality" is opinion based ?
Your chosen DAW does not define you as a music creator.
"Song was garbage but huge" sounds like a sad reflection on the current state of the music creation industry.
I don't believe the "Top 40" is even relevant anymore in an internet music market. Top 40 on which site ?

My garbage comment wasn’t so much a reflection on industry, but a simple personal opinion on the song . I didn’t care for it. Pop music has always produced successful songs that were not considered great by critics. Fortunately for artists, it’s paying fans that matter more than critics.

When I say “top 40” I was talking Billboard. My point was not to claim any DAW defined a person but simply that a hit song or two can change fortunes overnight. At the time Soulja Boy made his hit, FL was considered more of a techno tool. A young,aspiring hip hop artist was more apt to get an mpc, keyboard workstation like Motiff or Triton or Reason if going DAW route. Image-Line did nothing special. It just happened that production styles shifted to methods that favored what was already in FL.

Anderton
Some people here don't understand that business isn't just "sell widget = receive money" any more, especially if a business is a division of a much larger company. That even applies to those who think data is a widget...it may or may not be.

yeah, back in the day business was a lot more transparent... there have been several posts asking how bandlab will make money if sonar is free, but no answer has been forthcoming, no wonder people are paranoid

dubdisciple
Song was garbage but huge. At any given point during the year there are multiple fl produced songs in top 40. Lots of them are garbage as well but very popular garbage

Incredible. No wonder I was almost ousted from the forum when I proposed they make a retro edtion :)

pwalpwal

Anderton
Some people here don't understand that business isn't just "sell widget = receive money" any more, especially if a business is a division of a much larger company. That even applies to those who think data is a widget...it may or may not be.

yeah, back in the day business was a lot more transparent... there have been several posts asking how bandlab will make money if sonar is free, but no answer has been forthcoming, no wonder people are paranoid

Well as they say, only the paranoid survive :) I really don't think you can expect anybody to explain their business plans to you, as long as your not a share holder. There are such things as business secrets, and if explained ... and the explanation is good ... it will be copied in the fraction of a second. I also think it has been explained by Meng how BandLab have other sources of revenue, and don't need Cakewalk to be profitable. If Cakewalk were the only leg they where standing on, of course it would be a cause for concern ... but it's not. 
 

urock
Plus, CbB now has an edge in the DAW Wars that only Reaper had before - a wealthy benefactor.   That has effectively allowed Reaper to have the loosest copy protection in the business (based on trust - which is laudable).  Now CbB has eclipsed that with its free status.

Notice significant differences at the moment:
* CbB is "free" as a plug-in for $0 with iLock. Yes, you can get it for free, but it still has copyright protection with on-line authorization. Without any explanation why.
* The last time I have tried to find it, I have failed. Where is "CbB EULA?" Without it, there is no known "game rules". Fine for a "freebie", but I do not know how someone case use it seriously.
 

And unless Justin's invested really well since he earned his WinAmp payoff, Meng and his family's business are in another $ league.  Plus Meng seems interested and committed to CbB.

The power of Justin is not in money, as many people here periodically argue. He spends $0 on marketing, he spends $0 on "company infrastructure" and (I guess) he spends $0 on sub-licenses.
But he and John are good "old style" (in terms of preferring conservative and proved by time ideas over bleeding edge wrappers)  programmers, the fact everyone can check not only in the result but also in the source (Cockos has several open-source projects).
 
Meng&Co has proved they can do not so bad web based apps (Bandlab), but the desktop app (Assistant) looks like a disaster for me.
Cakewalk (DAW) is developed by the same people which, let face that, have failed to advance it during more then 10 years.
 
With time I understand that Sonar was a brilliant program, with tons of innovative concepts and reasonable implementations of them. It was so good that even after 15 years (of no real changes) face-lifted incarnation of it is not bad. With several aspects which still beat concurrents.
But without evidence it is going to be advanced (and sorry, I do not observe such evidence since the first day I use it), there can be no questions about the future. It is a brilliant "vintage" past...
 

I think we have to look at the reality of where CbB is right now.
 
Pretty soon after the announcement of Cakewalk Inc's demise, a fair amount of people migrated to other DAWs. Obviously Meng as the new owner wanted to limit the damage here, hence the rush to get an early access out as soon as possible.
 
Buying a portion of assets from a company in a lot of ways is far more complex than buying a whole company.
 
If BandLab had bought Cakewalk Inc outright, then things like EULA, all the products, 3rd party agreements etc could have stayed in place.
 
Buying the assets means that there's a bunch of untangling to do with regard to de-coupling the assets from Cakewalk Inc, and a whole lot of integration to do to make the new assets fit into BandLab's processes and infrastructure.
 
This process is obviously still ongoing, so I think it would be wrong of us to judge CbB by what we're seeing right now. To my mind, what we've got now is still an early access product, that will hopefully limit the amount of users permanently moving over to other DAWs, and that BandLab are keen to make as good as possible (with our help & feedback) before they officially release it with all the pomp.

The only consensus I have is that CbB is as good if not a little better than SONAR Platinum.
 
I own other DAWs that do somethings more brilliantly than CbB but may be lacking in other areas. Such is life.
 

Consensus seems to have been reached. General consensus that is. Sometimes snowflakes fall in the summer.