If you bought the Cakewalk MP3 encoder license, to the absolute best of my knowledge you never have to buy it again, no matter how many release versions come out.
 
It has been since Sonar 8.5 or p prior to that Home Studio 6, that I bought their MP3 encoder, and I have never had to pay for it again, and I have upgraded Sonar all the way through X1, X2, X3, and now Platinum, and all is good for my ability to export to MP3 format with no licensing issues at all.
 
Hope that helps, 
 
Bob Bone
 

Agree with Bob... I bought this way back at Sonar 5ish... never had to reload, rebuy, or whatever... also, if you've wiped your system it's in your cake account and can be downloaded.
 
can't believe this thread is still here... regurgitating the same stuff ad nauseum... 

I checked my account and I don't see a license code in there.  Maybe I will contact support and see what they say.  Either way, it is not a big expense if I choose to purchase.  Thanks for taking the time to reply!! 

19 frets
Related question to the current discussion.  Like many of you here I am a long time Sonar and related products user.  I have a couple of older Cakewalk Products called Pyro 5 and Pyro Audio Creater that have MP3 conversion capabilities.  I assume that the cost of this product included the requisite Fraunhoffer license fee since it does MP3 encoding of files.  Is this license transferable/substitutable for the required Sonar Platinum license or do I need to pay an additional license.  I seem to remember when I bought these I had to activate a license, but I am not sure about this.  It was a long time ago.  TIA  

Hi Jim
 
I got my encoder with Pyro too, and yes, that purchase does count as your licence for all Cakewalk products.
 
When I needed to activate the encoder on a new PC, I just emailed Cakewalk and they sent me the details I needed to do so.

In hindsight (which is wonderful of course), it would probably have been better to spend the $10 on the mp3 licence and a good mp3 export interface rather than the development time on supporting arbitrary formats.  mp3 is and was ubiquitous, even if not perfect, so should have been provided without needing to pay an additional cost on top of the purchase price.  And it definitely did make SONAR (hell, it was probably Pro Audio at the time!) look less comprehensive than alternatives.
 
Probably not worth a change now though.

Doktor Avalanche
It wouldn't be an incentive for me as I configured LAME myself (10 min job) and that cost me $0. All that will happen is that the customer will burden the costs, or development will get reduced as it would take a slice of Cakewalks profits. This has already been discussed over and over again in great detail. I guess some people will never see this. Cakewalk here has done the right thing here imho.
 
Also I'm only seeing a few people complain about this, vast majority seem happy with the situation.

I installed lame also but it took me more that 10 min to get it right. LOL. However it would be nice to have the ability to modify the export settings without having to create several encoder configs.

Have a look at the library ni in my signature. It takes you to tythe first post in the software forum.. Quite a few MP3 options there and more to no too.

mudgel
Have a look at the library ni in my signature. It takes you to tythe first post in the software forum.. Quite a few MP3 options there and more to no too.

Thanks I'll check it out.

In mudgel's thread...This one works very good!
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Audio-Convertors/Aaron-s-Sonar-Mp3-Patch.shtml

I'm totally on Craig's side in this.  If CW has to pay a royalty to make mp3 conversion 'free', why?  There's already 'free' software like audacity and itunes that work great.  Sonar lets you drag a copy anywhere which makes porting mixes or samples simple.  Sonar is fantastic and personally I want them to keep it as reasonable as possible.