Doktor Avalanche
Personally I hope MP3, 32 bit plugins and ASIO4ALL die a miserable painful death. There really is not much use for mp3 any more, even with cellphones. Wav is what you should master to, and FLAC is there for compression requirements.

I believe mp3 can be a lot smaller than flac and it is sufficient when played back through crappy earbuds or worse, a phone or laptop.  So room for a lot more songs (speaking about the general public).
 
I have hundreds of small sound files that go with my music tutorial books that I drag around with me and I've had to convert them all to mp3 so it'll all fit on my mp3 players.  They'll play flac and wav but I ran out of room quickly enough.  The quality doesn't have to be great if you're just learning a guitar lick.  I do use flac for music that I care about and listen to through reasonably good Sennheiser earbuds.

Doktor Avalanche
There really is not much use for mp3 any more, even with cellphones.

Every other audio product I have supports MP3. Sonar is the lone outlier.  Sorry, this is not the way to impress new users. This simply gives the impression that Cakewalk has such a low opinion of users or such a high opinion of themselves that they will dictate what is good and what customers should use.
 
We don't all have the same needs.  For what I do, almost all of the time, people want to receive the output as MP3s.  They aren't interested in arguments from me why they ought to be doing FLAC or something else.  I'm sorry if this offends anybody, but really, folks should get off their high horses and accept that there are valid reasons for people to use the tools in ways that aren't the same as what others might be doing.
 
Simple question, do you want to see Sonar accepted as a mainstream professional product or would you prefer it being seen as a second-class product only for hobbyists, techies, and garage bands?

cparmerlee

Doktor Avalanche
There really is not much use for mp3 any more, even with cellphones.

Every other audio product I have supports MP3. Sonar is the lone outlier.  Sorry, this is not the way to impress new users. This simply gives the impression that Cakewalk has such a low opinion of users or such a high opinion of themselves that they will dictate what is good and what customers should use.
 
We don't all have the same needs.  For what I do, almost all of the time, people want to receive the output as MP3s.  They aren't interested in arguments from me why they ought to be doing FLAC or something else.  I'm sorry if this offends anybody, but really, folks should get off their high horses and accept that there are valid reasons for people to use the tools in ways that aren't the same as what others might be doing.
 
Simple question, do you want to see Sonar accepted as a mainstream professional product or would you prefer it being seen as a second-class product only by hobbyists, techies, and garage bands?

This is getting ridiculous. Pay the $10 and be done with it if its so important to you. We are users that have no control over this. 

cparmerlee

Anderton

cparmerlee
Let me ask you a marketing question.  Would you pay $10 to begin a relationship with a new customer that might result in 5-10 years of subscriptions to Platinum?

With respect, your question is not relevant.

You are correct, if the only ambition for Sonar is to have it perceived as a hack's tool as opposed to a a professional, robust product.  The point is that obviously anybody would spend $10 to make a good first impression that would start a relationship with a customer.  I bet Gibson is spending a lot more than that on click advertising.
 
This is a no-brainer.  The company should eat the $10 and have the product ship with seamless MP3 support.

There you go again with selective quotation, presumably so you can avoid answering the relevant question I raised: whether customers who already have multiple ways to convert files to MP3s (including having already unlocked the non-expiring Cakewalk encoder) should be forced to pay $10 in order to subsidize other customers who find either a) following 9 steps "a pain," or b) who don't think to look in the Help file (or do a 1-minute search) to find out how to convert files for free from within SONAR to MP3, or c) refuse to take the free option but also refuse to spend $9.99 for something they presumably need.
 
Care to answer my question this time?
 
And as to "eating" the $10, read what I wrote about the concept of a "bill of materials." Companies have budgets and make forecasts based on what it costs them to make a product. You must think $10 is a pretty big amount of money if you find it onerous for people to need to spend it if they don't want to install a codec for free. Well, multiply that by the number of copies of SONAR that are sold, get our your calculator, and realize it is NOT a trivial decision (or a particularly intelligent one) to "eat" $10 for every copy of SONAR sold. 
 
FYI SONAR Artist sells for $99 and that doesn't take into account dealer margins. So you're asking Cakewalk to give away 10% of the MAP cost of the product to benefit a small number of new users while penalizing existing users, and also, give up a much higher percentage of their profit on that product.
 
Sure, Cakewalk could "eat" the cost of paying $10 for every copy of SONAR by firing someone in customer support (actually that may not be enough). I think that's a stupid tradeoff to make because you want to force what I believe is the majority of users to pay for something they don't need.
 
Remember, Cakewalk wouldn't have to pay the license fee only for people who use MP3 encoding. They have to pay the license fee for every copy of SONAR, including the ones sitting on store shelves. 
 
Besides, the point is moot because you can already get SONAR with built-in MP3 encoding. Just ask for the version called "SONAR + $9.99."

Anderton
Care to answer my question this time?

Any audio product should support MP3, period.  If you don't want the product to be seen as a hack's tool, then this should should be seamless out of the box.  Just about every other company manages to do this somehow.  It seems to me either Cakewalk doesn't understand some of the most basic marketing principles or else they are poor negotiators.  In either case, given that the company expects its users to pay an annual subscription that will be hundreds (or thousands) of dollars over the life of the relationship, it is just plain dumb to not support this seamlessly.  It makes the whole thing look amateurish.
 
I don't know how to answer your question any more clearly.

Anderton

cparmerlee

Anderton

cparmerlee
Let me ask you a marketing question.  Would you pay $10 to begin a relationship with a new customer that might result in 5-10 years of subscriptions to Platinum?

With respect, your question is not relevant.

You are correct, if the only ambition for Sonar is to have it perceived as a hack's tool as opposed to a a professional, robust product.  The point is that obviously anybody would spend $10 to make a good first impression that would start a relationship with a customer.  I bet Gibson is spending a lot more than that on click advertising.
 
This is a no-brainer.  The company should eat the $10 and have the product ship with seamless MP3 support.

There you go again with selective quotation, presumably so you can avoid answering the relevant question I raised: whether customers who already have multiple ways to convert files to MP3s (including having already unlocked the non-expiring encoder) should be forced to pay $10 in order to subsidize other customers who find following 9 steps "a pain," or who don't think to look in the Help file (or do a 1-minute search) to find out how to convert files for free from within SONAR to MP3.
 
Care to answer my question this time?

Well if they spend the time to "do a 1-minute search" because they know about Google or whatever :) they will probably come across this...
http://forum.cakewalk.com/TUTORIAL-Getting-LAME-MP3-Encoder-to-Work-With-SONAR-m1255631.aspx
 
Search was "configuring Sonar for lame" 
 
At least for me that is the first search result returned using Google.
 
That thread spans from 2007 to 2015.
 
I really regret participating in this thread. Seems as if my intentions were not understood and feel a little defensive in what seems like a hostile environment. But I'll get over it. Don't worry! :)
 
I have no problem with how cakewalk handles MP3 encoder unlocking or the use of the configuration tool for free Lame etc. My only point was this has been a reoccuring topic and I can understand why.
 
Perhaps this topic could be put to rest if it is explained during installation or in the popup dialog box when attempting to export an MP3 that is locked or not configured to use the free Lame (which I believe may be only for educational purposes but not sure really). There probably is a popup, but maybe it doesn't explain things well enough with all the options and reasoning other than pointing them to the Cakewalk store to unlock.
 
Again, that is a "Perhaps". I still think a lot of people are going to think MP3 export would be included in the initial purchase. But whatever.
 
I'm out! Peace!

cparmerlee

Anderton
Care to answer my question this time?

I don't know how to answer your question any more clearly.

 
Well, you answered the question you asked very clearly. Unfortunately, you did not answer the question I asked. My question wasn't "Should all programs include MP3 encoding out of the box?" Nor was it "If a program doesn't include MP3 support out of the box, will it be seen as a hack's tool?"
 
Here's the question I asked:
 
Should customers who already have multiple ways to convert files to MP3s (including having already unlocked the non-expiring Cakewalk encoder) be forced to pay $10 in order to subsidize other customers who find either a) following 9 steps "a pain," or b) who don't think to look in the Help file (or do a 1-minute search) to find out how to convert files for free from within SONAR to MP3, or c) refuse to take the free option but also refuse to spend $9.99 for something they presumably need?
 

Any audio product should support MP3, period.

 
Maybe I live in a parallel universe, but last time I looked, SONAR does support MP3. You can configure an encoder or if that's too much of a hassle, buy one whose installation is no more complicated (often much less so) than the other options people buy to accessorize a program for their particular needs. Then you can use SONAR to create MP3 files. That is "supporting MP3 files." If SONAR couldn't generate MP3 files, then it would be considered as "not supporting MP3 files."
 

It seems to me either Cakewalk doesn't understand some of the most basic marketing principles or else they are poor negotiators.

 
The cost of producing a program, determination of a bill of materials cost, pricing to dealers, MAP, and margins are not marketing issues. And Fraunhofer doesn't say "hey, what do you want to pay us? Let's talk!" They charge a licensing fee.  
 

In either case, given that the company expects its users to pay an annual subscription that will be hundreds (or thousands) of dollars over the life of the relationship, it is just plain dumb to not support this seamlessly.

 
You state this as if it is a fact. I'm not saying it's not true, but I'm curious where you get your market data. Or is it just your opinion?
 

WDI
I really regret participating in this thread. Seems as if my intentions were not understood and feel a little defensive in what seems like a hostile environment. But I'll get over it. Don't worry! :)
 
Again, that is a "Perhaps". I still think a lot of people are going to think MP3 export would be included in the initial purchase. But whatever.
 

Absolutely agreed, we know that some people think MP3 export should be included as a "native" feature in SONAR. It may be 1%, it may be 99%. I don't know, and those making statements about how people view a program that doesn't have MP3 export as being amateurish (despite it having DSD import and export) don't know either 
 
But you could also make an argument that Cakewalk should include a goniometer for checking phase. And it should, but you can get one for free that's quite good. And it should include a really good maximizer too. But it doesn't, so you either get a free one like W1, or spring for Ozone or WAVES or whatever.
 
The point I'm trying to make is that baking an MP3 encoder into SONAR requires a tradeoff. There's no free lunch. The tradeoff is either paying more money for SONAR, having less features in order to subsidize those who for whatever reason can't cope with the free installation or don't want to pay $9.99, or firing someone at Cakewalk.
 
Given those tradeoffs, I think the correct decision is to leave the decision about how to handle MP3 encoding up to the user. Others disagree. On the other hand I'm not sure they want to pay more for SONAR, have fewer features, or put someone out on the street; but to be fair, maybe they're totally cool with those tradeoffs, and if so, I respect their opinion regardless of whether I agree or not.

Anderton
Here's the question I asked:
 
Should customers who already have multiple ways to convert files to MP3s (including having already unlocked the non-expiring Cakewalk encoder) be forced to pay $10 in order to subsidize other customers

If that is what it takes.  I doubt that is what it takes, however, as these things are probably negotiable when talking about volumes.  Nonetheless, $10 would be a small price for Cakewalk to pay in order to clear out such a basic objection to the product.
 
You can spin this into sounding the way you want it -- as a "subsidy".  I don't care.  I am simply pointing out that MP3 is one of the most basic requirements of any audio program, and other suppliers have had no difficulty dealing with it without making the customer jump through hoops.

cparmerlee

Doktor Avalanche
There really is not much use for mp3 any more, even with cellphones.

Every other audio product I have supports MP3. Sonar is the lone outlier.  Sorry, this is not the way to impress new users. This simply gives the impression that Cakewalk has such a low opinion of users or such a high opinion of themselves that they will dictate what is good and what customers should use.
 
We don't all have the same needs.  For what I do, almost all of the time, people want to receive the output as MP3s.  They aren't interested in arguments from me why they ought to be doing FLAC or something else.  I'm sorry if this offends anybody, but really, folks should get off their high horses and accept that there are valid reasons for people to use the tools in ways that aren't the same as what others might be doing.
 
Simple question, do you want to see Sonar accepted as a mainstream professional product or would you prefer it being seen as a second-class product only for hobbyists, techies, and garage bands?

Or, configure any free encoder it you would rather.  It is indeed all a series of trade offs and balancing acts - development direction, which fixes for this cycle, what plugins to include, any UI alterations, the encoder, and a thousand other things.
 
Each person will have likes and dislikes about feature present, features absent, etc., and Cakewalk has worked the particular MP3 encoder they offer in the same manner for many many years now.  If you do not wish to purchase a user license for the offered MP3 encoder, feel free to download the exact same one for free, and use the Cakewalk supplied configuration options to simply add it in yourself (saving that license fee), and move forward. Or don't.
 
This perceived shortcoming has really soaked up a lot of some folk's time, and that to me is a bit odd - though I certainly support folks having whatever their opinions are - they are every bit as valid as mine.
 
I DO happen to think it a bit silly to think that the Sonar license fee for the offered encoder, considering how small a part that plays in the whole grand scheme of things - particularly since you can actually get the exact same one for free.  IF it were really true that this MP3 encoder is making any kind of sizable number of folks thinking Sonar is some kind of amateur-hour product - I would imagine that this would be discussed at length and by a wide assortment of industry engineers or reviewers.  I cannot say I have ever seen a review that included some comment along the lines of 'boy, that Sonar is something, but man it just sucks they didn't include that MP3 encoder for free - hey Sonar isn't any good'.  Until I DO start seeing that kind of review on it, or some number of industry pros responding in interviews along the same lines, I will believe that your opinion is in the minority.
 
Good luck with it all - I cheerfully and seamlessly exported SEVERAL MP3 files this evening, in Sonar, so in any case it is not an issue I face.
 
Bob Bone