150 bucks a year to keep on the upgrade spine of a monster like Sonar sounds like value to me.  And in reality it's pretty much what we've been doing since Pro Audio - who can resist the new toys!?  I just hope the UK price reflects the actual rate ($150=about £98) and they don't just swap $ for £.  It's software, there's no shipping. 
 
Just one more thing....please tell me the NOW time doesn't still jump forward on PAUSE, or at least I've got the option - my projects have more markers than a bad gambler!

EezyP
......I just hope the UK price reflects the actual rate ($150=about £98) and they don't just swap $ for £.  It's software, there's no shipping. 

Yes, I'm looking out for that chestnut.....

Skyline_UK

EezyP
......I just hope the UK price reflects the actual rate ($150=about £98) and they don't just swap $ for £.  It's software, there's no shipping. 

Yes, I'm looking out for that chestnut.....

+ VAT, cake wont pay our taxes unfortunately :(

We were expecting a subscription based product, and I wasn't happy about it, but these options are pretty good. No complaints here. Happy with the new features, Couldn't be bothered tormenting myself with which version. Platinum it will be. It's still really good value in my book. And 12 months of updates.
 
I will buy up front and probably the same each year after. It's a known expense at a know time and will factor into my business costs, like most other things.
 
So thanks CW. And thanks to the CW team for getting on here and answering all the questions and fears. This thread has answered everything I wanted to know, so thanks to all.
 
Consider it bought. cheers. Dave.

Anderton
rolling out and QAing one or two new program features at a time is much more straightforward than QAing 40 changes in a huge rollout. Also if there's an issue, it can be fixed more quickly.
 
The bar has now been set for a customer-centric ownership model instead of a company-centric rental ("subscription") model. 

I totally agree. If this spreads to other types of software (are you listening Adobe and AutoDesk?) this could reshape software use/ownership as we know it.
 

And a question from left field. Will this run under boot camp on my Mac Pro?. If so, I may finally upgrade from X2 Pro. I have various songs I would like to remix using better hardware (RME HDSPe, Orion 32 etc) all hooked in the Mac Pro. 
 
Cheers,
 
Tony

The included AD2 Producer alone is 149.95. Check out http://www.xlnaudio.com/products/bundle/producer_bundle
So, for those of you who are thinking of upgrading from X3PE to "X4" you are actually buying AD2 Producer and Getting the Sonar upgrade free. Or the other way around?

I don't like the terminology - it reeks of money grabbing.  It may be no different than what we have now, but the marketing of it stinks.
 
I've been with Sonar since V7, and bought every new version.  But I didn't think of it as a "subscription" or some other marketing terminology.  I just bought the new version program.
 
But others are doing it so I guess Gibson decided to do it.  I have Malwarebytes that was a lifetime purchase when I bought it, now its on a yearly basis like most computer security software.

henk.vanwulpen

• The model seems to have a significant price increase for the loyal users that always upgraded to the latest version. Those upgrades used to be $119 to $149, where now it turns out that you pay $199 after the first year (am looking at Producer only). This is exactly the price that you paid in the past when you had skipped the last upgrade. This may be another significant reason why to adhere to my above scheme with intermittent non-memberships since it no longer 'pays off' to be 100% loyal (now I'm afraid Cakewalk will soon realize this and come up with a scheme that makes it again more expensive if you are not constantly renewing your membership :p).

 
Apologies for quoting myself here. Just saw that it looks like Cakewalk already plans to avoid people suspending their memberships in between releases. From the website : " Members are also entitled to free technical support and discounted Membership renewals.  ". So once your membership ends, you probably won't have any discounts anymore for renewal. It will then be a matter of how high the discount is to see how many months you would have to wait to renew before your non-membership saves you more than that discount. There's no details on that yet (in fact, current pricing scheme seems to suggest the opposite) but I guess they still have the whole of 2015 to figure the discount plan after 1 year.

Here's my take on this upgrade:
 
It's not really a membership; it's a financing plan.
 
Imagine buying a fridge. Keep the payments up for one year and you own the fridge... or the software, in this case. Skip a payment and the repo guy will come a-knocking.
 
You always pay interest on a financing plan and this one's no different.
 
Don't want to pay the interest? Buy it outright; you get the same product. If you have to borrow the money to do it, you'll simply be paying interest to someone else, your credit card company, your bank, your mother, whatever.
 
This is the best solution for all concerned, IMHO.
 
Customers get:

• what they pay for as long as they...
  • keep up the payments for a full year and don't try to skip any, or
  • buy it outright with an up-front lump sum,
• new features one at a time so they can be integrated into workflow more easily.

And Cakewalk gets:

• better cash-flow,
• easier, less confusing launches for new features.

I really don't see a downside to this.