Anderton
Actually, the "hidden premise" (although I'm not sure how well hidden it is) is that we'll come up with so much cool stuff over the course of the year that people will want to renew, either by paying upfront or doing a monthly payment plan. And also, that by providing updates when ready and allowing people to pay by the month, they'll have more reasons to renew as soon as they have that option.
 
A very important aspect is that it is NOT the responsibility of the customer to renew. It is OUR responsibility to make them want to renew.

Can I quote you in two years?  :)
 
I've been thinking this whole thing will be bad for periodic upgrade buyers from the bug fix perspective.  The above statement reinforces that idea.
 
Maybe this will end up being soooooooo coooooool that there won't be any periodic upgrade buyers because everybody is a subscriber^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmember.  I hope I'm wrong because I just invested in getting back up to date.

COLOR ME ...totally excited and totally ready to buy the upgrade.
...need more be said?

Over the years ...Cakewalk (et al) has been a solid, reliable partner in helping me generate income...
I work with some of the biggest names around ...albeit very quietly ... after a huge loss in late 2007 and a horrid setback in 2008 thanks to "the economy" ...I struggled to regain some foothold on sanity and life itself...

During this period I lived on the computer ... creating every kind of sound I could imagine...Cakewalk was my constant production companion
 
I encountered a dandy of a software issue with Cakewalk 8.x each forum post yielded nothing but "you must be crazy" responses... I called technical support... I believe it was Willy (almost sure) who doggedly pursued my crash reports and actually did see "something" that just didn't look right...

... he pursued this issue until finally, another office in Germany encountered the very same problem... 
Upon discovering this ...Willy notified me Cakewalk was building a beta version to address this remote problem...

Turns out ... the obscure issue was at the bottom of many related problem reports... 

SO he carefully guided me through the beta testing ...often by phone ... we tested, worked on many revisions ...until finally the problem was resolved.... that outcome had positive effect on many users...

*** That sort of dedication to clients indicates the quality of the individual and more ...the dedication Cakewalk has to providing users with a product that performs as advertised.

I will be a Cakewalk customer for as long as I am able to work in this business... and beyond if they'll put my face on a product after I am gone...(chuckle)

...and with Craig Anderton on board ... it's a done deal for good.

Where do I pay? (The top o' the line version, please) I want all them bells and whistles.

Best of All Worlds to All Y'all 
Roy

TabSel
...X3e came more than 12 months after x3, as far as I remember, ...

X3E came out in March 2014, X3a launched in September 2013

This looks and sounds great to me!  Already put in my pre-order!   149 upgrade!   Same as before and get features sooner.   I guess Cakewalk is taking the more modern "Agile" development approach to software which will get us changes faster and more often and is way more efficient for their development team!  Thanks!!

stxx
This looks and sounds great to me!  Already put in my pre-order!   149 upgrade!   Same as before and get features sooner.   I guess Cakewalk is taking the more modern "Agile" development approach to software which will get us changes faster and more often and is way more efficient for their development team!  Thanks!!

The Pre-order isn't available yet...how did you put it in?  (unless you are one of the "random" people spoken of...

Anderton

Beepster

djjhart@aol.com
As I under stand you get more for being a monthly subscriber.

Nope. If you pay in advance you get all the same stuff you would on a month to month basis (as far as I understand it).

Correct, and you pay a little less if you pay upfront.

So if your monthly subscriber after 12 months of paying your done?
Or do you keep paying and On the 12 th month you will get X5 and 12 months thereafter of paying you will get fixes upgrades and goodies . (Something like that)
But as a one time payment this year I will get x4 and all its bells and whistles as soon as there ready too? And then a year later I have to buy x5 .

So basically it's a 12 month ez payment plan ..

after reading the 17 pages so far my remaining question was asked in the middle but never answered.  it has to do with integration of already upgraded to full versions of software (melodyne, etc) with the new versions of Sonar;  will the lite versions overide the paid for full versions and will there be a way to turn off the lite versions for installation?  
 

ampfixer
THe only thing I can tell for sure is that it will cost me more to own Sonar than in the past, and that there will be no more free bug fixes or enhancements.

 
Realistically speaking, you ALWAYS paid for bug fixes and enhancements. When you spent $149 for an upgrade, that was factored into the cost. A company knows there will always be problems that surface after a piece of software is released, so you build in the cost of making those fixes.
 
New users get a year of free bug fixes, enhancements, and content. By the end of that year, the assumption - as it is currently - is that show-stopper bugs will have been fixed. Most users realize that software will never be bug-free and that X3 is substantially more stable than previous versions. By continuing to tweak that core, I would expect it will continue to become more stable in the future. 
 
The way things work now, if there are remaining bugs, they may or may not be fixed in the next update. The way things will work in the future, if there are remaining bugs, they may or may not be fixed in the next update. However, the big difference is that QAing will be easier, and the modular installer makes it easier to do what used to be called "quick fixes."
 

It's costing me more and you have a cop out option for buggy updates. You will get the $149 from me so that I can experience the new format for a year and then I'll evaluate the experience. It doesn't feel good, but you're the dog and I'm the tail.

But again...that's no different from now. Suppose you had X2. You paid $149 to update to X3, even though maybe you were nervous about new ownership and thought the future might be uncertain...but you took a leap of faith. Then you received five updates over the course of six months, enjoyed more stability, found out all the cool things you could do with X3, and then you were in a position to decide whether you thought the $149 was well-spent or not, and whether you'd update to X4 when it appeared. That's what's happening, EXCEPT you're getting what would have been X4, while assembling "X5" a block at a time over the next year and using "X5" features as soon as they're ready.
 
Personally speaking, I think the improvements in "X4" are well worth $150. Mix Recall is huge, so is VocalSync and the MIDI enhancements. The Control Bar is now fabulous...and of course, the new amp sims  That's not all but for the way I work, those would justify $150.
 
It has always been your option to say "Nope, not gonna upgrade this time around" and if you didn't, then you weren't going to get bug fixes for the version that was no longer being sold. I really can't think of any major music software companies that continue to offer new features and bug fixes for versions that are no longer being sold, although there probably are.

jimtzu
after reading the 17 pages so far my remaining question was asked in the middle but never answered.  it has to do with integration of already upgraded to full versions of software (melodyne, etc) with the new versions of Sonar;  will the lite versions overide the paid for full versions and will there be a way to turn off the lite versions for installation?  
 

Someone can correct me if mistaken, but I can't  think of a reason Sonar would chane the status quo where that is concerned. If you currently own Melodyne Editor, it simply defaults to that instead of lite.

 I found the answer....