scottfa
There are some strange people on this forum! Why would you thank Cakewalk for putting out a product?  If you think it is worthwhile, you buy it, it is not a "friendship", they aren't your family doing you favors. There are some on this forum thanking them for putting out a "great product". How could you possibly know before it is released?
Anyway, I do NOT like the continual dodge of support issues.
1. Assume I have X3. If I call tomorrow can I get support for that product?
2. Is support ONLY for up to date subscribers? If I call with an out of date subscription is the first thing I hear is "Sorry, can't talk to you"? Is there anything in place to fix showstopping bugs in out of subscription products?
Thanks

Why should it matter to you if someone else chooses to thank Cake for what they perceive to be a great product? Many longstanding customers have developed a longstanding, almost familial relationship after years of using the product and knowing the people there. Obviously not in your case. Suggest you get over it.

dcumpian

scottfa
 ...
2. Is support ONLY for up to date subscribers? If I call with an out of date subscription is the first thing I hear is "Sorry, can't talk to you"? Is there anything in place to fix showstopping bugs in out of subscription products?
 

According to an earlier post be a Cakewalk staffer, the answer is they would never do that to any customer. It is, however, possible that the "fix" for your issue requires updating to a newer version, if the issue resulted from an actual bug...

Exactly THIS is what will Happen: you will HAVE to buy the bug fixes by by a full 12 months continues payment in order to "keep" it fixed, so you will HAVE to buy bug fix patches for at least 199, whereas up to now, you get patches for free, no matter how long you already own the license.

To me, it is bad practice (wether illegal remains to be seen), to refuse repairs for defects without further charge of products you own, and I own the license to use the product even when my subscription ended long before the repair gets available.

Well, I already decided to not subscribe, instead wait and see how it works out for all you customers. It's a pity, I would have liked to show my support now and pay now, but I don't know WHAT I would buy NOW, so I won't buy. It's that simple. And it's a pity, because it might have a negative side effect on the company as a whole, and I as a customer could be suffering from that in the long run, too...
However, I wish it works out well for everyone, I'd be a paying customer again.

Brando

scottfa
There are some strange people on this forum! Why would you thank Cakewalk for putting out a product?  If you think it is worthwhile, you buy it, it is not a "friendship", they aren't your family doing you favors. There are some on this forum thanking them for putting out a "great product". How could you possibly know before it is released?
Anyway, I do NOT like the continual dodge of support issues.
1. Assume I have X3. If I call tomorrow can I get support for that product?
2. Is support ONLY for up to date subscribers? If I call with an out of date subscription is the first thing I hear is "Sorry, can't talk to you"? Is there anything in place to fix showstopping bugs in out of subscription products?
Thanks

Why should it matter to you if someone else chooses to thank Cake for what they perceive to be a great product? Many longstanding customers have developed a longstanding, almost familial relationship after years of using the product and knowing the people there. Obviously not in your case. Suggest you get over it.

Way over it. Just an observation. BTW I have been a purchaser of Cakewalk products since the DOS days, before audio was involved. So, as usual assumptions are made. I am continually amazed that people become emotionally involved in products.  

TabSel
Exactly THIS is what will Happen: you will HAVE to buy the bug fixes by by a full 12 months continues payment in order to "keep" it fixed, so you will HAVE to buy bug fix patches for at least 199, whereas up to now, you get patches for free, no matter how long you already own the license.

This is not correct.  We've always had to buy the next release to get the bug fixes that came after the previous version release with its patches (which I think always occurred within the 12 months following the release).  I haven't liked this either, since I'm mostly happy with Sonar as it is.  I just don't want it to have serious bugs.

scottfa

Brando

scottfa
There are some strange people on this forum! Why would you thank Cakewalk for putting out a product?  If you think it is worthwhile, you buy it, it is not a "friendship", they aren't your family doing you favors. There are some on this forum thanking them for putting out a "great product". How could you possibly know before it is released?
Anyway, I do NOT like the continual dodge of support issues.
1. Assume I have X3. If I call tomorrow can I get support for that product?
2. Is support ONLY for up to date subscribers? If I call with an out of date subscription is the first thing I hear is "Sorry, can't talk to you"? Is there anything in place to fix showstopping bugs in out of subscription products?
Thanks

Why should it matter to you if someone else chooses to thank Cake for what they perceive to be a great product? Many longstanding customers have developed a longstanding, almost familial relationship after years of using the product and knowing the people there. Obviously not in your case. Suggest you get over it.

Way over it. Just an observation. BTW I have been a purchaser of Cakewalk products since the DOS days, before audio was involved. So, as usual assumptions are made. I am continually amazed that people become emotionally involved in products.  

I'm amazed that you're amazed. :) Cheers.

dcmg
I think some replies I'm seeing suggest that the folks who ( for lack of better description)
a) "game the system" and adopt late in a product cycle,
b) buy the "current" but sunsetting version at rock bottom price
c) then get favorable (or free) upgrade to the next version
are the most opposed to this new system. Harder to do that in this ecosystem.

Certainly you can call it "gaming the system". That is one way to look at it. But here's how I look at it - I have been using Sonar since back when it was just Cakewalk Pro Audio back on Windows 95. In fact, I might even have used it on Windows 3.1, but I forget. Either way, I would buy the program as-is, and use it as-is.
 
When a new version came around, I wouldn't feel obliged to buy it any more than I would feel obliged to buy the new version of any software - instead, I would see if the number of improvements justified the price, and if so, then I would upgrade. Developers know that the value you gain by picking up a few extra features and improvements is less than the value of going from no software to some software, so they offer discounted upgrade prices.
 
But there's still no guarantee that the discounted price is worthwhile to any given user. It certainly has never been worth the money for me. So, in 'recent' years, I've gone from Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 to Sonar 4 (or was it 5?), then Sonar 7 Studio, then 8.5 Producer, then X3. Only with a gap of 2 or 3 versions is it worth the price to me. It's the same this time around - all the new features demonstrated for the impending version, plus the 'Up Next For Members' stuff, does not add up to $200 worth of stuff for me. I might grab it at the $149 level just in the hope that I get enough bug fixes on top to make it worthwhile. But I'll know 12 months from now whether that gamble paid off or not.
 
Hopefully Cakewalk will make it so that customers like us can still do well with this system, getting all the same updates as everybody else, just having to wait longer to get them, and maybe missing out on some optional freebees along the way. The alternative, where failing to stay subscribed potentially ends up leaving us as second-class users with many key features missing, will just push me over to a different DAW where the cost of ownership is lower. Despite many frustrations I stick with Sonar due to familiarity and backwards compatibility - but if it gets too expensive, there are feasible alternatives.

Well, up to NOW, there was little financial motivation for cakewalk to hunt and squash bugs, so they concentrated on feature development for the next version one occasionally put out a free patch with bug fixes.

NOW, they get paid for bug fixing, so they MIGHT be way more motivated to squash bugs fast, in order to keep subscribers subscribing, so that MIGHT have a positive effect for the product quality.

However, it remains to be seen, not promised, as they get my money NOW, whereas I get the promise of more agile software development/maintenance. This I simply can't accept, at least not for the price.

The basic premise laid out by Cakewalk is that the monthly subscription(oops, membership!) allows them to put out bug fixes and updates more frequently because they don't have to wait for a major release. Please tell me why they could not just put out more frequent updates and charge you for it without all the membership stuff. If they put out a X3.21212 that fixes bugs A,B,C and adds Y new stuff couldn't they just charge $20 or whatever for it? I don't see the need from a customer point of view for the new system. I see it from Cakewalk's viewpoint, they need/want a steady flow of income. No one made them stick to a giant update scheme.

Just as a reminder, I in no way think these features are useless - just not that useful to me. Consider it a data point. :)

Anderton
Mix Recall: I often do have a need to produce multiple mixes - vocal up, vocal down, music bed behind narration up or down, alternates for the client (one with more drums, one with more vocals), etc. So it's really useful for me.

Very rarely, I have to do this. But basically it's just a case of pulling the drums bus down and re-bouncing, or muting the vocal bus and rebouncing, etc. The most complex one is where my guitarist wants a mix of a demo with his parts prominent, but I just drop in a couple of sends of his tracks to a new bus and pull the master down. Using the mix recall feature for this purpose seems like it's aimed at people who are used to working on a console where routing flexibility is limited, rather than those of us who've worked in the box with Sonar (and its predecessors) for 15 years.
 

MIDI editing changes: Yes, this can be done with Length, but i'm in favor of anything that makes gestures between audio and MIDI clips as similar as possible. It's so much faster than figuring out what percentage you want something to be, entering it, finding out it wasn't right, etc.

I only know of 2 situations where this is useful. If I have a MIDI loop, it's already created to a beat, so it'll stretch to whatever tempo is in place. The only exceptions I see are where you get drum loops that you want to be half or double time (so you use length x 200% or 50%) or where some lazy library maker has given you 12/8 loops in 4/4 (I'm looking at you, Toontrack), so you do the scale up 300% then scale down 25% trick. And you only need to do this once per clip. Having this on the mouse will be good, but not a revolutionary workflow improvement.
 

Control Bar: It's light-years beyond the customization that was available in 8.5.

I barely use the control bar in X3 because it has had so much less information visible on one screen than in Sonar 8.5. I learned extra keypresses instead. The end result is that I'm probably not going to notice when it becomes useful again.
 

FX and Send stacks: I never used Console View, for several reasons. Now that has changed and I use it for, well, mixing. I don't think it was "crippled" as much as by the time you got to mixing, you had your effects in place and were dealing with pan, fader, solo, recording automation moves, etc.

We've been over this before, but this is true for those of you who do a tracking phase, then a mixing phase. I don't, never will, and so console view is basically just an inconvenience for me. 90% of my time is working with clip arrangement and I mix as I go, while watching exactly which clips are playing and what automation is lined up, as well as adjusting VST and VSTi settings to make the mix work well. Quite why we're harking back to days of being hunched over Neve desks where there's a strict division between tracking and mixing I don't know.

Brando

scottfa
There are some strange people on this forum! Why would you thank Cakewalk for putting out a product?  If you think it is worthwhile, you buy it, it is not a "friendship", they aren't your family doing you favors. There are some on this forum thanking them for putting out a "great product". How could you possibly know before it is released?
Anyway, I do NOT like the continual dodge of support issues.
1. Assume I have X3. If I call tomorrow can I get support for that product?
2. Is support ONLY for up to date subscribers? If I call with an out of date subscription is the first thing I hear is "Sorry, can't talk to you"? Is there anything in place to fix showstopping bugs in out of subscription products?
Thanks

Why should it matter to you if someone else chooses to thank Cake for what they perceive to be a great product? Many longstanding customers have developed a longstanding, almost familial relationship after years of using the product and knowing the people there. Obviously not in your case. Suggest you get over it.

I thanked my mechanic for working hard to fix a bad wheel bearing.  He identified potentially dangerous damage in adjacent parts and made an extra effort to get those parts from another dealer quickly.  Yes, it was his job, and yes, they made a little more money by installing the extra parts.  But I have a safer car and I really do appreciate how he handled it.
 
I got great service at a restaurant last night and made sure to tell the manager.  Yes, it was their job, but it never hurts to thank a person for doing a good job.