Thanks for the info,
I emailed tech support yesterday with my serial # so maybe they'll help out. Whether I get it for free at this point or have to pay for it is really not the issue. The fact that it is locked for anyone is absolutely ridiculous. I feel like I bought a car with three wheels on it & the dealer made me buy the fourth wheel so i can drive it off the lot. I know I'm exaggerating but I just don't understand how a reputable company can do something like this.

garyed
Thanks for the info,
I emailed tech support yesterday with my serial # so maybe they'll help out. Whether I get it for free at this point or have to pay for it is really not the issue. The fact that it is locked for anyone is absolutely ridiculous. I feel like I bought a car with three wheels on it & the dealer made me buy the fourth wheel so i can drive it off the lot. I know I'm exaggerating but I just don't understand how a reputable company can do something like this.

As Scook pointed out, there are options to install an external encoder (including Lame) using the External Configuration Utility at no cost to you. As I understand it, when Cake sells the encoder, the purchase cost or some part of it is a license fee which they are avoiding you having to pay for over and over again on each new software release. Fraunhofer and Thompson own patents on the MP3 compression process, and commercial use of their technology requires a license. Cake could simply charge you for each release, but way back in the Pro Audio days, thought that allowing users who have already purchased the encoder to simply migrate it to the new release would make more sense than charging over and over for the same thing.
So options like WMA which don't have an associated license issue are built in with no associated cost (or can be added with the external encoder utility.
Assuming all of this is still valid, I think it's a pretty fair arrangement and avoids an unnecessary cost component on each revision of the upgrade process, and I guess similarly avoids some bureaucracy for Cake on the number of licenses.

I don't really understand how this would work legally. When you buy an upgrade, you are basically paying for "the new features", not what you already paid for. I'm not sure what the case would be for having to charge for the mp3 converter again. Even if that absolutely has to be the case, looking around at the ridiculous amount of posts on how to get something as simple as mp3 export working, I think it's time Cakewalk integrates it as core functionality and treats it as such.

In this thread alone there have been pages of text describing how to use an external encoder, or what might be wrong with the purchased version and the multiple approaches on how to solve it. I have never seen a single post on how to export a WAV. Seriously, it should be that simple.

I finally got Lame working on Professional but it doesn't work as good as it does in X1 Producer since you can only set up one bit rate at a time for each external encoder. I'm still disappointed with the whole process of exporting an mp3 file. I'd be curious to know if any other DAW software makes you go through the same process.   

The licence that Cakewalk has to pay is per unit sold. Whether that is an upgrade unit or a new install makes no difference.

The Lame encoder is free to use for a private individual for non commercial work. For a company, they have to pay for including it in with their own software.

Lame is distributed under the GNU open source licence.
By giving you access to the free lame encoder and providing instructions on how you install it is as per the GNU licence Cakewalk don't need to pay the licence, you save money. If it comes with Sonar as per the unlocked version it attracts a licence fee.

Other daws I think licence the technology directly from Fraunhoffer thus the licence is part of th program every time you upgrade or buy that software.

mudgel
The licence that Cakewalk has to pay is per unit sold. Whether that is an upgrade unit or a new install makes no difference.

I believe the "unit" is the mp3 encoder itself, not "sonar", which comes with no mp3 capability at all out of the box. If it is as you describe I'm frankly at a loss to understand why it's set ip like it is. In any case, I've never been concerned enough about it to get as worked up over the issue as some seem to.
 

On a positive note Cakewalk did send me the activation file so i am appreciative in the way they responded so promptly & positively. I have to give credit where credit is due but that doesn't change my opinion on the issue. It does however reinforce my belief that they are an excellent company to deal with.