hi everyone, it's been a while since i posted anything here because i was too busy mourning the loss of my beloved Sonar. my first question is, does my lifetime upgrade still work?
second, will there be a formal announcement that Sonar has been resurrected? just in time for Easter, how appropriate.
over the years i've asked many questions on this forum. most of which have been really dumb, however, i always received help from people a lot smarter than i.   
i hope to hear from all of you soon.
thanks,
jp

There are stickies at the top of the forum by the new owner Meng, be a good idea to read those and get caught up.

Yes, by all means do some reading. No need for questions which have been asked several times already. The answers are already here. you don't even have to google...

No one really knows if lifetime upgrades will continue.  A lot of people have speculated both ways, but until Meng says something definitive. no one knows.
 
I think the official announcement about the resurrection of SONAR has been made.  
 
All the best.

jude77
No one really knows if lifetime upgrades will continue.  A lot of people have speculated both ways, but until Meng says something definitive. no one knows.
 
I think the official announcement about the resurrection of SONAR has been made.  
 
All the best.

It has been answered here:
https://blog.bandlab.com/cakewalk-announcement-faq/

Quote:
I’m an existing or old SONAR user and have questions about my old account or subscription or want a refund?

BandLab Technologies did not acquire the operating company of Cakewalk Inc., only the complete set of intellectual property, patents, trademarks and certain assets necessary or related to the entire Cakewalk product suite.

For users of Cakewalk from before 21st February 2018 – please refer to the original Gibson/Cakewalk announcement FAQ:https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2016000087/Gibson-Cakewalk-Announcement-FAQ

What more can that mean as either or. That is as clear as it gets, that is a prior obligation, Lifetime subscriptions etc. Any prior purchase.

Meng has answered that the new program is going to be crossgraded( in his stickie at the top) at no cost as is hoped for which is quite generous if and when it comes to be.

Once again all this is in the stickie and my link in this reply to the Bandlab announcement(once agian in the stickie above in this forum).

thank you all for getting back to me.

I for one am hoping that the always upgrading/never finished model that gave birth to the lifetime upgrade concept will not be resurrected. I sincerely doubt that the new owner will be willing to carry forward with this commitment to a select group of former Cakewalk customers, although if he has enough income from other sources, and a low enough investment in Cakewalk stuff to justify it, he may make it a freebie for all. I was most happy when features were bundled, tested and released as roughly yearly upgrades, and bug fixes were released as they were completed. It is not my impression that rolling updates improved the stability of the application, or resulted in carefully prioritized and planned choices of which features were to be developed and released. A case in point is the looooong time it took to introduce a workable ripple editing; the ability to move all of the tracks of a composition easily and flawlessly is so integral to arranging that it should have been priority number one. Instead I get the impression that work was being done on much less critical but easier to implement features just so there would be something in the monthly update basket.
 
I expect most of the work being done currently is to integrate the application tightly with the BandLab products, so that stuff being done on one platform leads users to employ the other. Can you say synergy? After that, I expect more effort at making the stuff just work. Musicians want applications that work more like a toaster than a computer, and BandLab is not positioned to appeal to computer geeks. SONAR is probably waaay to complicated already for that market, so I would guess that the direction to simple song, pop music, looping type features will be the way it is going to go. Those few SONAR users who are using  it to compose and audition their symphonies will probably not see major efforts to improve their workflow in the new era. At any rate, constant change is not something that will be greatly appreciated by those either using or supporting the new application. 

interesting. still, after all the drama of finding a DAW that actually works without a degree in computer science, i'm going to keep my options open, have sonar stashed on my external H/D, keep working with studio one which i find quite good. sometimes sonar would get nasty and i would have to adjust latency/bitrate (whatever the hell that is)etc. so far with S1 i just downloaded it and off i went.
it will be interesting to see what happens.