I have been slowly trying to finish a big project that I started in SPLAT (Sonar PLATinum, for you those who still might not know), and when news of the shutdown came I was devastated, 'cuz I love SPLAT. Then what I thought was good news came when Cakewalk by Bandlab (CbB) was announced. But I held off on downloading CbB because in my experience this is a good way to lose a ton of time in the middle of a project. I've never had good luck with upgrades going smoothly. For reasons I'll get into in a minute, I decided to download CbB & see how it went, Well, my experience with going from Sonar Platinum to Cakewalk by Bandlab was...
 
Excellent!!! Now I'm wondering why the hell I waited so long! Nice job Meng, & Bakers! I had an issue a while back with VST scans in SPLAT taking way longer than it did one day earlier, and there is a thread about that here somewhere (which I should update - I'll get to it in a day or ten), but I just lived with it when I couldn't find a solution. Then I added some new plugins & the problem got worse but not not unbearable. I thought when I'm done with this album I might jump in & try CbB.
 
Then I started getting this weird issue where about 1 in 5 playbacks would not actually play back, but instead generate an awful buzzing sound. Again, I just tried to tough it out. But after a couple days of dealing with that, it got to me so I wasted a bunch of time troubleshooting. Then I thought "Oh what the hell. Try CbB. It can't eat up any more time than the current problems."
 
I downloaded & installed it, which went very smoothly, and opened one of the tunes for this project. VST scan was super-fast, the look is nearly identical to SPLAT, all my plugins load quickly & smoothly, no weird buzzing glitches during playback, and it loads projects much faster (for me, anyway) than SPLAT ever did. Wow. I'm thrilled with it.
 
If you have been hesitating on making the move, I would say just jump in. Worst case scenario, you go back to SPLAT if you don't like it. Chances are you'll find CbB to be a faster, more stable SPLAT, though. Seriously, Meng, Noel, & crew - nice, nice job.

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We’re a year in now. I remember what I was doing when I was told Sonar was going belly up, and I guess many of us do. Time stood stilll for a moment...10 year love affair in my case, and I didn’t know where to look!

Well, I went to Studio One and I am very happy, but I swore I’d never be a one DAW person again - let’s face it, being bilingual must be a good thing. So, shame on me I’ve never downloaded Cakewalk by Bandlab. I will address it this weekend. Your post was very timely, thank you.

There was never anything to loose in trying CbB from the beginning. We all keep our older versions installed so no problem trying the new version and if it didn't work for you just go back.

Been solid for me from the day I downloaded it, and yes I had the lifetime Sonar Platinum deal, like many others.  All former projects loaded smoothly in the BandLab version and all the vsts etc that I used consistently continued to be there. 
So, I am more than pleased.                                                                                                                                                                        If things go crazy for a moment, it is usually user error and once I double check, I am golden.  When I have had questions Noel and the bunch have been there to straighten me out.  This forum is a daily visit for me and I have learned much by simply reading.  Can't ask for anything more than that.  I have literally tried every daw out there and I always settle back on my original daw of choice. BandLab's assumption of Cakewalk has been a major plus for me.  I always scratch my head when I read one of these guys say they are not sure whether they should try it or whatever.  Are you kidding me?  Exactly what does anyone lose by doing so?  It leaves all your Sonar stuff intact and accesses your former vsts etc and you can easily switch back, if you feel the need, but I don't believe you will.  I didn't, that is for sure.

I think it was smart to not rush into anything until you could be reasonably sure it would be at least not a full blown disaster. I did jump right in mainly because I had nothing to loose by doing so. I did download all my files from Cakewalk just in case. Then my main computer went south. I have been using a laptop for a while. Just recently I finally rebuilt my main system with a new motherboard and a brand new processor with more memory. In some ways I have been lucky in that nothing of real importance was lost. We have also been lucky that Noel is still working on the program. I'm very glad you and so many others have had a pleasant experience with the new Cakewalk.
 
I will add I hedged but bets a bit by buying Cubase 9.5 only because I could not be completely sure there would be a Cakewalk. I had used Cubase a long time ago with SX 1, 2 and 3. I didn't upgrade to Cubase 4 because I saw no reason to. I still had the dongle and understood it so the transition was not so hard. I will say all the reasons I was so content with Sonar are sill in effect. Cubase is a great DAW but it just now went fully 64 bit in its audio engine. Other areas are not as easy to do or simply are implemented in a poor way. For the sorts of things I do Cakewalk is the best DAW for me. Having Bandlab keeping it alive is a huge bonus and that it is free is truly wonderful. 
 
Overall Cakewalk is a very stable DAW that has matured. There are a lot of "cool" features in Cubase yet most of those are of little use for me. The things that are kind of bread and butter in Cakewalk just make any other DAW a study in frustration. So many things can't be done in Cubase where in Cakewalk they are simple. 
 
The bottom line is nothing has changed Cakewalk still is years ahead of the competition. 
 
However I do see a use for Cubase and will most likely upgrade to Cubase 10. I am not in any hurry.   
 
Happy Cakewalking!        

I've only been with the program since a couple of days after the freeware issue was announced; I'm able to post here because I registered a free download of the CA/2A compressor plug-in a few years ago.
 
I installed CbB v.1 and was kinda....well, this needs a bit of work. The playhead on that first build used to kind of get lost, like I'd move the program around on the screen and the program would move but the Now Time indicator would stay put hanging off in space. And it locked up and crashed under no real stress a couple of times.
 
I'd been used to Mixcraft, which has a smaller feature set but tolerates no bugs, like, seriously, Acoustica run a very tight ship over there. I wasn't expecting that level of stability out of a relative behemoth like ex-SONAR, but I thought it was a little rough for something that used to cost that much.
 
30 days later, an update drops and BANG! I get a UI faster than I do with Mixcraft, my projects are loading faster than similar ones do in Mixcraft, and the playhead isn't getting lost anymore. Also, not crashing so much. Dang, I'd say reports of this product's demise were premature in the extreme.
 
30 more days later and these guys have new features in it, it's going like a bat out of hell, I can leave it running for days without having it crash, and it's clear that BandLab are a Force For Good. We're just gonna kick back from here on in and watch these guys polish up this code and work their magic and imagine what role this DAW is going to play in their grand scheme.
 
It's a dream come true, it is! Just when I was ready to "graduate" to a more full-featured DAW, along comes this grand experiment of licensing this venerable and great-sounding one for free, AND they have a tight development process that's going through and cleaning up the code and adding useful please-the-user-base meat and potatoes features.
 
For all us new users who don't get all the great other software that came with the Platinum suite, there are plenty of freeware substitutes. They won't be left out in the cold.

So many that are reluctant to dive in don't realize that when you install CbB, it has no effect on Splat. So if for some reason you run into a problem or some confusion, just close CbB and open Splat and resume where you left off. There no risk whatsoever.
 
I immediately found CbB the most stable version in my history of using Cakewalk products back to 1992 and the DOS days. As soon as it was available I dove in immediately and love the stability. We're in great hands with Noel, Jesse, Meng, et al

Hey Guys,
I'm sure glad I stumbled upon this post.  I'm putting together a new Windows build with Thunderbolt capability.  I too am struggling with what DAW to load.  Sonar X3 Producer Expanded or BandLab's Cakewalk.  It looks like maybe all of the above.  Thanks everyone for valuable replies.

Meng and Crew have brought me back from "choosing a  DAW depression". 
There is only one single item that bothers me, which is when tracking using "takes lanes" newly recorded conent will record onto previously muted take lanes. Noel confirmed, it is an issue and Band tech team said they will address it.  I am very hopeful they will.
 
 
Other than that, I do not know what else I could wish for in DAW... Since BandLab took over I had only a dozen crashes, all caused by me doing things that I should not have done. Program is very stable, even with huge number of tracks in a project. Only one wish...actually two  Meng be happy and stay  healthy!
 
Thank you!