Great observations for Matron Landslide directly above.. And where would we be without a sense of humor?
 
Hmmm, ya know......... I can't remember the last time I crashed in SONAR Platinum, or really experienced any bug like or strange behavior...
 Has to be about closing in on a year now when I stopped updating it all the time and changing things that didn't need to be changed, and adding stuff that didn't need to be added.
 That combined with a sensible work flow, and losing the bad habits of pushing SONAR hard just to see how far I could go with tons and tons of plugins running on channels, and running heavy hitting mastering plugins on the buss while recording and or during mixing sessions.
 HEY!! What's the sense of having all this brutal power if ya can't abuse it, right??? 
 
  I really got a chuckle of comparing Pro Channel's Quad curve EQ to Waves Sheps Channel strip plugin. 
 The Quad curve EQ which is actually 4 different types of EQ's, all of which are highly musical yet very transparent, and is only part of the channel strip, as one would typically find on a typical hardware mixing console that can be used for ANY source material corrections.
 
I'm a HUGE fan and advocate of Waves plugins, but I also believe the real difference between SONAR's built in ProChannel and Waves Sheps Channel strip is the plethora of hand carved configurations, presets and mixing ingenuity of Andrew Sheps himself. I.E. highly musical but trading off transparency for a very colorful sound specifically centered around Pop Music.
 Another world renowned engineer, Greg Wells had also collaborated with Waves in designing some very excellent plugins that do some really amazing things centered around "One Knob".
 Anyone who likes to use ProChannel's "Style Dial" modules should really check them out, but know this, unless they are on sale, each of these plugins can cost more than SONAR Professional.
 
 As far as flexibility goes looking at the ProChannel as your mixing console's front end, it is so configuration friendly it wins by a landslide. Simply because you can either integrate ANY 3rd party plugin directly into it, or simply assign them to the channel's FX bin. 
 And as far as I know, the only other DAW that has anything similar to SONAR'S ProChannel would be Studio ONE's Fat Channel.
 
  I have tried and worked in just about every DAW through the years during collaborations with others.
  And as far as I'm concerned, with the exception of blind unwarranted brand loyalty, and crap like comparing Windows to Mac or even more ridiculous barameter of "street cred", the only DAW that can actually compete with SONAR on a purely factual technological advancement plain would be Presonus's Studio ONE.
 
 And I'm pretty certain while Gibson was wasting Cakewalk's baker time trying to force SONAR to run on a Mac and all that subscription horse dung whilst trying to get Tascam married to SONAR,, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, and all the WHINE, and not enough wine, or vise versa mixed with conflations and conspiracy theories of endless WHINE, WHINE, Whiny stuff that at times inundates the Cakewalk User Forums ........
 While nobody was looking...............Presonus steps up to the front of the line with Studio ONE 3.5 which has three, ah uh, ah uh, dats rite, as in  "3" separate and distinctly user assignable and configurable audio engines, and combined with their new SuperDuper JawDropping, UltraLowLatency QUANTOM audio interfaces..... And at extremely affordable price points..
 WOWZER!
 
However, as great as all that promises to be, and I'm very confident that it IS, it's no better than the user using it that is INTIMATELY familiar with IT and ALL IT'S TOOLS!
 
That being said, as a 30+ year user of Cakewalk, I'll be most happily, effortlessly, and efficiently keep driving SONAR Platinum as my main whip, and NEVER had any intentions of doing otherwise.
 
 I had thought when Gibson bought Cakewalk from Roland was sort of alarming. But Gibson throwing Cakewalk under the buss did in fact make me kind of sad, but it was nothing to get mad about or even worth getting excited about. (Psssst, neither are their guitars in my opinion.)
 
 Now I'm very glad Bandlab bought it from Gibson and is keeping it alive. And how cool is Meng for dropping into the forums and actually communicating with us?
 
However Microsoft has always proven to be more than reasonable for keeping support for backwards compatibility for old software. Even in it's current build state without any updates, SONAR has many years left of updates and upgrades to Windows.
 Windows 10 still runs and supports ACID Pro 7 and that was orphaned by SONY and hasn't been updated in over a decade. It's also still being sold by Magix in it's original last Sony update build for the ridiculously low price of dirt cheap.
 
And uh, BTW, I still have a Windows XP laptop running SONAR 8.5 Producer, and by not connecting it to the Internet, it still works GREAT for a portable recording system!
 
 

Steev
Great observations for Matron Landslide directly above.. And where would we be without a sense of humor?
 
Hmmm, ya know......... I can't remember the last time I crashed in SONAR Platinum, or really experienced any bug like or strange behavior...
 Has to be about closing in on a year now when I stopped updating it all the time and changing things that didn't need to be changed, and adding stuff that didn't need to be added.
 That combined with a sensible work flow, and losing the bad habits of pushing SONAR hard just to see how far I could go with tons and tons of plugins running on channels, and running heavy hitting mastering plugins on the buss while recording and or during mixing sessions.
 HEY!! What's the sense of having all this brutal power if ya can't abuse it, right??? 
 
  I really got a chuckle of comparing Pro Channel's Quad curve EQ to Waves Sheps Channel strip plugin. 
 The Quad curve EQ which is actually 4 different types of EQ's, all of which are highly musical yet very transparent, and is only part of the channel strip, as one would typically find on a typical hardware mixing console that can be used for ANY source material corrections.
 
I'm a HUGE fan and advocate of Waves plugins, but I also believe the real difference between SONAR's built in ProChannel and Waves Sheps Channel strip is the plethora of hand carved configurations, presets and mixing ingenuity of Andrew Sheps himself. I.E. highly musical but trading off transparency for a very colorful sound specifically centered around Pop Music.
 Another world renowned engineer, Greg Wells had also collaborated with Waves in designing some very excellent plugins that do some really amazing things centered around "One Knob".
 Anyone who likes to use ProChannel's "Style Dial" modules should really check them out, but know this, unless they are on sale, each of these plugins can cost more than SONAR Professional.
 
 As far as flexibility goes looking at the ProChannel as your mixing console's front end, it is so configuration friendly it wins by a landslide. Simply because you can either integrate ANY 3rd party plugin directly into it, or simply assign them to the channel's FX bin. 
 And as far as I know, the only other DAW that has anything similar to SONAR'S ProChannel would be Studio ONE's Fat Channel.
 
  I have tried and worked in just about every DAW through the years during collaborations with others.
  And as far as I'm concerned, with the exception of blind unwarranted brand loyalty, and crap like comparing Windows to Mac or even more ridiculous barameter of "street cred", the only DAW that can actually compete with SONAR on a purely factual technological advancement plain would be Presonus's Studio ONE.
 
 And I'm pretty certain while Gibson was wasting Cakewalk's baker time trying to force SONAR to run on a Mac and all that subscription horse dung whilst trying to get Tascam married to SONAR,, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, and all the WHINE, and not enough wine, or vise versa mixed with conflations and conspiracy theories of endless WHINE, WHINE, Whiny stuff that at times inundates the Cakewalk User Forums ........
 While nobody was looking...............Presonus steps up to the front of the line with Studio ONE 3.5 which has three, ah uh, ah uh, dats rite, as in  "3" separate and distinctly user assignable and configurable audio engines, and combined with their new SuperDuper JawDropping, UltraLowLatency QUANTOM audio interfaces..... And at extremely affordable price points..
 WOWZER!
 
However, as great as all that promises to be, and I'm very confident that it IS, it's no better than the user using it that is INTIMATELY familiar with IT and ALL IT'S TOOLS!
 
That being said, as a 30+ year user of Cakewalk, I'll be most happily, effortlessly, and efficiently keep driving SONAR Platinum as my main whip, and NEVER had any intentions of doing otherwise.
 
 I had thought when Gibson bought Cakewalk from Roland was sort of alarming. But Gibson throwing Cakewalk under the buss did in fact make me kind of sad, but it was nothing to get mad about or even worth getting excited about. (Psssst, neither are their guitars in my opinion.)
 
 Now I'm very glad Bandlab bought it from Gibson and is keeping it alive. And how cool is Meng for dropping into the forums and actually communicating with us?
 
However Microsoft has always proven to be more than reasonable for keeping support for backwards compatibility for old software. Even in it's current build state without any updates, SONAR has many years left of updates and upgrades to Windows.
 Windows 10 still runs and supports ACID Pro 7 and that was orphaned by SONY and hasn't been updated in over a decade. It's also still being sold by Magix in it's original last Sony update build for the ridiculously low price of dirt cheap.
 
And uh, BTW, I still have a Windows XP laptop running SONAR 8.5 Producer, and by not connecting it to the Internet, it still works GREAT for a portable recording system!
 
 

 
Well...when I installed sonar 1x for the first time, I came here, because it just would not work with fireware, and my very expensive Audio desks tied together for 32 tracks of audio inputs....crash, hangs, and oddity of file formats not opening up, plus missing data always something missing...and cannot find on any of the many many hard drives attached...Just to make sure I had enough room, to record at...96k...of which by tying the two audio together had to be set to...to work as one audio desk.
 
All ASIO2...Drivers.
 
Set up and built according to the manual...and not shared slotted...no,..and many things tweaked also there upon trying to settle it out with tweaks....
 
Some here said, you do not have to tweak the system anymore....Just to the power tweaks, and leave the services in the OS alone.....What?...and more crashes....Oh wipe and reinstall.....Ok....And until Plat or spalt...for the short name be used....As many do....All those sent crash reports.....never got one reply from...So why bother sending them?.....Another mystery to ponder while RMAing the boards...and calling in the help.....From Cake eventually...Micheal....Remote viewed and ....No glory there!...squeeling and hissing noises and loud popping and crackles.... this is 2012-2915...called digital Audio work station?....so I sought the Thunderbolt way, and a firewire adapter for....Got it working better, but still dropping the audio, and hanging and oddity remained...so...THE PUSH..Move to the new win 8...Because MS told me Thunderbolt 1 had issues and they were trying to fix it....It did work better on Thunderbolt....So, I bought win 8.1...got it kind of working...still dropping my audio , and magically rerouting my setup...and settings through updates, and more seeking what was causing CPU spikes, making the audio crackling....MS OS>..and interuptions writing log files while something of a service was running behind the seens.....MS Services....Unknown doing.
 
Augh.....Am I using sonar to any ability stated?....Not even close to getting it to open and then hunt out...Troubles ...Not related to sonar at all.....SO black viper was right!....And I was told not to tweak...as it is not necessary.
 
 
Now I brought in a X MS employee....Who stated win 10 was crapping in spy and lie tactics...and not nice Bing over ruling the principles of defaults.....Yah....So the OS is gaining insider trade info...as internet does....So Trade is slanted now...right?...economies and nasdex....Is a lying body of cheaters!...and the money goes to disapearing?...Where did all those lovely investments go?....shell game shamoo no doubt....How many lost invested money..in that World Trade Centre where all money flows through.....and tied to other trade not so nice...liken child sex?...prostitution?....and for what cause?......$$$$$$$$....it is ugly...and weapons sold and bought to keep the blood shed flowing......Is also a cost and a amount said it cost to make wars...and use those things to make people dead........And I got history to prove...Murders are done..underhandedly...while the sodomite hide behind painted faces, and plastic body parts?....Oh how they love the barbie look....?...again tied to a root cause no doubt.
 
 
And more the liars club....Yeh?...life time updates do not apply to dead things that have no life or body of entity of Life as a living entity....Thus a product cannot have....neither a name...for a name is a title...Not a being of life....Life must be in some form of Truth be known?...Knowing...and seeing and feeling....of which...is a living care or flesh blood and water with.....(( function, and good intent to keep what it needs for its function to function properly as in health)).
 
If I pushed the on botton on a machine...and ran a app to do....and I could not get freaking on track cleanly recording after all that....said..and believing in good faith...It might be my Gear.....I tested it on another platform and no issues were as was on the PC.....same gear!....And some of the Studio one 3 on both....which one worked better for that?....MAc!
 
I rest my case!....OS MS is part the blame here...Not Cakewalk!....So , if they did rewrite that code properly instead of patch and try the port over using a app to do it.....It would work and the whole app would be rewritten....Proper for it....in that..if they did do the hard work...and pulled in good helpers...I would still help....But words eh?...I warned before they imposed....LIFE TIME UPDATES>....I Gave them a way to do it right, and make it work better......They cut the corners off, and sliced their throats, asking for one time more a payment to fix ...What I do not even need.............................................I make music with my mind!....

sharke
These DAW's are heavily geared toward modern production techniques, especially in the electronic realm. Part of the reason why this kind of music production is so popular among youngsters it that you can do it solo, in your bedroom, without the need for expensive equipment or soundproof studios.

I would guess that a very small proportion of commercial hits are made by teenage producers working alone in their bedrooms with Ableton. I haven't found a resource online to verify that one way or the other, but I'm curious how much real-world success those guys and girls are having.

Larry Jones

sharke
These DAW's are heavily geared toward modern production techniques, especially in the electronic realm. Part of the reason why this kind of music production is so popular among youngsters it that you can do it solo, in your bedroom, without the need for expensive equipment or soundproof studios.

I would guess that a very small proportion of commercial hits are made by teenage producers working alone in their bedrooms with Ableton. I haven't found a resource online to verify that one way or the other, but I'm curious how much real-world success those guys and girls are having.

Larry, I would guess that 99.9999999% of SONAR usage does not result in commercially profitable hits.  I don't think that's a fair standard by which to judge how people might be using Live or other DAWs.  There can be many good reasons to use loops as part of the composition process.  I don't think that is necessarily any more or any less valid than a guy recording audio tracks with his guitar.

Larry Jones

sharke
These DAW's are heavily geared toward modern production techniques, especially in the electronic realm. Part of the reason why this kind of music production is so popular among youngsters it that you can do it solo, in your bedroom, without the need for expensive equipment or soundproof studios.

I would guess that a very small proportion of commercial hits are made by teenage producers working alone in their bedrooms with Ableton. I haven't found a resource online to verify that one way or the other, but I'm curious how much real-world success those guys and girls are having.

I'm pretty sure the business goals of BandLab will lean more toward getting as many people as possible to buy the DAW rather than producing the most number of "hits" with it. And as cpamerlee points out, your argument is also true for old guys using a DAW to record themselves the album they've been promising themselves since they were 18. 
 
Very few artists have commercial success in the form of a hit. Of the subset of people who actually manage to make some money out of the music they produce, the vast majority of them are making pretty modest sums - maybe a few tens of thousands of downloads if they're lucky. And that very much includes teenage producers working alone in their bedrooms, quite a few of which have achieved some modest level of commercial success in the EDM world (or have gone on to bigger and better things after having started out in their bedrooms). 

Sir Les

Steev
Great observations for Matron Landslide directly above.. And where would we be without a sense of humor?
 
Hmmm, ya know......... I can't remember the last time I crashed in SONAR Platinum, or really experienced any bug like or strange behavior...
 Has to be about closing in on a year now when I stopped updating it all the time and changing things that didn't need to be changed, and adding stuff that didn't need to be added.
 That combined with a sensible work flow, and losing the bad habits of pushing SONAR hard just to see how far I could go with tons and tons of plugins running on channels, and running heavy hitting mastering plugins on the buss while recording and or during mixing sessions.
 HEY!! What's the sense of having all this brutal power if ya can't abuse it, right??? 
 
  I really got a chuckle of comparing Pro Channel's Quad curve EQ to Waves Sheps Channel strip plugin. 
 The Quad curve EQ which is actually 4 different types of EQ's, all of which are highly musical yet very transparent, and is only part of the channel strip, as one would typically find on a typical hardware mixing console that can be used for ANY source material corrections.
 
I'm a HUGE fan and advocate of Waves plugins, but I also believe the real difference between SONAR's built in ProChannel and Waves Sheps Channel strip is the plethora of hand carved configurations, presets and mixing ingenuity of Andrew Sheps himself. I.E. highly musical but trading off transparency for a very colorful sound specifically centered around Pop Music.
 Another world renowned engineer, Greg Wells had also collaborated with Waves in designing some very excellent plugins that do some really amazing things centered around "One Knob".
 Anyone who likes to use ProChannel's "Style Dial" modules should really check them out, but know this, unless they are on sale, each of these plugins can cost more than SONAR Professional.
 
 As far as flexibility goes looking at the ProChannel as your mixing console's front end, it is so configuration friendly it wins by a landslide. Simply because you can either integrate ANY 3rd party plugin directly into it, or simply assign them to the channel's FX bin. 
 And as far as I know, the only other DAW that has anything similar to SONAR'S ProChannel would be Studio ONE's Fat Channel.
 
  I have tried and worked in just about every DAW through the years during collaborations with others.
  And as far as I'm concerned, with the exception of blind unwarranted brand loyalty, and crap like comparing Windows to Mac or even more ridiculous barameter of "street cred", the only DAW that can actually compete with SONAR on a purely factual technological advancement plain would be Presonus's Studio ONE.
 
 And I'm pretty certain while Gibson was wasting Cakewalk's baker time trying to force SONAR to run on a Mac and all that subscription horse dung whilst trying to get Tascam married to SONAR,, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, and all the WHINE, and not enough wine, or vise versa mixed with conflations and conspiracy theories of endless WHINE, WHINE, Whiny stuff that at times inundates the Cakewalk User Forums ........
 While nobody was looking...............Presonus steps up to the front of the line with Studio ONE 3.5 which has three, ah uh, ah uh, dats rite, as in  "3" separate and distinctly user assignable and configurable audio engines, and combined with their new SuperDuper JawDropping, UltraLowLatency QUANTOM audio interfaces..... And at extremely affordable price points..
 WOWZER!
 
However, as great as all that promises to be, and I'm very confident that it IS, it's no better than the user using it that is INTIMATELY familiar with IT and ALL IT'S TOOLS!
 
That being said, as a 30+ year user of Cakewalk, I'll be most happily, effortlessly, and efficiently keep driving SONAR Platinum as my main whip, and NEVER had any intentions of doing otherwise.
 
 I had thought when Gibson bought Cakewalk from Roland was sort of alarming. But Gibson throwing Cakewalk under the buss did in fact make me kind of sad, but it was nothing to get mad about or even worth getting excited about. (Psssst, neither are their guitars in my opinion.)
 
 Now I'm very glad Bandlab bought it from Gibson and is keeping it alive. And how cool is Meng for dropping into the forums and actually communicating with us?
 
However Microsoft has always proven to be more than reasonable for keeping support for backwards compatibility for old software. Even in it's current build state without any updates, SONAR has many years left of updates and upgrades to Windows.
 Windows 10 still runs and supports ACID Pro 7 and that was orphaned by SONY and hasn't been updated in over a decade. It's also still being sold by Magix in it's original last Sony update build for the ridiculously low price of dirt cheap.
 
And uh, BTW, I still have a Windows XP laptop running SONAR 8.5 Producer, and by not connecting it to the Internet, it still works GREAT for a portable recording system!
 
 

 
Well...when I installed sonar 1x for the first time, I came here, because it just would not work with fireware, and my very expensive Audio desks tied together for 32 tracks of audio inputs....crash, hangs, and oddity of file formats not opening up, plus missing data always something missing...and cannot find on any of the many many hard drives attached...Just to make sure I had enough room, to record at...96k...of which by tying the two audio together had to be set to...to work as one audio desk.
 
All ASIO2...Drivers.
 
Set up and built according to the manual...and not shared slotted...no,..and many things tweaked also there upon trying to settle it out with tweaks....
 
Some here said, you do not have to tweak the system anymore....Just to the power tweaks, and leave the services in the OS alone.....What?...and more crashes....Oh wipe and reinstall.....Ok....And until Plat or spalt...for the short name be used....As many do....All those sent crash reports.....never got one reply from...So why bother sending them?.....Another mystery to ponder while RMAing the boards...and calling in the help.....From Cake eventually...Micheal....Remote viewed and ....No glory there!...squeeling and hissing noises and loud popping and crackles.... this is 2012-2915...called digital Audio work station?....so I sought the Thunderbolt way, and a firewire adapter for....Got it working better, but still dropping the audio, and hanging and oddity remained...so...THE PUSH..Move to the new win 8...Because MS told me Thunderbolt 1 had issues and they were trying to fix it....It did work better on Thunderbolt....So, I bought win 8.1...got it kind of working...still dropping my audio , and magically rerouting my setup...and settings through updates, and more seeking what was causing CPU spikes, making the audio crackling....MS OS>..and interuptions writing log files while something of a service was running behind the seens.....MS Services....Unknown doing.
 
Augh.....Am I using sonar to any ability stated?....Not even close to getting it to open and then hunt out...Troubles ...Not related to sonar at all.....SO black viper was right!....And I was told not to tweak...as it is not necessary.
 
 
Now I brought in a X MS employee....Who stated win 10 was crapping in spy and lie tactics...and not nice Bing over ruling the principles of defaults.....Yah....So the OS is gaining insider trade info...as internet does....So Trade is slanted now...right?...economies and nasdex....Is a lying body of cheaters!...and the money goes to disapearing?...Where did all those lovely investments go?....shell game shamoo no doubt....How many lost invested money..in that World Trade Centre where all money flows through.....and tied to other trade not so nice...liken child sex?...prostitution?....and for what cause?......$$$$$$$$....it is ugly...and weapons sold and bought to keep the blood shed flowing......Is also a cost and a amount said it cost to make wars...and use those things to make people dead........And I got history to prove...Murders are done..underhandedly...while the sodomite hide behind painted faces, and plastic body parts?....Oh how they love the barbie look....?...again tied to a root cause no doubt.
 
 
And more the liars club....Yeh?...life time updates do not apply to dead things that have no life or body of entity of Life as a living entity....Thus a product cannot have....neither a name...for a name is a title...Not a being of life....Life must be in some form of Truth be known?...Knowing...and seeing and feeling....of which...is a living care or flesh blood and water with.....(( function, and good intent to keep what it needs for its function to function properly as in health)).
 
If I pushed the on botton on a machine...and ran a app to do....and I could not get freaking on track cleanly recording after all that....said..and believing in good faith...It might be my Gear.....I tested it on another platform and no issues were as was on the PC.....same gear!....And some of the Studio one 3 on both....which one worked better for that?....MAc!
 
I rest my case!....OS MS is part the blame here...Not Cakewalk!....So , if they did rewrite that code properly instead of patch and try the port over using a app to do it.....It would work and the whole app would be rewritten....Proper for it....in that..if they did do the hard work...and pulled in good helpers...I would still help....But words eh?...I warned before they imposed....LIFE TIME UPDATES>....I Gave them a way to do it right, and make it work better......They cut the corners off, and sliced their throats, asking for one time more a payment to fix ...What I do not even need.............................................I make music with my mind!....

Have you tried editing your posts? Just a suggestion. 

cparmerlee
Larry, I would guess that 99.9999999% of SONAR usage does not result in commercially profitable hits.  I don't think that's a fair standard by which to judge how people might be using Live or other DAWs.  There can be many good reasons to use loops as part of the composition process.  I don't think that is necessarily any more or any less valid than a guy recording audio tracks with his guitar.

sharke
I'm pretty sure the business goals of BandLab will lean more toward getting as many people as possible to buy the DAW rather than producing the most number of "hits" with it. And as cpamerlee points out, your argument is also true for old guys using a DAW to record themselves the album they've been promising themselves since they were 18. 
 
Very few artists have commercial success in the form of a hit. Of the subset of people who actually manage to make some money out of the music they produce, the vast majority of them are making pretty modest sums - maybe a few tens of thousands of downloads if they're lucky. And that very much includes teenage producers working alone in their bedrooms, quite a few of which have achieved some modest level of commercial success in the EDM world (or have gone on to bigger and better things after having started out in their bedrooms).

I didn't make my point very well, so let me try again: Most of us using a DAW at home would like people to listen to and enjoy what we produce. Commercial success is a measure of how many folks we've reached, so in that context I think it's fair to ask how many units have you sold. We now all have the means to make high-quality audio recordings, working alone with our DAWs in a spare room. What I wonder is how many of the big-time recordings I hear on the radio were produced like that, and how many were done the old-fashioned way, in purpose-built studios with hardware consoles and all the accoutrements. I tried to find a resource online, but that's not the kind of information that's commonly shared.

99.999% of all DAW users don't achieve commercial success no matter what DAW they chose to use.
Few artists have commercial hits because they are completely ignorant about managing the mechanics and structures of how the music industry works.
And as a result, are simply ignored and being ignored, are simply denied access to mass exposure due to a basic lack of understanding of promotion and distribution. 
 
And as for all of the gullible sucker's who fell for the "lifetime support", you've been conned. Like as in "Sold the Brooklyn Bridge". What ever Gibson's original intentions were, their bottom line was making money and optimizing their profits by investing little to nothing in research and development.
 Unfortunately, although it worked for many decades in the guitar manufacturing industry were they made HUGE profits at basically resting on their laurels of their past reputation as a great guitar manufacturer, allowed them to charge greatly inflated prices for their guitars without ever changing or improving on anything. That mindset is a death nail for anything not only in the software tech industry, but in any industry.
 And than came along upstart companies like Kramer, Schechter Research, Paul Reed Smith, not to mention power house competition manufacturers like Peavey, Ibanez, and Yamaha, all putting out guitars with newer more creative innovations that easily completed with and even rival Gibson's quality and at a fraction of the cost.
 All Gibson did was lower their workforce, raise their prices, and started expanding their interests buying up assorted brands of electronics companies like Onkyo, KRK, Tascam, and even Cakewalk, the missing link for jettisoning Tascam's floundering PortaStudio line to the top -o- the mountain, but oppsy, Gibson not only didn't understand how the DAW markets works, they completely mismanaged SONAR development, and utterly miscalculated the dangers of throwing the world's best selling DAW producer and product line  under the buss.
 That's right, you read right, CAKEWALK, staring early from Pro Audio all the way up to SONAR, no matter what the nay Sayers say about what is the best DAW, Cakewalk has by far outsold all others making it the WORLD'S MOST POPULAR AND BEST SELLING DAW! And only really floundered when Gibson changed the rules of research, development, and distribution...  
 First off, traditionally pretty much ALL software vendors offer the limited free support for life without ever paying extra for it. They traditionally have only charged for version upgrades.
 And version upgrades require a lot of research and development to improve upon stability functionality.
 And while Gibson's Subscription Plan had some great benefits  to attract new users by offering a pay as you play lease purchase plan making it affordable for many who could not otherwise plop down the full purchase price all at once, the constant push to EXPAND and the RUSH of constant CHANGES of monthly upgrades by understaffed, overworked researchers and developers only added to instability and flawed functionality.
 
However, thank the Lord, Gibson isn't interfering, oops I mean running Cakewalk any more. Bandlab is, which for us forward thinking optimists, THIS is as a truly WONDERFUL and POSITIVE DEVELOPEMENT, as it is they also own a good chunk of one of my favorite very informative and HONEST magazines of all times, Rolling Stone. 
 
 Now I'm not even going to try to change the minds of any of any negative naysayer, conspiracy theory seeking pessimists here who sit, simmer, and stew over what bad and dark intentions Bandlab and Meng have in store for us, nor am I going to jump ship on SONAR because I got suckered into a lifetime what ever the hell it is deal for an extra $50, because, well, I DIDN'T, because I thought that was the second dumbest plan I ever heard of.
 The #1 dumbest plan I've ever heard of is cynically refusing a helping hand from someone trying to rescue you, because YOU let someone else take advantage of you.
 
 That being said, I truly hope and wish Bandlab and Meng great profits and fortunes, and will be more than happy to contribute to their success.
 Oh YES I WILL! Just as I did and have always done in the past, even when Cakewalk released the infamous turd SONAR X1, as angry and even confused as I was, I carried on and never skipped a beat making my music with SONAR 8.5, and purchased SONAR X2 the very day it was released.
 And as for any negative thinking naysayers, conspiracy theory seeking pessimists here who are offended by how much money Bandlab or Meng makes, you really and truly need to get a life with some purpose, and or start getting angry about something else if that pleases you, because in reality that's NONE OF OUR BUSINESS!
 
I'm in the business of making music and loving SONAR Platinum for what it does for me.
And if for some reason a newer upgraded version is no longer branded SONAR Platinum anymore, so what!
 Call it what you want, I'm calling it STILL ALAIVE AND WELL! 
 

jacksojo2000
I've been a Cakewalk user exclusively for well over a decade and have immensely enjoyed their product offerings over that span of time.  Despite this, I have admittedly mixed feelings about where things are right now...
 
Me too but I don't have "feelings" about the software nor Gibsons' troubles. ( I dropped Gibson when they dropped the craftsman in Kalamazoo. If I wanted a Gibson I'd buy Heritage...just the way it is...I did have feelings about the way they treated the luthiers that made Gibson what it was.)
 
On one hand, I am exceedingly happy to hear that SONAR's legacy will live on. 
 
I'm curious to see what happens.
 
On the other hand, I do feel a bit burned by the circumstances surrounding lifetime updates (felt like a very dishonest cash grab and almost a betrayal) and the fate of Cakewalk. 
 
I knew when I paid for Platinum lifetime updates it was about Sonars' life not mine and I really don't think Gibson had some diabolical plan to pull in a few extra dollars. It seems to me since the mid-eighties Gibson has just been snake bit and screwed up everything they've touched.
 
Given the nature of Cakewalk's inability to sustain itself with its product offerings, I am looking at Bandlabs with extreme caution.  Can they really do what Cakewalk could not (stay afloat on their own terms)?  Is the SONAR's successor really a DAW for a life-timer like me to stick with and expect longevity from (when that same DAW could not save its previous owners)?
 
Opinion, concerns and questions I have no concern about. If BandLab changes Platinum to something I don't care for I still have Platinum to use. If in time I can't use Platinum I'll find another program I like. Pretty simple for me.
 
I want to see SONAR thrive, believe me, but a part of me also feels I may be better off going with a more stable and long-lasting/committed/secure/honor-proven company.
 
Again- desires/feelings and concerns of no matter to me.
 
Just wanted to post my thoughts somewhere, but I wish Bandlabs all the luck in the world and hope they do justice to the SONAR name as it was in its hayday (no matter what the new name will be).
 
I'm glad my thoughts are simple and there's no emotion attached to the software.
 
On their side; BandLab has the opportunity to refine Platinum and continue to have it grow into an even greater program or they may decide to completely change it into their vision of how DAW software should be and look- which may or may not workout. 
On my side; Use Platinum and see what BandLab does and go from there.
 
Cheers and Warm Regards
 
To you as well.

Very cool post spacey. I honestly have no ill will or grave concerns with Gibson or Bandlab, nor believe Gibson had any evil intentions, they screwed up, and as much as I hate to admit it, I for one can really relate to that much more than I'd like to elaborate on.
 And I feel confident to say I truly wish and believe that Gibson will survive. They have indded reached the peak of the mountain top in their times, and there is only one way to go from there. It would really and truly be a sad thing if they crashed and burned.
 And even though I never was a die hard fan of their guitars, I've tried very few Gibson's and that I didn't at least like, and I owned an ugly old beat up SG for quite a while that I really liked. I might still have it if I wasn't offered an ugly old beat up Fender Telecaster for it as an even trade. WOWZER we both made out great on that trade!
 But my real true love is pictured above in my Icon pic. It's a pure stock completely original 1984 Fender Stratocaster (Made in Japan) which is in surprisingly great shape considering it's high mileage and what it went through, couple of not so nice nicks on the edges that almost disappear with a black magic marker but no scratches, and it still plays and shines up just as brightly as the day I bought it new.
 That being said, I've learned infinitely more meaningful lessons by the mistakes I've made, than I have ever learned by doing things right the first time.
 And the only person I'm highly critical of and extremely concerned about screwing me again is ME, myself and I.
 That is critical thinking on my part in my efforts to try and never make the same mistakes twice.
 
The only thing that mildly disappoints me about Bandlab is it's lack of support for Edge/Internet Explorer, and Firefox browsers. I cannot decide to remove or even disable Edge/Internet Explorer from Windows 10, I can only decide not to install software that interferes with it and the smooth operation of my system.
 And that's why I do kind of understand Bandlab's reluctance or at least difficulties supporting other browsers(?).. I could never get the Chrome browser to stop interfering with my Windows 10 based home, studio, and office network, so I can understand how the Edge/Internet Explorer, and Firefox browsers could create complications and have a bad effect on Bandlab's preferred Chrome browser functionality and networking across the entire PLANET!