If Cakewalk were serious they would offer a "Lifetime and Beyond" deal.

WDI
If Cakewalk were serious they would offer a "Lifetime and Beyond" deal.

As in "After Life" updates ?

chuckebaby

WDI
If Cakewalk were serious they would offer a "Lifetime and Beyond" deal.

As in "After Life" updates ?

I'd settle for heirloom license transfer (free of course).

Starise
I guess I'm saying that although I understand they have their reasons, I know people like to go with what works for the best value they can find. Plenty of other things work at the level many home studio users are at. Do they work as well? Probably not in most cases. Is that a valid trade off? Maybe.
 
I'm mainly referring to the flagship program Platinum. I'm comparing it to the flagship of a few competitors. There are many other considerations as you know. It isn't just about price. But price is a BIG one.

The flagship is $400 right now.  This basically includes current version and the next version (in the typical DAW model).  There isn't another DAW on the market with the features that Sonar has on the Windows platform that includes the feature set and "add ons" that Sonar does at that price point.  (Addictive Drums 3 Sets + MIDI Packs, Melodyne Essentials, Drum Replacer Software, Vocal Align plugin, Top Shelf Mastering Suite (LP EQ, Comp, Limiter), and a plethora of other effects plugins and instruments.  
 
Ableton, Fruity Loops, ProTools, Cubase, are all significantly more than that.  Sutdio One, BitWig, Reason are all in the price ball park, but are realistically not as full featured in terms of content/function over all.  
 
Which DAW do you think is really on the level of what comes with the Platinum packages that costs significantly less?  Logic is the only one I think someone can make the case for, and it used to cost $999, and is also limited to the MAC platform.  
 
For those that can't afford the flagship, they have versions that are very feature rich for a price that just about anyone can afford if they make a few life sacrifices.  

chuckebaby

WDI
If Cakewalk were serious they would offer a "Lifetime and Beyond" deal.

As in "After Life" updates ?

Haha. You may be onto something! Perhaps there really is a final reckoning. Those that have been good DAW users go to DAW heaven to recieve never ending perfectly bug free platinum updates. Those that have been bad are condemned to eternal punishment and given a copy of Sonar x1a:)

tenfoot

chuckebaby

WDI
If Cakewalk were serious they would offer a "Lifetime and Beyond" deal.

As in "After Life" updates ?

Haha. You may be onto something! Perhaps there really is a final reckoning. Those that have been good DAW users go to DAW heaven to recieve never ending perfectly bug free platinum updates. Those that have been bad are condemned to eternal punishment and given a copy of Sonar x1a:)

Brian Walton

Starise
I guess I'm saying that although I understand they have their reasons, I know people like to go with what works for the best value they can find. Plenty of other things work at the level many home studio users are at. Do they work as well? Probably not in most cases. Is that a valid trade off? Maybe.
 
I'm mainly referring to the flagship program Platinum. I'm comparing it to the flagship of a few competitors. There are many other considerations as you know. It isn't just about price. But price is a BIG one.

The flagship is $400 right now.  This basically includes current version and the next version (in the typical DAW model).  There isn't another DAW on the market with the features that Sonar has on the Windows platform that includes the feature set and "add ons" that Sonar does at that price point.  (Addictive Drums 3 Sets + MIDI Packs, Melodyne Essentials, Drum Replacer Software, Vocal Align plugin, Top Shelf Mastering Suite (LP EQ, Comp, Limiter), and a plethora of other effects plugins and instruments.  
 
Ableton, Fruity Loops, ProTools, Cubase, are all significantly more than that.  Sutdio One, BitWig, Reason are all in the price ball park, but are realistically not as full featured in terms of content/function over all.  
 
Which DAW do you think is really on the level of what comes with the Platinum packages that costs significantly less?  Logic is the only one I think someone can make the case for, and it used to cost $999, and is also limited to the MAC platform.  
 
For those that can't afford the flagship, they have versions that are very feature rich for a price that just about anyone can afford if they make a few life sacrifices.  

 I like Dave's idea of having a lifetime or greatly reduced price for those who have been loyal over a period of time.
 
Probably the closest competition is Presonus Studio One 3. I wasn't going to mention competitors by name, but since you've asked for specifics. For 399.00 you get pretty much everything Sonar has and then some. I don't believe it has Addictive drums, but it has a few things Sonar doesn't have. Unlike Sonar, they don't require you to buy into a yearly plan although they do have priced updates periodically just like the others. In between major software revisions the minor updates are free, or you could buy Reaper and add all of those things and still be ahead.
 
They don't include the full version of Melodyne, neither does Studio One. Vocal align and Drum Replacer are very usable, but not as full featured as the higher end dedicated programs that do similar things. IOW for a pro producer they might not cover all the bases.
 
I mostly use Sonar because I simply like the workflow and how it all works. I'm not convinced the current pricing is really head and shoulders above a few of the others all things considered. I guess it all depends on what you intend to do with it and where you see the value....and I thought the flagship price was 499.00.

Starise
Probably the closest competition is Presonus Studio One 3. I wasn't going to mention competitors by name, but since you've asked for specifics. For 399.00 you get pretty much everything Sonar has and then some.

 
I think SOP is a fine program and if SONAR didn't exist, it's what I would use in the studio (I do use SOP for album assembly). But there are many features Platinum has that Studio One does not, like plug-in load balancing, Pen and Dial input device support, vocal alignment, speed comping, Drum Replacer, Matrix View, the ability to create and edit stretchable files that respond to key and tempo changes, theme editor...IIRC SOP doesn't have a Step Sequencer and I'm not sure if it does surround. When considering what SONAR does or doesn't have, it's equally important to consider what other DAWs do or don't have.
 

Unlike Sonar, they don't require you to buy into a yearly plan although they do have priced updates periodically just like the others.

 
You are not required to buy yearly updates for SONAR or periodic updates for SOP. Either one will continue to work in whatever state you have it, unlike programs that "die" if you don't pay for updates.
 

I guess it all depends on what you intend to do with it and where you see the value....and I thought the flagship price was 499.00.

 
That's the MSRP and like most products, it's discounted periodically from the MSRP. Like you, I use SONAR because I like the workflow and how it all works but IMHO the current pricing of $399 is both realistic and competitive with other products. 

I agree Craig. 399.00 is competitive. This appears to be a temporary price though. In order to truly be competitive 399.00 all the time is probably better from a buyer perspective. I would be happy with that.
 
Maybe this is the price for a current user compared to a new user? Temporary sale? 
 
I'm mixing a  project right now and I've jumped back and forth between the two. A good argument to have both. My last album was rendered in Studio One. Cake just doesn't have those types of tools yet.
 
I'm  impressed with the deep hardware integration and latency improvements in SO. 
 
I'm in Sonar most of the time because it works and gets things done much faster for me. You need a magnifier to use SO. If I can find the time to learn slip editing I might stop using the arranger in SO.

SOP has a standard crossgrade in place for any X2 Producer or better user for $299, $50 extra will get Notion 6 - Christmas saw a blanket $199 sale for everyone. The features between the two programs have some substantial differences, although few compare feature sets objectively. The only feature I miss thus far is simple track template assignments, but some of SOP's features are ones I truly feel SONAR will never possess. I have never felt like a beta tester with SOP, and cannot seem to crash SOP either (I have actually tried to crash it a few times). A kid posted a video trying to crash SOP 3.5 with 164 plugins and 140 sends on an i5 laptop which was interesting to me (can skip the part where he counts all 164, but he actually counted them for a few minutes) - the experiment was to track vocals with all of that stuff running.
 
Rumor from SOPs release notes is that a good number of feature requests are from folks crossgrading from other DAWs - the "do this and I will switch" idea. Rather clever in that it keeps them up to speed on the features the competition has that are actually used fequently. Conversely, in SONAR even standing feature requests for years (and some over a decade) have gone unanswered from customers who have already paid (what a wild difference in mentalities) - the "Forget about that... try this, you will like it better!" mentality.
 
To add further insult to injury, a local mechanic's daughter showed me this video by her fiance's band and a local photographer (I am truly in the boonies, so even though this genre has little interest to me, the quality of the video/music production impressed me). The first thing I asked out of curiosity... "Which DAW does he use?" She went off to ask and came back a few days with "Reaper." Made me chuckle... "Oh yeah, the one with the fully functional, no time-limit trial."