I keep upgrading my Sonar Producer software.....and I'm forcing myself to learn and use it, and it has improved, but I constantly find myself writing with P5, it's the SUPERIOR composer, even if I'm not sure I can spell superior....heh

There are some similarities though. I have Sonar 8.5 and love it. But what Cake never figured out, was that the pure simplistic approach with P5 and the lack of all the luster is what made it so special. I use it almost every day. It is my scratch pad and my tune tester. When I want to just sit down and experiment with new ideas, I start P5. If after I find that I have come onto something that I really want to pursue I'll port my project audio and midi file over to Sonar and start a more in depth approach.
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I love Cake products, but I think they really missed the boat of letting P5 slip into obscurity. Maybe they will find a way to resurrect it.

I am guessing here but I think Cakewalk struggled to cope with the development requirements of the SONAR product family *and* P5.
 
A bigger issue IMO was likely the target market for P5. When P5 1.0 was announced  back in January 2003 (gulp) The target market for it then was...
 
Reason 2.0
Live 2
FL 3.5/ 4
 
The description Cakewalk gave for P5 bears that out IMO…

"A complete, open-platform, virtual studio environment; combining a suite of professional soft synth instruments, samplers, pattern-based sequencing and editing tools, automatable effects, ACID-format loop editing, live mixing"



That is not a description I would have given to SONAR (2.2) or Cubase at the time. So P5 it was a very good fit for SONAR while competing very nicely with the other 3 products I listed above. Indeed I would say P5 1.0 was a superb offering and IMO better in most aspects compared to the three apps above (at the time).  Bear in mind Live 2 had no MIDI features (or hardly any) No Record + Reason Combo back then and FL was nothing like it is today especially as of beta 9.9 (today).

 
P5’s feature set was very exciting looking at the competition back then. One can only imagine where it would be today…up to version 8 or 9 if the development of  P5 had continued.
 
Moving target…
 
As time went on Image line and Ableton in particular started to add features that put their products into a far more competitive position with SONAR. I think this caused a major re think within Cakewalk as they likely could already see the crossover feature wise (P5 with SONAR) at the time (which was OK) but that crossover would likely increase and potentially  become a problem.

1. Do you update P5 every year and have another in house product that rivals your flagship?

2. Do you update P5 less frequently so it does not overtake the flagship feature wise but competes better with future versions of Live and FL?

3. Is the Virtual Studio (VI Rack) market big enough to chase from a resource point of view with the year on addition of features to Live and FL that really continue to increasingly rival Sonar in some areas?

I think the Bakers made a very difficult decision to axe P5 because of these reasons. I think they would have loved to keep developing it. But IMO the market for P5 was evaporating fast. Maybe this is why FL and Live have also moved on since then. Those apps now boast features that elevate them far beyond the more simple pattern based /  MIDI or AUDIO  focused apps they were back then. I think Cakewalk concluded perhaps correctly that they will be in a far better position to compete with the new emerging DAW market if they added the P5 feature set into SONAR.
 
X1 Vs P5
No version of SONAR has really pulled off replacing P5 for me until...X1. The pre X1 SONAR UI was just not cutting it. P5’s UI was slick and super easy to navigate. It’s Inspector was inspired. Nice and wide, not narrow and awkward like SONAR pre X1. I Just could not see SONAR as a replacement for P5 any time soon.


But the X1 UI is simply exquisite IMO. You can even do crazy stuff like docking the Inspector and the Browser next to each other. It’s almost like an anything anywhere UI. It is still difficult to believe that X1 really has SONAR somewhere in there! :-)
I think the Inspector in X1 is better than P5’s. The Step sequencer is deeper in X1 but UI wise not necessarily as pretty as P5’s but in every other area X1 is just too slick for me to miss P5. Throw in Geist (for more wider drum options) and really I can side step P5 for the first time now.
 
Geist delivered the two key features I so hoped P5 would have…
 
1.            X64 support
2.            VSTi format. Geist does not need Rewire as it can be plugged into any host as a VSTI.
 
  
Any time I fire up P5 I am reminded of how fantastic the workflow is. With X1 I think I can get not only the same workflow but beyond that now (even without Geist). I still love P5 and wish it was still developed but sadly its development is no more. Maybe it can be resurrected as an iOS app (hint hint Cakewalk) as that might work well but then again a smaller cut down version of X1 might be better.
 
Still Geist fills in any areas X1 does not (regarding P5) so for me while I am so pleased I still have a copy of P5, I am even happier that with no dev for it in future I don’t need it as much as I use to. 


Still some work to be done
It seems X1b will deliver on these promised fixes. X1 certainly needs it. That could really round off the X1 release quite nicely IMO. Perhaps another patch is planned as well.

The thing with P5 is, if you did synth based music mostly, it had everything you needed without a lot of filler.  90% of everything you need to do in one easy to grok page.  For audio-based production it wasn't as good as any number of DAWs, but if you did mostly midi and loops with a few acoustic tracks (vocals, mostly), it was easy to use and get where you needed.

I haven't been able to play w/ X1 as much as needed lately, but it is still a much more complex appearing beast than P5.  P5 had a very stripped down, utilitaran look - goldilocks like, not to hot, not to cold, just right.  If you could lock it easlily to Sony Vegas you'd have a pretty good uber, 2-part DAW.

@

I will try when the demo comes out is to load a VSTi on a channel and then see if there is any 'replace synth' option...if they still haven't added this basic workflow element (that is in P5 and most other sequencers I've used/use), then I won't be upgrading.

 
There is no replace synth option. But X1b is pretty cool.

I've been using Live since version 5.   That's been my replacement for P5 and Sonar.  I still can't believe Cakewalk stopped P5's development.  Big mistake.  Haven't checked in here for a while.   I don't know about X1.  I can't believe the Pro Channel in X1B still doesn't work right.

What's Cakewalk doing?