AT
If you work in the publishing business, esp. reviews,  there is nothing quite as important as credibility.

Exactly hence my point of editorial control still being maintained to an extent.

There are so many independent amazing vst's out there... why try and compete?  Focus of the DAW... Recording, Mixing, Mastering...and all other aspects... seems to me every hour or dollar spent on synths is a take away from the DAW's refinement.
 

Why not? Cakewalk are capable look at drum replacer and z3ta+2. Plugin content is required for Sonar as well.

Small team... endless supply of awesome stuff already out there... many issues still needing attention as per our suggestions forum...
 

AT , I know of the editor of the mag due to a link to something else he used to do (game music) and another member of staff who used to work for them.. neither of them are or were getting incentives outside of their publisher .. if the mag gave good reviews to not to good products, then folk wouldn't by the mag. Yes I have heard of game mags, where the reviews reflects advertising pages.. but there is only "so much" greasing of palms can achieve, people would see right thru reviews that were a crock.
 
look at it this way, you own DP (well I own 3-4 due to the silly licensing scheme, cakewalk would gain customers if they allowed license transfer of doubles.. look how many bought rapture due to CM!!) and same again for rapture, multiples.. what actually has been done to both DEEP down in the code ? remember both have shared components long before they were merged also... so is it something really REALLY new? it comes across as cosmetic... is it something that co-existed in the past.
 
if your saying that the version they got deserved a higher rating , then perhaps
1) it wasn't exactly bug free
2) it wasn't something NEW and innovative (see the likes of u-he consistently gets high marks, wonder why ? )
 
I could tell it wasn't gonna be an 8 or 9 from the trailer.. I've used stuff like Kore for example years before.
 
cakes synths are over engineered and too thought out.. only those who have the time will want to bother to code sfz scripts etc. the browser thing in DP and rapture has been none standard and a nightmare to use with other 3rd parties where it won't even grab the patch list / do the changes
 
how many people actually bother to sit down and do patches for rapture for example? it's not exactly as inviting / straight forward as other things.
 
if you're stating it didn't get a higher mark due to advertising.. then nah, the score reflected "nothing REALLY new".. and yer I own a lot of virtual synths , to be objective enough.

Fog
how many people actually bother to sit down and do patches for rapture for example? it's not exactly as inviting / straight forward as other things.

I do.  I have done a lot of cool things with factory waveforms.  Trance gates, mock Chamberlins, ambient scapes, ELP leads ... I even have one patch which mimics the bass line and reverse cymbals from Pink Floyd's "One of these Days".
 
It seems that every time I sit down with Rapture I come up with something interesting.  I haven't had as much of a chance with Pro yet.  I am more likely to get good results from scratch with Rapture a lot better than I get on with Massive, FM8, Rhino or Alchemy.

As for CM's review scale, think of it more like grades from school.  9 is an A, 8 a B, 7 a C, etc.
 
Then also consider that they are going to focus their reviews on the type of plugins that readers might be interested in buying.  Most of these are going to be B's or C's, with a few A's and A+'s and a few D's.  
 
They are not going to be reviewing a plugin made by a guy called 1337d00d using an unstable crack of SynthEdit that crashes every host but the one he tested it on within 60 seconds of loading it into a project.

It's in the  the August 2015 (CM219) Sidechain issue - electronic copy arrived through Zinio today.
 
It appears CM wanted to see more clear enhancements pull it into line with the current bigboys. They've likely given Cakewalk a 'headsup' and were good enough to suggest that some of the 'missed opportunities' could be addressed through updates (as implied/told by Cakewalk).
 
But does that mean that Beta testing is a thing of the past (to iron out the kinks/UX for initial release)(?) I suspect that management speak like 'agile' and 'ship early, ship often' had a part to play in the current situation. My 'operational capital' is upfront (albeit at the cakewalk owner intro price) ... so look forward to the updates. Definitely not giving up on it. 

 
Fog,  I wrote an answer but the forum software didn't post - maybe the missing content problem is spreading!
 
But it went something like this:  I haven't read the review and don't know the score.  I would give it a middling score myself, tho I think RaptPro will be a great synth once the kinks get worked out.  Maybe great isn't the right word, but one I'll use a lot.
 
And yea, if someone would have put out a visual SFZ editor the format would have done better.  Not for every aspect of text control (and why couldn't someone write in wave/sequencing/tables in SFZ?) but the basic layout of samples and things of that nature. Oh, well, that horse seems to have left the barn and I was asking for that back in the P5 days.
 
Once Cake gets it working right it still won't be a ground breaking synth, but how many moogs are there?  Still, it is a solid synth and one I'll use on every project, if not a couple of instances along w/ Alchemy and Kontakt.  At this point it is a C (an old-school C that means barely passing) because of the reliability issues; a B for many once it works reliably and an A for my personal uses, which aren't typical but more experimental and inharmonic (my guitarist just shakes his head at times when I give him tracks to play against).   With the various performance pads, I'll be able to play a patch into all kinds of weirdness.   
 
For $99 it will be a good deal, since it will be going up in the future I imagine.  But again, I've got a warped idea of value, since I'm investing much more in hardware these days for my home stuff.
 
good to see you around,
 
@

Fog
AT , I know of the editor of the mag due to a link to something else he used to do (game music) and another member of staff who used to work for them.. neither of them are or were getting incentives outside of their publisher .. if the mag gave good reviews to not to good products, then folk wouldn't by the mag. Yes I have heard of game mags, where the reviews reflects advertising pages.. but there is only "so much" greasing of palms can achieve, people would see right thru reviews that were a crock.
 
look at it this way, you own DP (well I own 3-4 due to the silly licensing scheme, cakewalk would gain customers if they allowed license transfer of doubles.. look how many bought rapture due to CM!!) and same again for rapture, multiples.. what actually has been done to both DEEP down in the code ? remember both have shared components long before they were merged also... so is it something really REALLY new? it comes across as cosmetic... is it something that co-existed in the past.
 
if your saying that the version they got deserved a higher rating , then perhaps
1) it wasn't exactly bug free
2) it wasn't something NEW and innovative (see the likes of u-he consistently gets high marks, wonder why ? )
 
I could tell it wasn't gonna be an 8 or 9 from the trailer.. I've used stuff like Kore for example years before.
 
cakes synths are over engineered and too thought out.. only those who have the time will want to bother to code sfz scripts etc. the browser thing in DP and rapture has been none standard and a nightmare to use with other 3rd parties where it won't even grab the patch list / do the changes
 
how many people actually bother to sit down and do patches for rapture for example? it's not exactly as inviting / straight forward as other things.
 
if you're stating it didn't get a higher mark due to advertising.. then nah, the score reflected "nothing REALLY new".. and yer I own a lot of virtual synths , to be objective enough.

If you read the posts carefully nobody is implying or saying RP got bought reviews. Somebody may have done on another thread. I was giving an overview.