Should I start using Cakewalk by Bandland or stay with Sonar Platinum ?
 
 
Can understand your question cause it didn´t feel right for me 
to start working with CbB til last wednesday.
On wednesday I started my first project with CbB
without thinking about it and it worked flawless.
Note : I´m often a laggard .

The answer and summary, for those that come along late and see the subject:
- Yes. Install Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB)
- Don't uninstall SONAR Platinum if you want the extra goodies it came with (at least for now). Other versions of SONAR might not have any of the goodies and it is probably fine to uninstall it first (certainly at least for SONAR Artist). You do get TTS-1 and Studio Instruments with CbB.
 
As for the Free Bit - you can pay for it, if you want, by Tipping the Bakers. I think when you install CbB the first time one of the pop-ups includes a link to the Tip Jar.  It isn't free software in the sense of Open Source or Volunteer Managed - it is a fully funded commercial project. The money just doesn't come from sales of the software. The software is Free in that sense; you are not obligated to pay for it. 
 

Rick Viola
The only file I have in "c:/user/yourname/appdata/roaming/bandlab-assistant/downloads" is asistant.exe and is 48MB. I don't like not having the download not stored locally.
 
 

 

I agree and have found a workaround below. The reason you only found that one file in the downloads folder is the install file named cakewalk.exe was deleted after it installed.

Here's what's going on:
When you install CbB versions, you can find the cakewalk.exe in C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\bandlab-assistant\Downloads\cakewalk.exe
 
The trick is after it's downloaded, a window pops up asking to install CbB. First copy the cakewalk.exe to a new folder marked 2018 07 and then choose yes to install CbB. After it installs it will delete the cakewalk.exe file in your download folder.
 
This way you can easily roll back to a previous version. In addition to this I also save an image file of my C drive, so I can roll back that way also. 
 
hopefully in the future Bandlab will make it easier to have access to previous versions.

And when you make that copy just append the version number to it eg. Cakewalk Core Setup 24.7.07.exe.

That way you’ll be able to keep all the installers in one folder.

mudgel
And when you make that copy just append the version number to it eg. Cakewalk Core Setup 24.7.07.exe.

This is what I do. I also keep a copies of previous releases installed and available for use by copying the current  "Cakewalk Core" in program files to a versioned folder. For example, before installing 2018.07 I copied the current "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core" to "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core-18-06."

scook

mudgel
And when you make that copy just append the version number to it eg. Cakewalk Core Setup 24.7.07.exe.

This is what I do. I also keep a copies of previous releases installed and available for use by copying the current  "Cakewalk Core" in program files to a versioned folder. For example, before installing 2018.07 I copied the current "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core" to "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core-18-06."

That's interesting. Have you tested it to see if you can successfully roll back to a earlier version simply by renaming that folder? I guess I'm always concerned there are other files in other folders that would make this not work well.
 
If this works I can really see how this would really be beneficial to you when someone posts something about a previous version.

gmp
That's interesting. Have you tested it to see if you can successfully roll back to a earlier version simply by renaming that folder?

This is not how I use hot backups but it would work. Rather than rename a hot backup to the production folder I just launch the DAW from the backup folder. Actually I use I tool I wrote some time ago to pick a version and project to load. The program is called Cakewalk LaunchPad available from the Resource and Utilities page but this is not needed to make the scheme work. The DAW may be run directly from the hot backuo folder (n.b. I keep all the hot backup folders under the same parent folder as production "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk"). Of couse, clicking on a project opens the project with the current Windows association.


Because all version use the same shared utilities any problem with the utilities forces a reinstall/restore with a working version. The "Shared Utilities" folder may be copied/versioned too. In practice, the current "Shared Utilities" are rarely an issue.

scook

gmp
That's interesting. Have you tested it to see if you can successfully roll back to a earlier version simply by renaming that folder?

This is not how I use hot backups but it would work. Rather than rename a hot backup to the production folder I just launch the DAW from the backup folder. Actually I use I tool I wrote some time ago to pick a version and project to load. The program is called Cakewalk LaunchPad available from the Resource and Utilities page but this is not needed to make the scheme work. The DAW may be run directly from the hot backuo folder (n.b. I keep all the hot backup folders under the same parent folder as production "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk"). Of couse, clicking on a project opens the project with the current Windows association.


Because all version use the same shared utilities any problem with the utilities forces a reinstall/restore with a working version. The "Shared Utilities" folder may be copied/versioned too. In practice, the current "Shared Utilities" are rarely an issue.

This is very useful info, especially for someone like me, who's running a recording studio. If I install a new version and then have a client come in and find something is not working right, due to a bug or incompatibility, then I can really quickly launch the previous version that I've lived with a while and know what bugs to expect.
 
I just updated to 2018.07 and now I just copied the folder for 2018.04 to coexist side by side in case I need it. I don't need to take time to revert to a saved Acronis image file. This is super handy. I don't need to be worried about being caught flatfooted with the unpredictability of a new version. 
 
I also have many versions of Sonar - X1, X3, 8.5 and 32 bit Splat. This covers a lot of bases for old files and problems that can come up.
 

OK, figured out how to save the exe file when updating (I assume it is the whole app)
When updating from assistant, let it download. (About 551MB).
Before clicking install, copy the cakewalk.exe at C:\Users\[yourname]\AppData\Roaming\bandlab-assistant\Downloads
and paste it somewhere else. 
Otherwise after install it deletes the exe file.
Success on 8/23/18.