They will sell the source code for Sonar, and it will happen this summer when Gibson files for bankrupcy.  Doesn't mean that Sonar will survive, it just means the IP that was Sonar will be sold off for pennies on what Gibson paid for it, to the highest bidder.  The most likely buyer would be either Steinberg, Microsoft or possibly Avid.  They're the only one's that would be interested.  Sonar would not be revived, what would happen is they would take the source code for certain things (i.e. Z3TA), and put it in their own product lines.  Or possibly Microsoft who is already working on their own DAW, could use the source code for doing thing like time stretching algorithms, etc.
 
And in answer to people's questions, no this will not go open source.  Gibson owns the source code, no they're not going to give it away, they will have to sell it off, to help pay off investors when the file for bankruptcy.  And yes it's still piracy to take the code and make it public.

why would a company buy a pc only daw.. if it's got both mac as well. then yer, there is far more interest.
 
its cheaper maybe to build one from scratch.. or buy sonar.. cherry pick the code you want out.. then sell the IP / asset on to someone else.
 

space_cowboy
James
I am afraid you are right.  I would like to organize a group to bid on Cakewalk, but if the talent all leaves, there is not much there except source code.  Ditto on user base, tho that would be slower.  
 
It may be the case that taking a loss (which is probably small vis-a-vis Gibson's debt load) is more tax efficient.  
 
I have tried to guess at the revenues of Cakewalk.  I do not get a huge number.  I am guessing somewhere in the $5-20MM range.  And with a team of software developers, profits could not be huge.  That guess is likely confirmed by the fact that Gibson must have tried to sell it and found no suitors.
 
Then again, everything has its price.  

If they sold it for less than their basis - probably for very little give current circumstances - they would still get a tax loss.  Something doesn't have to be liquidated for $0 to generate a tax loss, it just has to be liquidated for less than your tax basis.

I'm sure most of us could be happy with Cubase Pro, especially those of us who hunger and thirst for a decent score editor.  What you will miss is a lively forum home. They just don't have it. I don't know why; maybe most cubase users are nerds or something. But their forum leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe that's not important, but I think that a lot of the grief people are feeling has to do with losing (eventually) this wonderful forum home, the best there is. I would suggest, even if you move to another DAW, stay with the new forum, Beyond Cakewalk that Bapu has set up. At least for awhile, until you've moved on from the grieving process.

I hope to see people on this forum on Cubase or Studio One. The community around Cakewalk was one of its greatest assets. Some amazing people on here.

I checked Studio One and have sorted it out.
In my case its a NoGo that you cann't apply effects from the effect bin (insert effects) to selected audioclips. And you cann't sent audio to an external waveeditor.
So my next check is Cubase. But at the moment there is no trial for the very new version 9.5
Until I have found a perfect DAW I will download a crack for SONAR - if the servers for authorization are down.

THambrecht
I checked Studio One and have sorted it out.
In my case its a NoGo that you cann't apply effects from the effect bin (insert effects) to selected audioclips. And you cann't sent audio to an external waveeditor.
So my next check is Cubase. But at the moment there is no trial for the very new version 9.5
Until I have found a perfect DAW I will download a crack for SONAR - if the servers for authorization are down.

As mentioned in the other thread
 

THambrecht
 
you cann't apply effects from the effect bin (insert effects) to selected audioclips.

Of course you can, look again
 

THambrecht
 
And you cann't sent audio to an external waveeditor like iZotope RX.


 

Users have simple workarounds for this (As a SONAR user you would be use to workarounds  ) Some just use a simple script. Go to the forums, seek and ye shall find.

AKG employees bought themselves  , why not bakers ? will help as many others around ...

I hope I don't see a fat lady singing today.

I was offered platinum fully updated for $ 20.00 !.. whats that tell you ?

gprokap
Thinking about it Microsoft is the only hope.   Who else would buy a product that ONLY runs on Windows when so many music producers are still tied to Macs?

Although there could be some good points of Microsoft buying Cakewalk, the problem I see is that Microsoft traditionally doesn't know how to deal with a niche product -- and by niche in this case I mean the whole product category of professional audio and DAWs in general, not SONAR specifically.   They are used to having products that dominate their space, and when something doesn't do that they end up giving up on it -- like with their previous forays into business accounting software and personal financial management to try to complete with QuickBooks and Quicken.  They couldn't beat QuickBooks and Quicken, so they gave up.  Even the best selling DAW in the industry would probably not sell enough copies for Microsoft to be happy.
 
They could go the Garage Band route, and sell lots of copies of a lower end version, which would be OK as long as they still maintained a professional version of SONAR.  And if they were to just buy Cakewalk to tear the technology out of the code and use it in their own product, that wouldn't do us any good unless it was capable of opening or converting SONAR projects, which would also be possible since they'd have all the code for that too, and it would be a good idea to get an instant user base for their new product.
 
I think it's a long shot, but since Microsoft has previously announced their intention to create their own DAW, and since they have often used acquisitions as the base for new products, it's definitely a possibility.

anxiousmofo
Gibson is fabulously inept.  I wouldn't be surprised if they barely shopped Cakewalk, or have been forced to hold the assets to pay off creditors for a pending bankruptcy.

I doubt that, just as I doubt that Roland was also inept.  The issue is that there are at least a dozen really strong DAWs at all price points, plus another dozen or more that are second tier products.  No matter how good SONAR was, it just couldn't get traction/mindshare.
 
A big reason for that is that much of the value proposition for DAW-based production is actually in the plug-ins, not in the basic DAW.  The Cakewalk plug-ins were pretty good - some very good.  But serious users migrated to companies like Waves, Izotope et al for their key plug-ins, making the DAW less of an issue.

Lifetime Updates payed The creditors.Peace

GjB
I hope I don't see a fat lady singing today.

Can’t you hear her? She’s wabbering at the top of her lungs 😂

Matron Landslide
She has already sung and is coming back for an encore for those who missed, but she has most certainly sung.

Is that you Mike McCue? Oh! never mind. Just you seem very familiar.