BMOG

kevinwal

BMOG

Great points but X3 was solid and I had no complaints , by far my favorite features in platinum are quad curve with the frequency being visible, vocal sync and comping because I record drums live.  If they never made another enhancement what we have now is more than efficient in my opinion. I guess the real question how much better can it be?  Allowing a Mac version maybe?  If we had a version for Mac I think we can get in the conversation with ProTools because of the solid performance Mac machines provides

I'd rather seen Windows improve to the point where people are saying, "Mac? What's the point?" lol
 
I know MS is making some big investments in their audio stack in Windows 10, so maybe we'll see that reflected in Sonar pretty soon, yeah? MS is saying they're already getting pretty much ASIO performance out of WDM drivers now and are coming up and with other fixes and changes in the audio architecture so I am hopeful.
 
The point is, I'd rather Cakewalk focus its resources on music production functionality and not on getting everything to work on competing OS's.

Valid points again if MS could improve Windows to equal Mac performance that would be sweet.  I hope they are reading this thread for those enhancements

Midiboy
Well, I found the pricing page...but I don't know where to check our account status.  I also found that to continue the subscription for SPlat is $199, not $149.  None of them are $149.  Where were you all seeing $149?

NeoSoul

Anderton

BMOG
 
$150 times forever adds up over time don't you think? 

Yes, no doubt it does add up. In fact 35 years from now, it will have added up to what I paid (adjusted for inflation) for a 4-track tape recorder in 1975 which had no mixer, no processors, no instruments, and a need to feed it $156 worth of tape every month. (No, that's not a typo...35 years.)

I really enjoy using Sonar.   But it is quite an unfair comparison.  Sonar doesn't do anything without a computer + audio interface

The $150 is also just an update cost.  To start the process, sonar costs $500 for the version under question.

I personally thought it was odd that the developers came out with Rapture Pro, but didn't add that to the premium product, they just provided a stripped down version, and offer it as a separate purchase. Even Apple gave Logic users (a full DAW that costs $200, and even includes plgins like drummer) the Alchemy Synth as a free add on, not some stripped down version.

The same can be said for some of the pro-channel models they have released on the side.  The model has changed, why not start including those in the package, especially since they are of no value to anyone but Sonar users.

Fabio Rubato
The last two updates I've 'paid' for have introduced issues where I'm unable to use these updates. Whilst it's fortunate that I am able to roll back to a version which allows me to continue making music reliably, the bugs introduced are creating loss of production time in trying to solve issues and are not giving me the benefit of what I'm supposed to be paying for.

Paul P

Fabio Rubato
The last two updates I've 'paid' for have introduced issues where I'm unable to use these updates. Whilst it's fortunate that I am able to roll back to a version which allows me to continue making music reliably, the bugs introduced are creating loss of production time in trying to solve issues and are not giving me the benefit of what I'm supposed to be paying for.

 
What happens if something is broken in the last update of 2015 and you hadn't planned on continuing your subscription ?  You could roll-back to the second-to-last, but you'd in effect lose a month's worth of improvements.
 

Anderton

NeoSoul

Anderton

BMOG
 
$150 times forever adds up over time don't you think? 

Yes, no doubt it does add up. In fact 35 years from now, it will have added up to what I paid (adjusted for inflation) for a 4-track tape recorder in 1975 which had no mixer, no processors, no instruments, and a need to feed it $156 worth of tape every month. (No, that's not a typo...35 years.)

I really enjoy using Sonar.   But it is quite an unfair comparison.  Sonar doesn't do anything without a computer + audio interface

 
I think very few people dedicate a computer exclusively to SONAR (even though they should, LOL). They are amortizing the expense of that computer over multiple applications. All a tape recorder could do was push tape.
 

The $150 is also just an update cost.  To start the process, sonar costs $500 for the version under question.

 
Consider the price I quoted for my monthly expense for tape. You can't run a tape recorder without tape...over a year, that would more than cover the $500, as well as $150 updates for 8+ years.
 

I personally thought it was odd that the developers came out with Rapture Pro, but didn't add that to the premium product, they just provided a stripped down version, and offer it as a separate purchase. Even Apple gave Logic users (a full DAW that costs $200, and even includes plgins like drummer) the Alchemy Synth as a free add on, not some stripped down version.

 
When you want to dominate a market, have $200,000,000,000 in cash on hand, and more importantly hefty profit margins on the computers people have to buy to run your software, you can take certain liberties with pricing. Remember that the goal of Logic is to induce you to buy a computer.
 

The same can be said for some of the pro-channel models they have released on the side.  The model has changed, why not start including those in the package, especially since they are of no value to anyone but Sonar users.

 
Because developing software and paying licensing fees to third party developers is not free. The more things SONAR includes, the higher the price will have to be to cover the extra expenses. Then people would complain about "I have Omnisphere, why do I have to pay for Rapture Pro? And I already have the Waves Mercury Suite of plug-ins and UA's Powered Plug-Ins. Why should I have to pay for more ProChannel modules I won't use?"
 
If you don't think that would happen, look at all the people here complaining that they don't want to pay money for particular features they don't use. It's a balancing act. No matter what Cakewalk does or does not include, their choices will satisfy some people and not others. To stay in business, all they have to do is make sure that most people are satisfied.
 
 
 

NeoSoul
My point being that Cakewalk developed things like Rapture Pro, and other ProChannel plugins that are not included with Platinum.  People are now playing for the continual development process of the flagship product with the membership system.  Of course they are free to sell it on the side to non-Sonar users (Rapture Pro), but I personally am surprised they are asking Platinum members to buy it as an add on.

I understand the 3rd party add ons.  However, things like the Boz Lab thing was already free.  The only development was to make it have a ProChannel GUI.  Something like the Sidewinder plugin they developed for Computer Music Magazine would have been a better argument for development costs, IMO.

The membership models works on the premise that the customer is paying Cakewalk's continual development fee.

Did a 3rd party make Rapture Pro?

In the previous model, something like Dimension Pro was added to the package under the development costs customers paid for, right?

I suppose I'm curious how many copies of Rapture Pro they have sold and the break down of Sonar customers vs. non Sonar customers.

(I'm a major Sonar fan, I have a friend that is a top seller of Pro Tools in the country and could give me a fantastic discount year after year, I've always told him "nope, not interested")

Anderton
 
On second thought, it is indeed an unfair comparison. I was comparing SONAR to a 4-track tape recorder and not including a mixer, any processors, or backline. A more accurate comparison would be comparing SONAR to two slaved 24 track digital machines with a rack full of processors and a bunch of synthesizers, and of course you'd need a two-track so you could mix down to a format other than 2" tape. Under those conditions, assuming you bought a tricked-out computer dedicated to music, a brand-new really big monitor, paid for SONAR at list price, and bought only two reels of 24-track tape and just kept erasing them over and over to keep costs down, then saying that it would take 35 years of SONAR updates to pay off a recording system is wrong. It would be closer to 1,000 years 
 

SimpleM
I recorded a 4 minute song in 1990.  It was done in the most professional studio in our area.  All world class gear, engineer/owner had credits on projects for MJ and Madonna and was lead engineer on Little River Band's last album in the 80's.  The guy took a liking to me and mentored me as I started buying gear and learning the craft just so I could augment my songwriting and kept on helping me as I stepped up through 4 tracks, then true multitrack analog and then my jump to DAW in the late 90's.  (all on PC might I add, MAC schmack, who needed SCSI anyway.)  He even stayed with me after I backed into recording others for profit.

Somewhere in the mid 2000s, he started calling me to take some of his overflow work.  I told him that made me nervous as I did not have the gear or experience he had.  He said to me; "You understand the craft and have enough tools, talent and ears to get the quality I need, you are one of the few people I trust in the area to associate my name with, I no longer consider you a student, you are my peer."

In 1990 when I recorded that song, he had near a $500,000 worth of gear.

I still have less than $20,000 invested in my studio since starting in 1994. 

All of my work was done in Cakewalk with the very bottom edge of pro-quality mics and hardware (no "B"word gear though).  Granted, I have never mixed "in the box" since I jumped to CW in the late 90s.  I have always used it as a fancy editing and tape machine that had the ability to add effects straight to the tracks before they hit the mixing board but I never had a truly high quality board either, Mackie, then 02R, now X32. (can I admit I finally have 1 piece of Behringer gear here?)

We listened to some of my recent work against that early 1990's work done on his $500,000 worth of gear and what I am doing is easily equal or superior to that.  The power of Cakewalk's products allowed me to do that.  My loyalty to Cakewalk allowed me to make music instead of learning software constantly by jumping around from DAW to DAW.  I actually used PA9 forever, all the way up to Sonar 6.  From 6 I landed on 8.5 and used that up to X2.  Each time I upgraded, I found a slowdown from a learning curve so from X2 on, I decided to upgrade every chance I get.  That makes continuing the subscription a very welcome option for me.  I have instant access to the one or two workflow changes a month I need to start learning, (they call them enhancements but not everybody has the same experience) rather than a whole new paradigm like going from PA9 to Sonar, and 8.5 to X2.
 
Granted the cost of gear and the move to software replacing hardware has brought the cost of starting a studio down so much that it hurt both our studios for a few years as any hack could buy an interface, a $99 Chinese mic, download Reaper and hang out a $25 an hour shingle to open a "studio".  I lost a TON of business to refusing to drop my price to meet that.  However that is changing slowly back as people are starting to understand it takes more to record (especially mix) than just the bare bones tools needed to capture sound.  It takes experience, knowledge, stability, acoustics and talent to name just a few.

My recording and mixing space has decent acoustics, I have been told I have reasonable talent but I know I have to constantly hone it or lose it.  Therefore, I'll keep paying monthly so that the experience with, knowledge about and stability of my chosen platform does not take me away from where I need to focus. 

Others mileage may vary, but roughly $17 bucks a month to replace about $480,000 of that $500,000 worth of 1990 gear with the latest and greatest CW product is a bargain to me.