***SONAR 8 was.... disappointing?!!***

You know that we have no way of refunding your money, right? This is a peer-to-peer forum. You should take this up with Cakewalk.

Cryophonic:
You know that we have no way of refunding your money, right? This is a peer-to-peer forum. You should take this up with Cakewalk.

Well I wish 'd known that before I sent off the cheque.

creynolds:
So I would like my money back please.

Please destroy my cheque when it arrives.

Did you ever think that it might be an individual problem related to your hardware and setup rather than a problem with the software?

There are other happy users, and your post convinced me to take the plunge and buy the upgrade. I was really only waiting for the first patch, but something about the way you phrased your feeling about the technology markets and ducking and diving that feels so wrong. Cakewalk cares about its customers, and has put a great deal of effort into making their software best in class, You could always call technical support and see if they can fix some of the problems you have encountered.

Paul

as i posted already i also do not believe that s8 should be 8 but it should have been a free 7.5 upgrade WITHOUT all the funny stuff (the new plugs) if i want plugs i buy plugs - btw.. there are also so many great free ones...
so in the end i agree with you : 8 isnt that substatial imo - yet i am not taking this so hard as you do...

The only thing that really got to me was the completely false advertising regarding Aim Assist. The information givin said "precise editing of tracks and clips" which it did nothing of the sort. Cake then chimed in and said they were just getting started with that feature. I took that as, "it doesnt work now, but it will one day". Well then why even add it?

Aim Assist

Retracted

Retracted

Retracted

Not me either.
I'm getting better performance with my Alesis Io26 unit with Sonar 8.

Ed

Thanks for the advice. Is this any better?

Actually, it is.

Sorry, have not read all the responses to the original post. While I empathize, (I have had software which does not work for me, but works well for others) I must say, Sonar 8 works well for me. My money was (reasonably) well spent. No refund here!

Love mine. Everything, including the patch, went off without a hitch.

No problems here. Are you a NOOB?

Whoa Jinga
That is a friggin mansion.

I believe we're going to have to change his User Name to, "JingMassa"... Wildman

ORIGINAL: creynolds


I don't want your money. I don't really wan't mine back to be totally honest. I want people to hear my greivance and create a movement that makes Cakewalk think about what they have done and maybe reconsider the direction they have taken. We are the customer.

As I've already written in other threads, I think Cakewalk made a gutsy move when deciding to focus on fixes, not features, in the Sonar 8 upgrade. I too felt this way last week when I learned the details of this release, and I too expressed my frustration and disappointment with negative comments here on the forum.

But after more thought, I've come to the conclusion that a) the philosophy behind the Sonar 8 release creates a win/win situation for Cakewalk and its users, and b) Cakewalk showed great strength of character in its decision not to focus on features.

I've been a weekly visitor to this forum since I started using Sonar 4 3 years ago, and therefore it's been clear that Sonar's 64-bit audio engine has had serious problems since its release two years ago. The product has been way too sensitive to variations in drivers and platforms, and has been much more vulnerable to plugin-caused crashes than competing hosts and daw platforms.

So, I disagree with your initial statement that Sonar 8 is a shambles. I would counter with: Sonar 6 and Sonar 7 had severe problems. Call it a "shambles" if you like, but I don't see it that way. Sonar 8 is an attempt to address the problems in Sonar 6 and Sonar 7.

Don't misunderstand -- I'm not telling you to shut up. We all have to blow off some steam now and then, and you have plenty of empathy here.

Cakewalk could have continued the status quo, piling more features on a questionable undercarriage. For two years they've managed by dealing with major problems in real time, while a handful of users here on the forum have served as an unpaid volunteer support group, helping noobs through configuration issues -- (great job, forums users.) But other DAWs just don't display this kind of eccentricity. Sure, noobs will have problems, but those problems are much more common in Sonar.

But Cakewalk chose to do the right thing -- find out what's wrong, get in there and fix it. That took guts, because they knew they'd get reactions just like yours (and mine, last week).

Now, I too was incensed over having to pay for these bug fixes.

10 to 20 years ago in the software publishing industry, software took longer to manufacture. Subsequently, releases came intervals of every 1.5 to 3 years, instead of today's practice of a release every year. Those major releases were not discounted as steeply as today's upgrade, and were priced within 25% of the retail price. If you do the math, and stretch the $170 of today's Sonar upgrade over a longer time period, you'll find that today's price is consistent with yester years, and maybe even a few percentage points less.

What I concluded was that we pay the same as we always did, whether we call it a new feature upgrade, or a maintenance release, whether we get a free update or have to pay for a major release. If you add it up, and divide by the number of years over the lifetime of the product, we pay what we always paid, because one way or another, a company has to maintain a revenue stream. That's the bottom line. Nobody is getting ripped off here, and nobody is getting rich -- it's business as usual, and in this case, that's not a bad thing.

Listen, I felt the same way, but when I calmed down and thought, it all made sense and I'm not mad anymore. We needed these fixes -- sounds like they didn't get them all yet. And, we also need some new features -- if I don't get a compositional interface to score my music pretty soon, I'm gonna stomp my feet and hold my breath til I turn blue -- and won't Cakewalk be in trouble them!

Hang in there -- the future does look brighter, but it requires patience, and that's how we support Cakewalk at this stage. Keep using Sonar and keep reporting back with your problems until they get addressed. We do have their attention.

-- Kurt Matthies