rbosco60
Now we have the ridiculous membership program.

Switching to Avid/ProTools won't get you away from the "membership program".
ProTools is moving to "subscription" based upgrades as well...
 
The way Cakewalk has implemented the subscription based method, it's not radically different from the past.
You can choose to pay the full upgrade cost up-front (same as it ever was - same as most software upgrades)... or you can make monthly installments (similar to Adobe's Creative Cloud).
Better than Creative Cloud, once you've paid for a year's cost, you own the license for that version (even if you decide to terminate the subscription).  
If you pay monthly, you can work with Sonar for several months... and if you decide it's not for you... you're only out the cost of those months (not the full cost of the application).
 
A software company needs a stream of revenue to stay in business.
A yearly upgrade is a way to give users new features (and fixes)... while keeping revenue flowing.
When compared to the cost of other studio gear, software upgrades are very inexpensive.

Anderton
Cakewalk also believes this will be better for customers because of customers not having to wait for features, the potential for a more stable product, and the inclusion of content. 
 
For me the biggest issue with Pro Tools isn't the bugs or the lack of tools I've come to depend on in SONAR, but I get lower track counts at equal latency settings.

As I put in a post before - I hope Cake don't feel pressure to have anything major in new features done before another release. I think just putting whatever is fixed of bugs out there every two weeks or something would be a good thing.
 
Just go through the bugs todo list - and whatever is done is done - out it goes.
 
Naming releases and stuff give me the feel they also will have new features every new release.
I don't know if this is possible, just personally would like that.
 
New features are more like - good to have.
Bugs not fixed are more like - from really annoying to showstoppers.
 
I will probably test ProTools First out of curiousity - if it's 64-bit. Only daw I didn't test. Maybe there are performance issues.
 
EDIT: Was inspired by another thread - why not call all just bugfix releases BrainDead 1, BrainDead 2 etc.
In between the BrainTree 2, BrainTree 3 etc.

Regardless pro tools is a great product.
So is Sonar.

Go with what you like. It still goes without saying what is best value for money, weirdly in this instance value for money doesn't reduce the end user to a second class citizen by miles. The only major fault with Sonar IMHO is perception. Marketeers take note.

Splat
The only major fault with Sonar IMHO is perception. Marketeers take note.

I often see, and in important places like Sweetwater, something to the effect that some product "works great with all major DAW's" which then goes on to list PT, Logic, Studio One, etc., etc., but no Sonar.
 
Sonar is the only daw I know so I have no idea how it compares to the others, but it seems that Sonar is off lots of people's radar.

In another conversation I had this evening, I realised I've been using Pro Tools on and off since 1997, 18 years in all. Which I think is enough time served for me to say with some authority that it doesn't offer particularly green grass.

It's not crap. Of course it's not crap. It's a very powerful and impressive piece of software (not so much the hardware component). But anyone who thinks it's the be-all and end-all just hasn't been around the block very many times. It's not crap, but it's not special either.
 
Increasingly not special now that whole thing of "DSP boxes for what your computer can't do" thing is basically dead and buried.
 
I have mixed in ProTools, and will again. And any faults in the mix will be down to me, not to ProTools. But I never mix in it by choice.

skitch_84
It just goes to show that it's very hard to recuperate a company or product's image in the minds of people who may have had a bad experience at one time in the past. I really do hope that the overall opinion of Sonar goes up in the general music production sphere. It doesn't deserve all the hate it gets from people who don't use it and don't realize how great it really is. 

Marketing could DEFINATELY fix this. Sonar as a product is getting it's act together, hopefully the message will do as well. It might take some money from Gibson though to spread the message. Come on Gibson why not put a leaflet in with every Gibson guitar for instance..

Splat

skitch_84
It just goes to show that it's very hard to recuperate a company or product's image in the minds of people who may have had a bad experience at one time in the past. I really do hope that the overall opinion of Sonar goes up in the general music production sphere. It doesn't deserve all the hate it gets from people who don't use it and don't realize how great it really is. 

Marketing could DEFINATELY fix this. Sonar as a product is getting it's act together, hopefully the message will do as well. It might take some money from Gibson though to spread the message. Come on Gibson why not put a leaflet in with every Gibson guitar for instance..

Agreed,
this and the fact that Cakewalk is nearly never  advertising in music magazines
is imo the cause why Sonar is that much underrated.

Pragi
this and the fact that Cakewalk is nearly never  advertising in music magazines
is imo the cause why Sonar is that much underrated.

we shouldn't care if they don't advertise, we bought already ... ads are expensive, so they do use all a favour by investing money in development rather than magazines ...

One of the biggest issues is Mac-only. Some people consider the Mac the only "real" computer for music. Although the market share of OS X is about 8% in the general market, estimates in the music industry place it at between 50% and 65%. Samplitude, Acid, and Mixcraft are other Windows-only programs...they don't get much attention either, and the Windows version of Digital Performer hasn't gotten much traction. (The exception has been FL Studio, which sells very well, but it's a very different kind of program.)
 
Windows is perceived by the "Gearslutz mentality" as not a serious solution. Therefore, anything that runs only on it is not a serious solution...guilt by association.
 
Advertising in magazines is not the answer because people who are prejudiced against SONAR will not be swayed by an ad. People are swayed by experiencing it. Much of SONAR's marketing is "in the trenches" at the store and distributor level (some of those people are clueless about SONAR, and actually dissuade people who want to buy it). For example, you'll see ads for SONAR in Sweetwater's catalog. You'll also see Gibson's product specialists in stores evangelizing the salespeople at, for example, Guitar Center. Cakewalk just did a big press event and store tour in Japan, where for whatever reason SONAR does very well. "Big in Japan" 
 
The music industry is slow and conservative. The membership program has been out for about six weeks and the push will continue. Of course it also doesn't help when a forum has thread titles like "SONAR BROKEN!! Automation DOESN'T work!!!!!" and it turns out to be pilot error, but there's nothing that can be done about that.
 
Also note that more and more companies do have SONAR on their radar. Universal Audio used to pay no attention to it but does now. Nektar's Panorama keyboard has a SONAR template, as do more keyboards and controllers. Finally, SONAR's sales keep increasing steadily, mostly from new users as opposed to "switchers," which is where "the rubber meets the road." I think part of that is because of the perception that Cakewalk is no longer in danger, and is here to stay. Marketing efforts will continue and expand, because if nothing else, they're having results.

FreeFlyBertl

Pragi
this and the fact that Cakewalk is nearly never  advertising in music magazines
is imo the cause why Sonar is that much underrated.

we shouldn't care if they don't advertise, we bought already ... ads are expensive, so they do use all a favour by investing money in development rather than magazines ...

Agreed,
I don´t care about it.
It´s only an answer for the question why sonar is that much underrated.
regards

GregGraves
* please send $1500 cash to my Swiss account #4PLEASE3RIP7ME9OFF5CUZ9IAMDUMB and I will get my DAW out to you "real soon".

I have an HSBC account so this should be easy...

Having both ProTools and Sonar running on my PC.
I feel Sonar is miles ahead of Protools in every way.

FidelityMusic
Get some artists and producers to start making Youtube content for Sonar. The content available online for DAW's like Ableton and FL Studio and their use in popular genres is one of the reasons why they're so widely used. Not only does this bring free marketing for Sonar, it gives people ideas on workflow that they might potentially like, they also get to see the DAW used in a wide variety of practical situations.

I agree, excellent suggestion. 

FidelityMusic
 
Get some artists and producers to start making Youtube content for Sonar............

I've done this in my measly own way.   My Youtube channel is still pretty new small-ish (as of now about 375 subscribers and 70K+ overall views), but I did a slew of Platinum videos the week it came out.  I did two videos on "making simple song ideas" in SPlat and they instantly became big hits on my channel with about 4K hits combined, just for those two, new videos.   So people are looking.  My YouTube stats say that about 1/3rd of the views on those videos come from "searching" YouTube, which seemed like a lot to me.

AndertonWindows is perceived by the "Gearslutz mentality" as not a serious solution.
 

Ah, Gearslutz. A site where sorting out the gems from the misinformation, mistaken information, plain wrong information, fifth hand opinions and follow-my-leader fanboism is a task even the angels would dread.

AndertonThe music industry is slow and conservative.

True, but there's also the factor of having invested in and learned one huge, expensive complex application the tendency is going to be to stick with it.

Partly because going to the bean-counters and telling them that the expensive package they've been spending biggish money on for years because it's "the best" needs to be replaced by a pretty ordinary PC and new software.

And partly because of the time investment needed to learn a new system and tweak it as required.

People generally don't like having to learn new software, because they don't find it easy and they don't necessarily have much interest in that side of things to start with. Not everyone has the ability to easily transfer skills learned on one thing to another either. Daft as it may sound, there are people, many people, who don't seem to pick up clues from icons and apply the clues from one application in another, but seem to have to learn every application from scratch as a separate learning process.

All of which means the studios can be slow to change, and in turn whatever they use gets seen by the home/small scale market as the "best and the industry standard" simply because it's what the studios use.

Simple human inertia makes toppling a market leader very difficult.