Upgrade to SONAR 8 to Receive a Free Update

Cakewalk announces a special promotion for SONAR customers!

Purchase or upgrade to SONAR 8 Producer or SONAR 8 Studio at any participating music & sound retailer worldwide or Cakewalk.com starting July 1st 2009, and you'll receive the next feature-rich update to SONAR as a FREE download when released later this year. Cakewalk will be making the free download available to anyone who has purchased SONAR V-Studio 700 as well, starting from the product's initial release in January.

For more information visit the SONAR 8 Free Update Special page.
 
*Note: Offer not available for customers in Japan at this time*

Enjoy!
Kate

...so, what about those who already own the product? Not a free download?

F@KKER
[edit] Sonar 9 is not mentioned...

Hey I just bought Sonar 8 is there any way to back date this offer?

Kate,

the website that you point out is not very clear. Is an update meant or an upgrade?
(Others wonder as well: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1760352)

Thank you

stickman, I would tend to agree with what you say, were it not for the fact that I have recieved 5 emails in the last 3 weeks encouraging me to upgrade.

I have been a cakewalk user starting with HS6 and progressing to Sonar 8 - I purchased the producer upgrade online on 26th June and because of the shipping time I received my upgrade on the same day as being told that I could have had a free upgrade to the next release (whatever it may be) if i had only waited 6 more days.

you mentioned a grace period being explicitly defined (i don't see it anywhere)

There is a difference in pricing - i paid £99, for the free upgrade offer i would have to pay £175 since normal upgrade prices are usually in the £175 - £200 mark then I would happily accept the next upgrade for a fee of £76 (175-99)
that way the saving that i made would be comparable to savings i could have made a week later.

all of this is sort of conjecture since we don't know what the next paid upgrade will be and how much but you get the drift.

I am a big fan of cakewalk and for me, most of the time they do get it right, occasionaly they are a little clumsy as the current situation shows

C

you’ll receive the next feature-rich update to SONAR as a FREE download

Did you mean UPDATE or UPGRADE? In Cakewalk terminology, those are very different.

seems that we need some clarification here - what exactly is "the next paid update"?

ORIGINAL: ew

ORIGINAL: daveny5

you’ll receive the next feature-rich update to SONAR as a FREE download

Did you mean UPDATE or UPGRADE? In Cakewalk terminology, those are very different.

In the link that Kate put up, it says paid update...

ew

ew,

the page clearly states:

*********
SONAR Upgrade offer

There has never been a better time to purchase SONAR 8. Whether you are new to SONAR 8 and buying it for the first time or upgrading from a previous version, you will be eligible to download the next paid update to SONAR absolutely free. Read on for more information and eligibility.

**********

Upgrade and update in the same paragraph.
*I* find that pretty confusing and agree with daveny5 that it means something different....not just in Cakewalk terminology but in IT speak in general.

ORIGINAL: stickman393

Anyone whose been around here through the last few annual product releases will understand that no matter what they do, Cakewalk just can't catch a break from some people.

Conjecture : The "downloadable upgrade" is most likely SONAR 9.0 and that's why it's not free for current users.

At least this strategy is an attempt to deal with the crowd who, upon hearing that 8.0 was imminent, demanded that they get some kind of a price cut because, after all, they bought 7.0 "just yesterday".

This time, we're forewarned, we understand that late shoppers of 8.0 won't be penalized, the grace period is even made explicit, and *still* there are complaints.

How much leeway do you guys want?

:rolls eyes:

I couldn't agree more Stickman! NO matter what they do, there are gonna be folks that get left out. They are a business, what do you expect? They need folks to purchase and new customers ALL the time to stay in business. Also, they do this EVERY year, so if u've been around for more than a year, you should know all about this.

I'm not sure what RodC means that we were told this wouldn't happen again- I've never heard that or anything close. Just the opposite actually.

You absolutely can NOT please all the people all the time, u just can't and stay in business. They have a different promotion just about every month. If you don't like it- wait till next month.

ORIGINAL: daveny5
Sonar 8.5 paid upgrade

Uh... I think you mean "Sonar 8.5. paid update"...

Updates should be FREE, Upgraded Versions should be paid. If this update updates version 8.3.1 to the next 8.xx then it definitely should be a FREE complimentary update. I can see that this being a PAID update will upset a lot of Sonar customers who purchased their copy or upgrade before July 1st. Someone from Cakewalk probably thew out the idea of the update requiring to be purchased. With the state of the economy it doesn't help that we loyal Sonar users will have to shell out extra $ for an update. My 2 cents.

might just be getting this when a paycheck clears

Hey CakeMaker:
Of course some people will always complain, but there will be a lot less, and Cakewalk look like good guys. It seems an obvious solution, used by many companies. To me it makes Cakewalk look more little league, and less pro.

I'll put it in the form of a simple question. If I pay $179 today to upgrade from 7 PE to 8 PE will I get the 9PE upgrade free?

ORIGINAL: Teksonik

I'll put it in the form of a simple question. If I pay $179 today to upgrade from 7 PE to 8 PE will I get the 9PE upgrade free?

If Sonar 9 was going to to be what new upgraders got, they wouldn't have gone so out of their way to repeatedly and awkwardly refer to the "next paid" version. They would have just said Sonar 9. Not the two are necessarily exclusive, but think about it for a sec.

The offer extends for over 6 months. There's no way they're gonna give away their next major release, for free, for half a year.

The offer is for a download version. There's virtually no way that a major new version of Sonar is going to be all that small. Not that multiple gigs can't be downloaded, but realistically....? For the better part of a year...? It will likely be something roughly comparable in size (or even twice a large... whatever) to the 8.3 download, with something extra special included to justify a "nominal" upgrade fee for those who, bought Sonar 8 prior to this offer. There will be a "nominal" fee for those who take the free offer and want top receive an actual disk. What might that realistically be? $10? $20? More than that...? It's not like you can't burn it to disk yourself... IF you have access to the download. Maybe the upgrade fee for early upgraders to 8 will be the same as the cost of the disk.

EDIT: That would mean the actual savings of this offer is of a "shipping and handling" order of magnitude. If would, or might, also make early upgraders less annoyed, cos they're not really being charged a whole lot for a minor upgrade.... though why wouldn't they just be allowed to download it anyway? Maybe they will be allowed. The offer says that if you upgrade now, you get the "next paid" for free, but it does NOT say that if you upgraded before the offer, you won't. It's only implied... just as it's implied that they're talking about an actual "Sonar 9." And it's not just a matter of the number they assign it. A .5 is just not the same thing as a new .0.

On the other hand, maybe the next version will have a very small footprint and thus an efficient and foolproof download. (After all, the entire Reaper installation is under 5Mb... that's megabytes.) But that wouldn't be the "next version of Sonar" as that would be understood, and expected: an extension of the previous versions with more super goodies. For the CW flagship to slim down to that size it would have to be an entirely new program that replaces and supersedes Sonar, and probably not come with a whole lot of sample-dependent plugins. When that happens, it will be a landmark in Cakewalk's glorious history, and they're not gonna give that away. There will no doubt be an upgrade path from Sonar to that new CW platform, but it's not likely to be a freeb.

I hope I'm wrong. (If I thought this offer was for the next "full" annual-like upgrade of the whole thing, I'd upgrade to 8 myself. That's what I briefly imagined when the offer came through yesterday. Then I through about it, and parsed the fine print.)