bdickens
Wow. So some of you people have never continued using an old, no-longer-supported software before?

I did with acid pro lol

Not so much throwing in the towel just making plans for the future I'll probably still use Sonar but I have also decided where I'm heading.
 
Sad that its come to this but looking at the facts I can't see Sonar making a come back in the near future in a format we recognise. I do think that some of what they have will resurface one day just not sure when and with who.
 
In the end there are just so many things that worked against them.

1. Cakewalk has been making a loss for many years possibly even before they were bought by Roland. This point is probably enough of an explanation on its own for the closure.
2. Gibson is in a mess financially and while Cakewalk may have been nothing more than a dripping tap in a flooding house they knew how to stop the dripping and did. That it took so long and they allowed Cakewalk to try and fix things themselves probably proves Craig's point that they wanted Cakewalk to succeed.
3. The Tascam relationship/partnership/co-branding never happened. I looked at a Tascam interface when I thought that I might need a new one and it comes bundled with Cubase. Not sure who is to blame for that, Tascam, Gibson or Cakewalk but its a fantastic marketing coup for Steinberg/Yamaha; "our software is so good our competitor bundles it instead of their own". BTW the Cubase integration with their interfaces looks really good and further demonstrates what was missed here.
4. Great technology/products that just disappeared:
   1. Project5 - one minute its the future of music creation next its gone.
   2. Kinectic - OK it probably would not have changed the world but its fun and has some potential.
   3. Club Tracks - I got this for my kids, looked like it would be good and allow them to create ideas that I could then import and help them develop further. There was never a version 2, which is really dumb as all it really would have needed is some new content and a visual makeover, then along comes a new OS and Club Tracks is dead. I would have bought version 2 and probably 3 and 4 as well...
   4. StudioWare - I still have a few of these but they are frozen in time because the editor is gone. They were such a great tool for controlling things like effects on synths.
   5. CAL - as above. I had an autoexec.cal that made sure my system was setup and ready to go including a couple of prompts for things I would forget to turn on or how to set. I know this is supposed to still work but losing the editor was plain dumb.
5. Market presence, as far as most people are concerned I use a sequencer call SonWho by CakeWhat.
6. The Roland Era - let's face it we should not be surprised by the lack of integration with Tascam because integration with Roland was minimal. Just look at the products that Roland had back then and consider what kind of Studio could have been built with Sonar at the centre. Again not sure whether this was down to Roland or Cakewalk but there is a common factor here. 
7. Consumers who demand more and more from new releases. I'm sure some of the third party licenses exist because of this demand and while I would expect the actual fees to be quite low they would have been a constant drain as more and more third party stuff was added.
8. Third parties and pricing. On more than one occasion I found the "for Cakewalk" content cheaper on the developers web site than it was on Cakewalk's. More revenue lost.

The big pluses that I will miss when Sonar fails or I just stop using it are:
 

1. The technology which I actually think is amazing given the amount that they threw away (see above).
2. The users these forums are probably the best user forum I have ever been involved with.

 
 
For those who stay with Sonar I hope it carries on working for years and for those who leave I hope the learning curve is not too steep.

abacab

FemcanLana

bdickens
Wow. So some of you people have never continued using an old, no-longer-supported software before?

I did with acid pro lol

I still have Sony Acid Pro 6.0, as well as Cakewalk Project 5 installed and working on Windows 10.
 
But they are stuck in 32-bit and I have moved on to 64-bit with most of my plugins.
 
I still have a 12 year old laptop (32-bit) that works, with Windows XP, Sonar 8.5 Producer, Ableton Live 5, Project 5, Acid Pro 6.0, and Sound Forge 7.0 installed.  3.0Ghz P4 with 2 whole GB of RAM.  That one is frozen in time.  I guess I could fall back to that if necessary, but it struggled with virtual instruments.  So I try to keep moving forward...

I still have Sony Acid pro as well.I love the program. FWIW One of the main Acoustica Mixcraft people also worked at Sonic Foundry which was Acid before Sony bought it. You can tell in some of the loop implementation. 
 
Maybe we'll be so lucky to see some of Sonar in something else eventually. Until then, I guess some of us are moving onward. 
 
I don't know why we can't do both. Learn a new daw and keep hoping the best for the old one.

To those arguing that people have used old versions of Sonar for years, and that Windows updates never broke them:
 
First of all, those older versions of Sonar did not require online authorization. Now we've been "sort of" told that activation keys will be provided at some point, but what if that doesn't happen and the servers go down at some point? So it's not 100% guaranteed that we'll be able to reactivate the software forever. 
 
Secondly, just because some older versions of Sonar have been immune to Windows updates doesn't mean that this good fortune will last indefinitely. There are people who speed and blow red lights habitually on the basis that it's never killed them yet, but that doesn't mean it won't happen at some point. 

tenfoot

BobbyT
i'm a broken man don't know where to go,didnt take the time and money to learn a new daw,just used sonar for years and years and they let me down after being the best daw on the market. IMO, software needs to be supported,i run into a few bugs here and there and would like to have support to resolve the problems but i think i can get through this beat down by learning Studio one in the mean time, i just hate not knowing when or if  the servers are going to be shut down in the middle of a computer upgrade because i have lots of projects to finish or be stuck like chuck with a daw that windows has broken due to updates. been with sonar since forever and they let me down,got a bottle of jack daniels,he never lets me down....lol.  and if y'all or thinkin it, NO!! i don't have a gun,just a bottle of Whiskey......LOL LOL.

On the bright side it looks as though you just wrote a country song right there ^^^^ !

Yeah but which DAW to use to record it?
 

I'll likely be taking advantage of the Studio One offer, which I feel is pretty generous on their part. I went through the panic of "BUT I LOVE SONAR!" and grieved but really, I've used every DAW in the past and they're all just glorified tape recorders. The workflow is different on each but after 2 days you get into the swing of it. I work as a professional composer, producer, songwriter, sound designer, etc. It's my full time job. I need something that will last and Sonar is dead and it's likely never coming back to life. What sucks is that if I ever have to re-open any of the thousands of projects I've done 5 years from now (highly unlikely), I'm in trouble. I'll be bouncing out a lot of stems in the months to come...

I'd prefer it if Sonar was still alive but it ain't. So, I move on. DAWS are just tools. What matters is what you make with that tool.

I threw in the towel and got Cubase. Now that doesn't mean I'm discontinuing using Sonar RIGHT NAO or anything, but I decided Id' start working on transitioning to something new.

Back to the OP, yes, I'm throwing in the towel. I am still very much a newbie and it makes no sense to learn Sonar at this point. If I'm gonna spend the time/effort to learn something new, it'll be on a supported DAW. I have no time for tweaking (Reaper) and I don't want to re-learn something every time I sit down to use it. So it needs to be somewhat intuitive (not Cubase). SO3 does that for me.

I see the wisdom in that Bat. 
I am tied to the web in pretty much any way you could imagine. I guess I'm too far gone to go cold turkey like that.
The web has almost become what electricity now is. 
 
But yeah, you're right. If you can unplug it and not have any other need for that computer on the web great.
 
I'm not that guy. Maybe I should be.

Anderton
As I've mentioned, for me it's a crossfade. ...

Thanks, Craig, that makes a lot of sense, I agree about SONAR being best in class for some things. 
 
I just hesitate to create a lot of new content in something that is not supported and may break at some point unless I freeze my system, or at least image it so I can get back to a place where it works. 
 
Not a bad choice, but my plan is to put my efforts into learning a new supported DAW.  I can't imagine how you feel over the whole debacle after all the work you put into content creation, all the things you put together for the community and all the effort you've put into this forum.

batsbrew

sharke
To those arguing that people have used old versions of Sonar for years, and that Windows updates never broke them:
 

 
CASE IN POINT:
 
i took my DAW off line, the day i got it dialed in.
 
8 years later, what do i care what windows does?
 
it became completely irrelevant.

Well, that's great if you can keep your computer offline. Most can't. 

The first update that breaks my SONAR, I will roll it back, turn off updates, then take it offline.  It's a secondary machine but needs Internet access for certain things, but only periodically.  Just go online long enough to do what needs to be done, then off again. I can live with that.

After all the talk of Studio 1, I downloaded S1 Prime (the free version) because I simply cannot make a purchase for the next while.  ....Prime doesn't provide for 3rd party VSTs and plugins. 

'Who's throwing in the towel?'...in the immortal words of Winston Churchill...'We shall fight them on the beaches' :). On saying that, I'm making preparations for the day Sonar doesn't want to play nicely, whether that is tomorrow or in ten years. Funnily enough, I'm leaning towards Reaper, only because it is the only DAW that understands audio fidelity or 64bitFp, no other DAW seems to export or record at 64bitFp. You can also ramp up the resample quality, so it's a no brainer. This is even though, Reaper looks like a child's toy. I will also get Studio One as well...and hope that Presonus get on board with audio fidelity. On saying all that, I will stick with Sonar till it breaks. Sonar X1, X2 and X3 still works on my machine...and in the past so has 8.5 and 6 :). Yes, I've spent a lot of money on Cakewalk over the years, and no I'm not bitter. Software is ethereal, and until we can figure out how to store ethereal technology forever, then this day was always coming...and in reality, the five thousand plus I've spent on Sonar and Cakewalk over a 15 year period is small change in comparison to building Electric Ladyland or Abbey Road :)