gprokap
Thinking about it Microsoft is the only hope. Who else would buy a product that ONLY runs on Windows when so many music producers are still tied to Macs?
Although there could be some good points of Microsoft buying Cakewalk, the problem I see is that Microsoft traditionally doesn't know how to deal with a niche product -- and by niche in this case I mean the whole product category of professional audio and DAWs in general, not SONAR specifically. They are used to having products that dominate their space, and when something doesn't do that they end up giving up on it -- like with their previous forays into business accounting software and personal financial management to try to complete with QuickBooks and Quicken. They couldn't beat QuickBooks and Quicken, so they gave up. Even the best selling DAW in the industry would probably not sell enough copies for Microsoft to be happy.
They could go the Garage Band route, and sell lots of copies of a lower end version, which would be OK as long as they still maintained a professional version of SONAR. And if they were to just buy Cakewalk to tear the technology out of the code and use it in their own product, that wouldn't do us any good unless it was capable of opening or converting SONAR projects, which would also be possible since they'd have all the code for that too, and it would be a good idea to get an instant user base for their new product.
I think it's a long shot, but since Microsoft has previously announced their intention to create their own DAW, and since they have often used acquisitions as the base for new products, it's definitely a possibility.