Skyline_UK
I can see it sitting in their portfolio.  A lot of their costs, like marketing, admin, HR, etc. are spread across many products so they'd only need to spend money on developers and software folk.  Fingers crossed.

Would be interesting to see how IK Multimedia would make this work if they become a serious contender to buy Cakewalk.
 
They definitely have a model that would enable them to achieve revenue from the effects and there are a few gems in the Cakewalk portfolio. But as an owner of T-Racks 5 Max I'm actually looking to these as replacements for the Cakewalk effects that are locked to Sonar and they have some good options. Challenge here would be duplication although this is not something that IK Multimedia are afraid of if you look at their current offerings they are good at differentiating similar effects.
 
Pro Channel could fit well if they reinvented it as a Shell like the ones they already have for T-Racks making it a flexible Channel VST. As a cross platform VST I personally think Pro Channel has real potential.
 
Not sure about the instruments, Zeta has to be pick of the bunch and a revamped Rapture/Dimension might be a viable option to sit alongside SampleTank. There must be ways that they could reuse some of the other VSTs as well but its not immediately obvious to me. If you look at IK Multimedia's portfolio a Drum Centric tool would be a sensible addition but I'm not sure that the Cakewalk tools are what the market wants and I think Cakewalk confirmed that they also think this by bundling AD.
 
A DAW would be a brave move but at least they already know enough about the market to be able to do an analysis of the market. They should have a good idea about which DAWs are popular and their relative market share. To date though their strategy has definitely been to complement the DAW developers and focus supporting all of the DAWs. Making, for example, a better bass plugin than the DAW manufactures is complimentary rather than competitive and I think IK Multimedia, Waves and others have carved out a profitable niche in that space. 

I don't think anybody left here would expect tier lifetime membership has any value at this point. I would think that deal is off unless the actual Cakewalk company re opens for business. 
It was Sonar by Cakewalk. If someone else like iK buys Sonar it will be Sonar by iK not Cakewalk. 
 
I could see it going down like this. 
Lets use iK as and example. They buy the "Sonar" brand and code and even a few original developers come with the deal. They could set up shop right away as the product is up and running. It would take a few months to set up the new servers and change the GUI and cosmetics to remove all things Cakewalk. 
Sonar would hit the market and we would be made an offer to "upgrade" for a special price. They would have no obligation to honor the lifetime membership unless they were feeling very generous that day. The lifetime membership was a business deal between us and Cakewalk, not the new company. A deals a deal and it was broken. 
 
CCC and our Cakewalk products download site will all be gone and we would purchase from the new company and they would have their own system of registration etc. I imagine iK already does. 
Or we can sit back and use the old version and follow along with the new iK Sonar development and buy in on the day we either need to or feel there's new value in the product. The special offer might be gone but that's the gamble you can take just as always when shopping for products. 

Whoever buys it should do it soon before the vast majority of Sonar uses go elsewhere and actually have time, experience and productions invested with a different product.
 

As the company has already ceased development, I believe the lifetime is over...
 
I don't believe anyone who might take over the software could/should be responsible to uphold such...
 
but...
 
SoniRig?
 
Sounds great to me!
 

Can only hope, need a lot of bugs fixing ASAP

The only reason I don't see this happening is other vendors were allowed to post cross-grade offers on Cakewalks own site.
Its over. the majority (guessing 75%) of Cakewalks customers have purchased other software now.
 
If they were going to do something, it would have been within the first few days/first week.
It definitely saddens me but I don't have much hope for a reprise. More so, The trust factor is damaged.
Im sure many would have an issue, a trust issue worrying about being burned again by a company that has disconnected itself from its customers (when they need them most) for over a month now.
 

Boy I think an IK takeover would be great! If only it would be so...still there is hope...

A Major plugin manufacturer with a DAW...that's an interesting concept.
What would be their motive?  How would this make things better for them?
How much more complex is a DAW to develop and maintain than an individual effect or instrument plugin?
I would think in the long run it would be a downer for them, but I don't know really.
All DAWs come with their own suite of plugin instruments and effects.
But no plugin manufacturers - Waves, IK, Arturia, NI, have a proprietary DAW.
So why would they do it?  The money has to be there...somewhere...for starters.
Then there is the Cakewalk Factor.
Like it or not, the Cakewalk Brand never got "professional"/"Peer" respect or acclaim.
Could a rebranding under a different Company Name change that?
Of course.  I don't see why not.
Behringer doesn't have a DAW.
But that company has done a complete 180 and is now hot.
But perhaps IK is the best fit.  It certainly peaked my interested when you posted this thread.
 

I just don't see it happening. Sonar has a small user base compared to other DAW's, and it seems to be comprised mainly of older users (40+) who use the software because they've used it for a long time and they stuck with it. It wasn't attracting nearly enough fresh new blood, and that's ultimately why Cakewalk went under. Add to that the fact that the program has a number of serious issues that the Bakers themselves never managed to fix, let alone a brand new team diving into unfamiliar code. It would be a HUGE costly risk for them, with no guarantee of a return on their investment, indeed a large chance that they would lose their money. It's sad to say but I really don't think Sonar is going to be adopted. The best we can hope for is that the Bakers start development of a new DAW from the ground up.

Mixbus and Waves Tracks Live are both based on the open source DAW Ardour. This suggests to me that there are companies out there interested in having their own DAWs but not interested in building from the ground up which, on one hand, suggests maybe someone could be interested in pickup up SONAR.
 
On the other hand, why go that route when they could use something like Ardour that is already out there, proven to be pretty successful for that purpose, cross platform, etc.? Alternatively, there are so many minor DAWs out there, why not just buy up one of those companies if you have the money to spend?
 
SONAR consists of 30-ish years of legacy code, has the whole "lifetime updates" thing hanging over its head, is not cross platform (though maybe the Mac port work adds some value in that regard), and has a recent history of not being profitable. Why would someone go there?