Before all this happened and before 'lifetime' membership I would have happily paid £80 a year to keep up to date.

Nope no Ken do ...I already paid up front for lifetime
On the other hand
Hypothetically speaking , If all brands of Digital Audio Workstations  had the 3rd party resources & coders  like Car maintenance does where you can take your older car that's out of warranty and have it fixed or modified to taste  ..
I may consider paying extra for that ..
As far as I know  that ain't happening yet ....
 
DO I have an imagination or what ? 
 
Picture a world where DAW doctors could fix things right ...That would be one hell of a world huh ?..
 
Then SONAR would have a staff View that works ...among other things
 
Kenny
 

Nah, that ship has sailed.
 

I would do that - but there are much too little people that would pay 50$ per month for a DAW.
We have also to pay for Adobe Cloud, accounting software and so on.
As I see in the internet, the most people look for a freeware DAW or at a DAW for a very low cost or search them in pirate bay.
It costs us a lot of money to switch to Cubase - instead of them I would give it Cakewalk.
But never under Gibson !!
 

I said it at the onset of all this but I personally would like the code to be handed over to the Cockos guys and Reaper could have a SONAR mode.
 
I've been using both regularly for the past year in conjunction with each other. SONAR is my tracking/mixing/comping/MIDI area... Reaper is where I do ultra fancy/critical stuff that SONAR poops over.
 
If they were integrated I think I would... well I don't want to get too dirty but I would [REDACTED] in my [REDACTED]s with glee.

Sure - with the caveat that Noel leads the team.    I've invested in S3 Pro, however, Sonar made it rather easy to create new music. 
 
We are at work finishing off 2018's release for the band I am in.  The plan - all current production is in Sonar.  Next release will all be in S3 Pro.
 
Take care all

Yeah... I know I'm a stupid old man, but none of the other DAWs are close to Sonar.

I don't need new features, but if new tech and hardware/software changes happen, development is needed.

Some comments above regarding crashes? All software has bugs and crashes! So do humans!

Yes, I would gladly pay more for Sonar to continue. I bought lifetime but also realize it was less than the typical yearly update cost so I can easily dismiss that.

Sadly, it feels less possible/likely with every passing day...

I continue to enjoy using Sonar and though I've tested the waters with the alternatives, I simply don't like them and don't want to change DAWs!

Hey, Keni.
 
Sup'? How ya doin'?

Not a chance, too risky IMHO. 
 
If the cakewalk team gets control of the IP and reopens shop I am game.

I think it's most likely all over, sadly enough. I'm as willing to pay monthly for ongoing development of Sonar as I've ever been; started the month they launched the membership, and paid every month after that until the shutters came down.
 
But knowing how these things go, it's already been too long. Some of the developers will already be in new jobs, and I hope they all are, soon enough, for their own well-being. The development team structure and knowledge base is already declining. It's a shame, but it's just how these things go.
 
I'm definitely not interested in paying for someone to buy the Sonar intellectual property and try to hack it with a bunch of new developers. I'm not sure what the point of that would be. The real value has always been in the continuous development over time. I think Gibson didn't know what they had, and likely don't yet know what they've killed. But I think they have definitely killed it.