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

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 am throwing in the towel.
 
i had a master plan, to build a new daw with the latest sonar Plat, on dec. 1st.
 
new PC, new O/s, New daw software, updated peripherals, and BOOM!
 
 
i'm currently on sonar 6 PE, on a Win XP system, that has been rock solid for 8 years now.
 
it's time to upgrade.
 
i'm moving on to Presonus Studio One, with Waves Platinum Bundle.
 

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.

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...

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.

Starise
I don't know why we can't do both. Learn a new daw and keep hoping the best for the old one.

Pretty much what I'm doing. Love SONAR, but the fantasy is always different from the reality...

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. 

This is true. We have been told by Cakewalk brass that we will continue to have a way to use Sonar. What that means I don't exactly know. 
 
Win 10 has been the most stable Microsoft OS in recent memory. Even running older gear and drivers. It is in their interest to make sure everything works. Most updates that affected me were driver upgrades to my mobo sound card. The rest are typically security related. 
 
Am I saying I don't think it will ever break? No. I'm saying I think we can be reasonably certain it will go on for a long long time so long as Cake works with us on the authorizations. Since I'm a lifetime member. My authorization won't expire. Cake has told us others who bought one year subscriptions are ok as well. I'm not naive enough to think we are good forever, but I think they are taking measures to assure we can still use Sonar for a long time.

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?