There are some good points being made here, I still use P5 religiously Rewired in Sonar and S1 as it doesn't have the MIDI functionality that I'm use too. Also it is my goto scratch pad and it will be until my PC out grows it. I wish P5 and Rene Ceballos were still with cakewalk but that doesn't dampen my enjoyment with these programs and Synths.

I too still use P5. Sometimes I do rewire into Sonar, but mostly I save the midi in p% and then drop it into Sonar. By the way ............. Hi AT, glad to hear you're still around. We should have some kind of online reunion or something.

Cool, Chris.  I'll buy the online beer!

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 How do we organize something,to get all the old P5er's back together? I'd love to hear how they are getting along, and what they are using. Help me figure this out.

Neuroharmony

But you wouldn't say that the structure of P5 is outdated, would you? On the contrary, I think it remains fresh and ahead of its time. And of course, if you want to add new things to P5, just get some new plug-ins for it. Ultimately the plug-ins are what you use most. The DAW is just a place to do your work. 
 

"there are that many other DAWs out there that offer these facilities without the workarounds (and that are still being actively developed and fixed) that most people have moved on." . . . . What have you moved on to? Have you found a program that gives you the same quick loading, easy interface as P5? It seems that every program I've looked into is too stuffed with frills. If I want all the bells and whistles I'll just start Sonar. I want something that is fast and can be used in the spur of the moment.

Chris,

I guess we could all start posting in the P5 forum again.  I check it when I'm at Cakewalk, but nothing much happens.  Maybe I should start posting cute kitten video links here - that ought to bring a crowd!


But no, there is nothing quite like P5 for ease of use.  I admit, I use SONAR more and more, but it is awful busy w/ screen and stuff I never use.  However, the higher render rates are nice.


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 Oh I agree, I use my Sonar X1 nearly every session. It has nearly everything I could ever want or imagine. But I just love the way when I just want to play around, and open something simple, P5 fills that niche. Is there some other suitable substitute, that doesn't require months of learning?

Chris in Indy


"there are that many other DAWs out there that offer these facilities without the workarounds (and that are still being actively developed and fixed) that most people have moved on." . . . . What have you moved on to? Have you found a program that gives you the same quick loading, easy interface as P5? It seems that every program I've looked into is too stuffed with frills. If I want all the bells and whistles I'll just start Sonar. I want something that is fast and can be used in the spur of the moment.

The current DAW's I have are Ableton Live 8 with Max for Live, Reason 6.5 and Studio One v2 Pro. Live is probably the nearest to P5 in terms of the Groove Matrix feature and being able to move and swap instruments and effects around. Studio One, for me, is the best linear type DAW workflow wise with it's drag and drop features and melodyne integration. With Reason, it's a different way of doing things with the rack and virtual cables...not like P5 at all but very good for getting things going quickly.
 
To be honest, I have little free time for making music at the moment and am seriously considering going with just Reason...the main motivation for this is that there is no messing about with bit bridges or having to download multiple plugin updates from different sites on a regular basis - all updates are pretty much in the one place. As it is now, if I have 2 hours on a given day to make some music, I seem to spend the first 60 mins updating various plugs before I even get started on anything remotely creative...so we'll see whether I can live without all the VST's I currently have and what the Rack Extension stuff holds for the future. 

I still maintain a Project5 User website with a lot of information contributed by many P5 users over the years a https://project5.technetos.com/.  It is a replacement for the old "P5 Wiki" that had been shutdown--I happened to have 100% of the content available after the Wiki was shutdown so I decided to give it a home on the web for everyone who still wanted to access it.

There are some Rewire articles there (among many other tutorials) and quite a few downloads for songs, sounds, etc.

Music is something I do in my spare time and from year to year I have other things that take precedence in the spare time, so I just don't use P5 as much as I used to.  I started with Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 long before Project5 was ever created, and I have kept up with its evolution into what is now SONAR X1.  Much of Project5's features have been moved into SONAR and expanded upon.