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re: 1)  Not necessarily.  This can be achieved legally through reverse engineering, as the goal of said reverse engineering is interoperatbility & does not result in a competing product (as sonar not longer being for sale).  This is the case in the EU at least.  Appears possbile in US but likely more risk attached.
 
re: 2)  An entire customer base, not worth any investment to win over?  How much have you spent on Cakewalk products over the years?

1) Still VERY expensive and likely an expense that would be difficult to estimate up front.
2) I just don’t see the potential customer base to “win over” to be anywhere big enough or a sure enough bet to warrant such a speculative investment. Of course this is merely my opinion and I don’t speak from inside knowledge but I expect to be proven right. If not, great for those who want Studio One. I own Studio One One and it has many merits but I only use Cubase now. If I was considering it now I wouldn’t let that feature figure in my decision.

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vintagevibe

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Why wouldn't they? There's a great business case for it.  In thier shoes, I'd certainly employ an ex-sonar dev or two to add this feature or create a small standalone convertor. As it would make Studio One top choice when Sonar users evetually have to move DAWs.

Two reasons:
1) They would need legal access to the source code which is currently not for sale.
2) It would be very expensive with no clear return on investment. Since that would be a feature solely for the benefit of a specific group with absolutely no value to anyone not in that group it’s a bad investment. Also the potential customers in that group have several solutions from other, much larger companies. Also this is a specific moment. By the time a major feature like that could be added the moment will have passed. Since software is so expensive to develope properly companies need to make investments into features that a large number of their users need. Sonar import would not be such an investment. Also if they were to purchase rights to the source code that would add a HUGE additional expense. It would be a waste of time and energy to wait for such a feature.

re: 1)  Not necessarily.  This can be achieved legally through reverse engineering, as the goal of said reverse engineering is interoperatbility & does not result in a competing product (as sonar not longer being for sale).  This is the case in the EU at least.  Appears possbile in US but likely more risk attached.
 
re: 2)  An entire customer base, not worth any investment to win over?  How much have you spent on Cakewalk products over the years?

I'm guessing that reverse engineering binaries is a very time consuming and expensive endeavor.

sharke
 
I'm guessing that reverse engineering binaries is a very time consuming and expensive endeavor.

Yes, unless you happen to be able to employ someone that already has a pretty good idea of the layout of the binary files in question! ...that being my fundamental point!
 

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sharke
 
I'm guessing that reverse engineering binaries is a very time consuming and expensive endeavor.

Yes, unless you happen to be able to employ someone that already has a pretty good idea of the layout of the binary files in question! ...that being my fundamental point!
 

I don't think you will see any significant development specific to the SONAR user base.  It just isn't a big enough base to make a difference.  Basically all of this talk of a white knight stepping in to save SONAR is just not going to happen and we really should move on.
 
But we also should learn a lesson -- all DAW users should see SONAR's demise as a cautionary tale.  It can happen to any product out there.  We really should push for open interchange standards.  This has existed for a decade in the notation world with MusicXML.  It isn't perfect, but it is a lot better then a dead end.  There ought to be a DAW-XML standard.
 
A big problem is that much of "the DAW" is actually assorted plug-ins and you can never standard on those.  But there ought at least be a standard that will move the audio and MIDI from one platform to another, and connect the basic routing.  That alone would be very helpful.
 
 

Thing to think about.... If sonar user base were so big, one would think it wouldn't have lost money year over year with Roland and Gibson. Not to be a negative Nelly, but I fear that if the sonar user base were far more "into" sonar than any potential investors or the product would have been profitable and not failed.

Clearly I'm not talking about a white knight stepping in and saving sonar. I accept that sonar is finished.  I'm simply talking about supporting a feature request that if implemented would save a great deal of time transitioning to another DAW.  This requries very little effort & I'm happy for Presonus or any other DAW company to judge the financial merit of creating some form of tool to help transition.
 

cparmerlee
A big problem is that much of "the DAW" is actually assorted plug-ins and you can never standard on those.  But there ought at least be a standard that will move the audio and MIDI from one platform to another, and connect the basic routing.  That alone would be very helpful.

 
Transfering plugin setup (/state) is actually the easiest part, as the VST interface including state storage is a standard used by all DAWs that support VSTs.  Even a tool to convert sonar fx chains into studio one effect chains would be incredibly useful in transitioning a project.
 

Blades
Thing to think about.... If sonar user base were so big, one would think it wouldn't have lost money year over year with Roland and Gibson. Not to be a negative Nelly, but I fear that if the sonar user base were far more "into" sonar than any potential investors or the product would have been profitable and not failed.

This is more to do with the user base expanding / upgrading (/or not... being more to the point!).  This doesn't mean that there isn't a large user base who would be happy with being able to transition to a new DAW (especially as there is no longer any hope of a new completely stable sonar to look forward to).  I'd happily argue that one reason there are so many X3 users, is that the investment in time requried to another DAW is too large! (with the other being the platinum wasnt yet stable!)

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Transfering plugin setup (/state) is actually the easiest part, as the VST interface including state storage is a standard used by all DAWs that support VSTs.  Even a tool to convert sonar fx chains into studio one effect chains would be incredibly useful in transitioning a project.
 

 
I agree that it wouldn't be such a big deal to transfer plugin settings. But developing a tool to convert Sonar FX Chains to Studio One effect chains would not be straightforward. For instance, what if the FX Chain contains a plugin that is locked into Sonar and not usable in other DAW's? And what about ProChannels - you obviously can't replicate every ProChannel effect chain in Studio One because they may contain ProChannel modules which of course aren't available in S1. 

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Yes, unless you happen to be able to employ someone that already has a pretty good idea of the layout of the binary files in question! ...that being my fundamental point!
 

It would still be reverse engineering and very involved. Using any Cakewalk source code would, of course, be illegal.

sharke
I agree that it wouldn't be such a big deal to transfer plugin settings. But developing a tool to convert Sonar FX Chains to Studio One effect chains would not be straightforward. For instance, what if the FX Chain contains a plugin that is locked into Sonar and not usable in other DAW's? And what about ProChannels - you obviously can't replicate every ProChannel effect chain in Studio One because they may contain ProChannel modules which of course aren't available in S1.

Even if said tool were ignorant of whether the plugins were locked into Sonar or not, would it not still be incredibly useful?
 
Currently audio & midi can be D&D'd to/from Sonar to other DAWs & while slow its possible.  The only things missing are an equivalently simple solution for routing and plugin setup.  For me the plugin setups will be the most time consuming to recreate.
 

vintagevibe

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Yes, unless you happen to be able to employ someone that already has a pretty good idea of the layout of the binary files in question! ...that being my fundamental point!

It would still be reverse engineering and very involved. Using any Cakewalk source code would, of course, be illegal.

Yes, of course using the source code would be illegal.  However, having knowledge of the principles & ideas behind the  source code is not illegal & can greatly reduce the time required to reverse engineer a file format.  That is the point I was trying to make.

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Yes, of course using the source code would be illegal.  However, having knowledge of the principles & ideas behind the  source code is not illegal & can greatly reduce the time required to reverse engineer a file format.  That is the point I was trying to make.

I’m actually not sure if it would be legal or not for a former Cakewalk employee to use information learned on the job to write new software. Reminds me of insider trading but it would really be a question for a lawyer. Why don’t you contact an employee and ask them?