Can someone explain the hype behind this?  It is another vintage compressor emulation.  It is cakewalk branded and costs $99.  Feels expensive for a Cakewalk compressor.  They aren't Waves.  What am I missing?

I believe this is going to be the first in a series of plugins developed by Cakewalk to break into the VST market. Up to this point all of their products have leaned towards being native to Sonar. This plug is probably their way of beginning a market strategy aimed at selling more universal vst fx. That's the feeling I get. I do like the CA-2A a lot. $99 does seem a little steep for it, but I got it for $20 as an upgrade for PC-2A. If you have PC-2A already I don't think you will hear a drastic difference. I hear a little smoothness that was not there with the PC-2A. It was worth the upgrade price.

Pricing is always an interesting exercise.  I struggle to imagine forking out $99 for a VST compressor to a company whom I pay only $99 to upgrade something as feature rich as a producer upgrade.  Yet I wouldn't think twice about giving the same money to another company like Waves.  I guess that I am not used to getting so little for my money from Cakewalk.

$99 is the retail price. You know it will go on sale at some point for considerably less.

It is cakewalk branded and costs $99.  Feels expensive for a Cakewalk compressor.  They aren't Waves.  What am I missing?

The quality of this particular plugin is (IMO) far better than many of the "included" compressors.
It's on par with some of the better 3rd party plugins...