SoulSurvivor
Hi, if this Sonar Home Studio monstrosity is in fact what Cakewalk has been working on and not just a convenient excuse, how come Cakewalk made a video promoting Sonar4Mac showing Sonar Platinum running on a Mac? You will plainly see this in the video, it is obviously Platinum, if you need anymore proof just pause the video where you can see a full shot of Sonar and you can see SONAR Platinum in the title bar. Maybe this Home Studio thing is just to head off any negative backlash and just a ploy after all, seems a bit suspicious to me. is the link to the video, or just search Sonar OS X Alpha on youtube. I imagine there will be many weird and wonderful excuses and reasonings for this, but it seems fishy to me

This was explained before. Its mainly related to plugins and the amount we could physically test for the prototype. Platinum has a huge set of features and third party stuff. Also we couldn't release a free alpha of platinum with all the plugins without incurring licensing issues. 

well, glad i didn't waste any money on the lifetime thing in hope of getting a mac version.
crossover?  sigh.. i could do that myself with sonar and wine.. thanks.
 

Gotta say I am disappointed but guess I understand. I started with Cakewalk and went to Sonar Pro Studio. I then switched to an iMac and started learning Garageband. If nothing else, the prototype allowed me to export the tracks from my recordings to wave files and import them to GarageBand. Guess its GarageBand from now on. I do miss Sonar but not Windows. You can do some pretty amazing things with GarageBand.

otnooishphoo
well, glad i didn't waste any money on the lifetime thing in hope of getting a mac version.
crossover?  sigh.. i could do that myself with sonar and wine.. thanks.

+1 - I was tempted with the lifetime thing, been with Sonar since v2 but am not surprised that Cakewalk has bailed even though many others seem to manage the duality of platforms. I'm soooo pleased I decided to sack off Windows and move to Mac and now it seems that the move to Reaper was also the right decision. Good luck with Windows, I've been with it since the very first, but now it's just an ugly slug. BTW the new Mac's look fantastic, the Pro versions even more so. All my interfaces which wouldn't work with Win 8/10 work fine on the iMac even though officially unsupported, I couldn't be happier. Guess I can delete all my Cakewalk shortcuts now.
 
Toodles!
 
James

Rain
 
This is anecdotal but if there is one thing which seems a constant in every studio I've visited and among the people who work there, it's that they tend to always be a few versions behind and usually avoid upgrades and updates as much as possible (OS and DAW software - I don't think I know anyone who runs Pro Tools 12).
 
When the computer is but one component and when there is a lot of hardware involved (AVID control surfaces, DSP cards, etc), people often seem to value a stable, working configuration over the lastest/fastest.
 
Of course, that is just my personal observation. But still... Most Mac owners I know don't really care for the latest/fastest. They have many other priorities before that.
 
As I mentioned earlier, the fact that Abbey Road decided to equip its 2 new studios with Mac computers - despite them being a few generations behind - illustrate just that. It's certainly not because they couldn't afford killer PCs.
 
Obviously, that's just one segment of the industry. But in my personal experience, that attitude is not uncommon in other segments too. 

This is not uncommon in many industry segments. Many enterprise databases run one or two versions behind the curve for reasons of stability and resource management - constant upgrades can be quite expensive but more importantly can be high risk. To characterise Mac owners as being happy to settle for 'last season' stuff I find a quite ill-informed comment. It applies equally to users of other PC's as well. We all want the sweet spot of performance with maximum stability and predictability.
 
In any event, older Mac's tend to be much more useful for longer not being shackled as they are with a slug of an OS. My Mid-2011 iMac happily out-performs my 'killer PC' which on paper is superior in all areas except intense online gaming (difficult to beat a pair of Cross-fired Radeon's) even though the PC runs the last reasonable version of Windows, 7 Pro. It also does this using a fraction of the disk and memory resources the PC demands. It is also noticeably more stable, boots faster, is not virus prone and the colour rendition is superb 'oob' which is great for my photography. The PC is now retired and on cold standby awaiting de-commissioning.
 
I'll be leaving you now as I take the view that I have been shafted by Cakewalk with their U-turn on Mac support so won't be following up on this. Good luck!
 
James
 

you got to do what you got to do, myself, and i would guess a lot of others are doing fine with windows. windows 10 has been by far the best windows os for me, stable, fast, and everything for me just works, even some old audio interfaces that i don't want to part with just yet, which have no official support under windows 10, the latest drivers are from back in xp - windows 7  days i think, but it works fine, as good as ever. doesn't really matter what you use as long as it does the job for you and suits your needs.
 
i guess if you had purchased lifetime updates solely for the promise of a mac version you might be a little p'd off, it would have been a risky move as there wasn't actually a promise or guaranty that it would ever see the light of day, so you made the right decision there. i would say most windows users would be very happy with the lifetime updates, they have already paid for themselves as it were, i don't even use sonar much at all over the last 2 and a half years since switching, but i still think the lifetime updates deal for $99 was a bargain, keeping me in the loop should things change down the track. as long as you are happy with what you got and it does what you need, doesn't really matter, just enjoy

I'm happy for decision to stop Sonar4Mac development,
it is unfortunate for all the Mac users, but I believe it was an only reasonable step for Cakewalk to do,
funding development of multiplatform software which is burdened by "legacy" Windows code is impossible task,
better keep advancing on one platform, than challenging each but loosing against competition on all,

me, I've known Sonar since version 8 or so, and I really liked it immediately (and believe me, I've been using practically all major DAWs at various studios and events through time), been fan of X1 and X3, latest version of Sonar are impressive as well,

but things started to look grim with launch of Windows 10 and whole Microsoft thinking, so about half year ago I finally made a choice to start leaving Windows (summary of all the reasons would make up a decent book) and I managed to make bootable OSX El Capitan on my X99 workstation (yes it's a hackintosh, technically illegal to use, but it's not a commercially used rig, and I do have some macs around aside),
 
as I'm a multiplatform user, I did a big research on which DAW to pick and use, and finally went for Reaper, recent versions being finally usable, reliable, extremely lightweight, and performing great on both Windows and Mac OS(X), so ease of moving projects is unbeatable which is crucial aspect for my workflow
- that said there are things I'm seriously missing compared to Sonar (ARA Melodyne, keyboard shortcut to set all tracks height to fit project window, built-in channel strip etc..), but it's a good alternative for OS(X) platform :)
 
 

I had gotten my introduction to the whole DAW world VIA HS -2 and stuck with Cakewalk DAW's to the point where I am now . Running SPlat.
At first I was very happy at the thought of being able to run SONAR on my Mac.
As things played out over time with the SONAR on a Mac development , it has certainly looked as if it wasn't gonna happen ..
Sigh,
It would have been real nice to have been able to run SONAR and Logic on the same machine .
I have made my peace with that idea and I have moved on to a general feeling of acceptance of the situation as it is , not how I would like it too be .
 
Kenny

jamesattfield

Rain
 
This is anecdotal but if there is one thing which seems a constant in every studio I've visited and among the people who work there, it's that they tend to always be a few versions behind and usually avoid upgrades and updates as much as possible (OS and DAW software - I don't think I know anyone who runs Pro Tools 12).
 
When the computer is but one component and when there is a lot of hardware involved (AVID control surfaces, DSP cards, etc), people often seem to value a stable, working configuration over the lastest/fastest.
 
Of course, that is just my personal observation. But still... Most Mac owners I know don't really care for the latest/fastest. They have many other priorities before that.
 
As I mentioned earlier, the fact that Abbey Road decided to equip its 2 new studios with Mac computers - despite them being a few generations behind - illustrate just that. It's certainly not because they couldn't afford killer PCs.
 
Obviously, that's just one segment of the industry. But in my personal experience, that attitude is not uncommon in other segments too. 

This is not uncommon in many industry segments. Many enterprise databases run one or two versions behind the curve for reasons of stability and resource management - constant upgrades can be quite expensive but more importantly can be high risk. To characterise Mac owners as being happy to settle for 'last season' stuff I find a quite ill-informed comment. It applies equally to users of other PC's as well. We all want the sweet spot of performance with maximum stability and predictability.
 
In any event, older Mac's tend to be much more useful for longer not being shackled as they are with a slug of an OS. My Mid-2011 iMac happily out-performs my 'killer PC' which on paper is superior in all areas except intense online gaming (difficult to beat a pair of Cross-fired Radeon's) even though the PC runs the last reasonable version of Windows, 7 Pro. It also does this using a fraction of the disk and memory resources the PC demands. It is also noticeably more stable, boots faster, is not virus prone and the colour rendition is superb 'oob' which is great for my photography. The PC is now retired and on cold standby awaiting de-commissioning.
 
I'll be leaving you now as I take the view that I have been shafted by Cakewalk with their U-turn on Mac support so won't be following up on this. Good luck!
 
James
 

Win 7 pro is the latest reasonable version of Windows?  According to who?  
 
That OS came out 8 years ago!
 
Numerous resources suggest Apple is not keeping pace with the professional A/V market (look up ProTools users jumping the Mac ship).  
 
Macs are notorious for an upgrade in an OS requiring a program overhaul due to lack of backwards compatibility.  

kennywtelejazz
I had gotten my introduction to the whole DAW world VIA HS -2 and stuck with Cakewalk DAW's to the point where I am now . Running SPlat.
At first I was very happy at the thought of being able to run SONAR on my Mac.
As things played out over time with the SONAR on a Mac development , it has certainly looked as if it wasn't gonna happen ..
Sigh,
It would have been real nice to have been able to run SONAR and Logic on the same machine .
I have made my peace with that idea and I have moved on to a general feeling of acceptance of the situation as it is , not how I would like it too be .
 
Kenny

Great attitude Kenny! 
 
When I first heard the announcement, I was excited for Sonar to be joining the cross-platform world.  I figured it would be good for Sonar to grow and maybe become accepted as more than the "other" DAW.
 
In hindsight, I think it was probably an overly optimistic plan, given how invested Cakewalk code development has always been in the Windows only environment.
 
In the end I am not that surprised to hear that it turned out to be too much work, and their potential for return on investment appeared to be shrinking.  That is a combination of technical hurdles, with the economic realities of the software market.  No promises were made, other than an Alpha, so nobody was shafted, intentionally or otherwise.  They took a look, and had to move on.  Good business decision.
 
Plus there are still a few other good DAW choices out there if you need to work cross platform.  A lot of folks like Kenny use more than one DAW, and some even more than one OS.  It's not the end of the world! 
 
And I think the Mac vs PC threads that have been around forever are pointless.  Both are good tools that have their places in certain workflows.
 
Bottom line is your computer and your DAW are just tools.  What you do with them is up to you.  Design decisions shouldn't ruin your day, or cramp your creativity.  Just move on and make some music!