jtendero@powerup.com.au

jjj.fcc
Well... my impressions...
 
Studio One: lack of VST support... no way...

Studio One 3, the full version supports VSTs both ver 2 and 3. And it is available cheaply for Sonar users as a crossgrade. Studio One Artist is the low frills version.

You can also buy VST/Rewire support separately for Studio One Artist:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/S1VSTRewireExp
 
Personally, I'd go for the crossgrade while it's so cheap tho.

I have no inside track at Gibson any more, but when I was there, I noticed that if there was nothing to talk about there would be no talk. So if someone was in fact buying Cakewalk, I think we'd hear about it. On the other hand if Cakewalk was a dead issue, I also think we'd have a "The servers are shutting down on March 1" or whatever. All that Gibson has said is that there will be no more development on SONAR and that the servers would keep going for the foreseeable future, which gives the company a lot of leeway in how to proceed.
 
I also don't think this is necessarily a "digital situation" where 1 = Cakewalk survives, 0 = Cakewalk dies. Maybe some company would want the ProChannel plug-ins, which are excellent, and maybe Rapture - I still haven't seen any instrument that does what it can do. Or maybe a company will hire the developers to add SONAR features to their programs. Or maybe a giant meteor will hit the world and none of this will matter. We'll know when we know. 

donbelisle
I will be running Sonar for a long, long time. I have added  3 others DAWs in my toolset, (already had DP9.5).
There is way to much be re-learning outside of Sonar. I don`t have that time available to
spend years mastering a new set of tools. So for a while, Sonar is still home for me.
The other DAWs have their strong points, but I know Sonar very well.
 
Happy New year to all of you. 
I have truly enjoyed reading everyone`s comments.  Many were so very helpful and fun. 
I hope Sonar re-surfaces somewhere.
 
The talent that went into it`s creation since conception from the 80`s until now, was inspiring to see from it`s humble
beginnings as a midi sequencer, to a full-up Audio DAW. There are times a "classic" is born, 
such as Sonar Platinum.   
Have wonderful year, to everyone.
DB 

I couldn't agree more.  If a tool works, it works.  Sonar has been improved countless times and for myself, at X3 Producer, it just made no sense for me to upgrade or change.  I understand that there were still things that people wished for (some nonexistent and some just overall improvements), but as far as I can see, I too will be using my Sonar X3 Producer for the next 20 years.

I said the same thing about Windows 7 and I refuse to change it.  I have Ghost copies of all my Windows 7 machines and see absolutely no reason to change.

The only thing I have nearly no knowledge of is how to Mix and Master like a real engineer, but I trust my ears and am able to read books and magazines.  I'll get there.

 
This is why I was thinking that if a lot of us went to Cubase, that maybe Cubase would pick up some of the Sonar engineers and use some of the features.
 
Best,
AB
 

Anderton
. Or maybe a company will hire the developers to add SONAR features to their programs. Or maybe a giant meteor will hit the world and none of this will matter. We'll know when we know. 

Same here and not only the long process of learning a new DAW, but all the money I put into Sonar over the years and now starting over by forking out more big bucks to rebuild with a new DAW and plugins....Hoping another company will take over Cakewalk and keep it going, but if not I'm thinking about moving to Pro-Tools... 

Sharke said:
 
"Any feeling could be described as "legitimate" simply by virtue of it having been felt by someone. The trouble is that feelings are frequently not based upon objective fact, or reasonable trains of thought, or even a rational set of values. For example, people "mourning" the loss of Sonar and acting like some tremendous tragedy has been inflicted upon them need to get a grip of their lives. You only have to turn on the news to realize how pathetic it is. Here in New York the other day there was an apartment fire which wiped out 12 people, some of them kids. When I read stories like that and then go online and read some of the self-centered, melodramatic rants people are posting about the news that some dispensable, replaceable piece of software will no longer receive updates, it kind of annoys me. I guess my feelings are legitimate too, yes? "
 
Of Course feelings are not based on objective fact. They're feelings. They have little to do with "reasonable trains of thought, or even a rational set of values." Besides which, reasonable to whom? You? You are the standard by which others' feelings are to be judged? You determine what values are rational? Since you've got it all figured out, please let us in on the secret, so we can order, structure and reason our lives into perfectly rational trains of thought, and stop having these bothersome, irrational things called feelings. Sheesh. I would think that a musician, of all people, would not be one to lecture us like this. 
 
Your other points are valid. But you're way, way off base on this one.
 
 

deswind
 
This is why I was thinking that if a lot of us went to Cubase, that maybe Cubase would pick up some of the Sonar engineers and use some of the features.
 
Best,
AB
 

Anderton
. Or maybe a company will hire the developers to add SONAR features to their programs. Or maybe a giant meteor will hit the world and none of this will matter. We'll know when we know. 

Personally if that had been my thought process I would have gone to Studio One and not Cubase because, as far as I can tell, Studio One's current user base is smaller than Cubase and more Sonar users seem to be choosing that option. 

LOSTinSWIRL
Anyone notice how the forum registered users gained about 3000 users in the last three weeks or so?

Could be people that saw the news on the website and joined up to find out more. Could be spammers, I've seen quite a few of those lately.

sharke
 
Any feeling could be described as "legitimate" simply by virtue of it having been felt by someone. The trouble is that feelings are frequently not based upon objective fact, or reasonable trains of thought, or even a rational set of values. For example, people "mourning" the loss of Sonar and acting like some tremendous tragedy has been inflicted upon them need to get a grip of their lives. You only have to turn on the news to realize how pathetic it is. Here in New York the other day there was an apartment fire which wiped out 12 people, some of them kids. When I read stories like that and then go online and read some of the self-centered, melodramatic rants people are posting about the news that some dispensable, replaceable piece of software will no longer receive updates, it kind of annoys me. I guess my feelings are legitimate too, yes? 
 

 
It is true there are worse things happening in the world. It is also true that people feel gutted by a rather cold impersonal decision to "kill" SONAR. I have invested almost thirty years using and understanding Cakewalk and SONAR. I'll grant that as a hobbyist user, I haven't spent the tens of thousands of hours a professional that spends their entire work day would have spent over that same time, but it is still mentally a significant investment of effort, and for a hobbyist, significant bit of money, too. I don't have a corporate bank account to use to purchase new software for my job.

I can't just shake off the feeling of loss from this just because there are worse things happening. Given that I don't have a source of income from making music and that I've retired from my "real" job, I also feel cut off and left out because the lifetime updates would have helped me be able to afford more plugins instead of spending that money to get a new version of what I already have. I will continue to use SONAR and probably also not invest in any new plugins. It is rational to feel loss at this time. I wouldn't call it a tragedy on the scale of Hurricane Harvey or Maria, but it isn't happiness and light, either.
 
Your opinion has been noted, but I don't need lectures telling me this isn't the end of the world and that my feelings are pointless (or at least, not rational).
 

The bottom line is that Sonar was nowhere near popular enough to justify the development cost. And that's not Gibson's fault. 

It could be partly Gibson's fault. If they had spent the effort over their tenure of ownership promoting Cakewalk products and integrating them into the TASCAM product line as they had announced, the product would have had much higher visibility and might have actually been profitable. Instead they sat on it like a cash cow. It was never a cash cow and it required and probably deserved better promotion and green lighting of the ideas put forward by Cakewalk to improve the financials. Of course the Cakewalk management of it's products could have been better, too. And perhaps there are too many high end DAWs on the market and everyone "knows" real music is made on a Mac. All of that put SONAR in a precarious position. It fell off the ledge it was on and all the kings men and all the kings horses shall never put Cakewalk back together again.
 
And that is what hurts.

no one here knows what really happened regarding gibson etc - personally, i'll speculate that gibson were cakewalk's last chance, after they had already failed with roland and intergrated/branded hardware, with anderton joining around the same time - "if anyone can save it, anderton can" - but cakewalk still failed to adjust to the new digital marketplace
/fwiw