The end of an era

[Nestor]

Brother, don’t accept this bitterness in your life, just dump Cakewalk, choose a new partner and keep going with your music right now. There are several REALLY GREAT DAWs today to choose from. I don’t think Cubase or Studio One and other great products are any more "that" difficult to be learned. There are also so many books, free tutorials, forums, videos, you name it… You have it all to learn and learn fast.

The faster you jump into the void, the sooner you will be fine!

Right now, you are in the middle of nowhere.

[Sounddesigner]

This is devastating news to me. Sonar is the only DAW I know. Everytime I tried other DAW's such as Reaper, Samplitude, Cubase, Ableton, etc I only tried them for a VERY short time

You haven't tried Reason ? I have the CakeWalk LA-2A Rack Extension for Reason, consensus is it will just keep working with no impact from the demise of cakewalk... long live Rack Extensions ! ( and mastering with Scope 7 ).

Reason is a good option since I have some familararity with it and Propellerheads the company. I have not used Reason since it became a DAW, and the last version I used was v3 so I know A LOT has changed but atleast a little familararity should still be there. Plus I only have to pay $125 to upgtade from version 3 to 10 .

I'm going to start learning Tracktion right now since I already own it and am a little familiar with it and I like its feature set (extremely flexible routing, Hybrid-Buffers, no domgle needed, project freeze, CPU efficient, etc). When I go to 64-bit O/S it will be both Reason and Tracktion (now called Waveform). I don't trust sticking to only one of them cause both DAWs rely on internet-activation and it is bad copy-protection that largely got me into this mess. I do however prefer internet-activation over a dongle/virtual-dongle. If the DAW does not rely solely on a License-Key to Activate it then you don't own it and can lose your ability tp use that DAW if the company perishes. License-key activation is quasi ownership but everything else is just renting and a scam!!

I will not be spending a lot of money anymore on big bloated DAWs anymore especially since you don't really own them anymore and can lose your ability to use them upon the companies death or rip-off business-model. Sonar was one of the big and bloated major DAWs out here and over the years I spent several thousands of dollars on all of its upgrades only to have nothing now. I generally won't spend more than $100 for a Native effect plugin and now I won't spend more than $200 on a DAW anymore since renting and needing to repeatedly upgrade greatly devalues a product. Also DAW upgrades have to be cheap now. Both Reason and Trackion are cheap, i'll be paying a $100 or less to upgrade Tracktion to Waveform and i'll be paying $125 to upgrade Reason from version 3 to version 10.


My poor eyesight and lack of time will further slow me down when trying to learn both DAWs but I obviously have to bite-the-bullet. It took me many many years to learn Sonar and get comfortable with it, I spent many days learning with other DAWs and walked away with very little.

EDITED

[Sounddesigner]

The faster you jump into the void, the sooner you will be fine!

Right now, you are in the middle of nowhere.

You are correct Nester, I do need to move on as quick as possible. I more than likely will start learning another DAW (Tracktion / Waveform) this January. So I will be jumping into that voide .

[Nestor]

If you can make a crossgrade to Studio One, that would be really smart and positive for you. Why? Because it is the easiest DAW in terms of workflow, this is something many people will tell you, it is not my appreciation alone. Even Cubase is right now actually copyng what Studio One can do! That is telling you a lot!

[ronnie]

If it wasn't for Cakewalk I probably would never bought Scope.

In 2003 Cakewalk demoed Project 5 at Sam Ash in NYC. Project 5 was a nice modular pattern based MIDI sequencer and audio editor, player that you could quickly build up songs with. It was kind of like the old DOS Texture with a nice Windows GUI. It was actually very nice. After version 2 it was discontinued. In any case, maybe 30 people showed up and got caps and literature and I won one of the Project 5 software packages. I was very impressed with how quickly the guy built-up a nice tune but it was the sound that knocked my socks off. I hung around and wanted to find out how he got that sound. What was the soundcard, the interface, plugins?

He minimized P5 and there was Scope. The whole P5 demo was running Creamware Pulsar. Synths, organ, guitar, samples, effects, the whole nine yards. I thought the P5 interface was cool but this was insane. The way everything was graphically laid out and routed was mind blowing. I/O, routing, mixer, synths, effects, busses, the one we've come to know and love. He just gushed about it. Started talking DSP processing, CPU overhead, low-latency, true hardware emulation. He shut it down and took off the top of the PC case and showed me the PCI card that made it happen. The whip with all the I/O you could want. I had to have it!

Sam Ash didn't sell it. I don't recall anyone selling it at the time so I bought a Luna 2 direct from the Creamware office in Vancouver. That was the least expensive way to get in. When it came the guys there got me up and running with all the XP tweaks in those days (ACPI, background processes). Basically that was it. Sonar and Cubase on top. I recall first VST 3rd party VST instrument the Prophet, called Pro-5, that I had but the Scope versions blew it out of the water. Stunning difference. No comparison. Bought a Pulsar 2 and a Power Pulsar with some more plugins within a couple of months and never looked back. Those cards were, and still are, the core of my little studio. They survived a Dell Pentium XP system that eventually died and now happily live in an Quad Core Win 7 HP XW 4600. The cards are going on 15 years. How much hardware has changed in 15 years; from processors to video (VGA to HDMI) and sound interfaces. It's like you did a time-lapse video of the inside of a PC over 15 years and the only thing that doesn't change are the Scope cards. That would make a great video!

So, I thank you Cakewalk and whoever did that demo and the Creamware guys in Vancouver one of which I suspect was our keeper of the keys!

[garyb]

yes, he was the (key)per(son) for North America at the time. the place in Vancouver was Creamware N.A. headquarters.

[bosone]

i used sonar 8.5 for i think 4 or 5 years before upgradeing to scope platinum with a lifetime upgrade offer. i think i can stick with splat for the next 4 or 5 years as well, if there is not a giant step forward in technology...
with scope 7, Sonar platinum, komplete ultimate 10, lots of other kontakt libraries, my good preamp / mics and tens of acoustic instruments i can have fun for my whole lifetime...

[ronnie]

Gasp! gary? That was you?

[garyb]

no, i was in Orange, CA at that time, near Los Angeles. i was a Creamware dealer back then.

[ronnie]

Diehard from the git go, eh?

[dbmac]

I remember Ali from Vancouver office, very helpful. And Paul Tanti (Mr. Echo), and Shahin (known as Shaman).
Before that Creamware NA was here in Toronto where I got my TripleDat board - met Frank Hund there

/Dave

[garyb]

Diehard from the git go, eh?

yeah....

[Sounddesigner]

If you can make a crossgrade to Studio One, that would be really smart and positive for you. Why? Because it is the easiest DAW in terms of workflow, this is something many people will tell you, it is not my appreciation alone. Even Cubase is right now actually copyng what Studio One can do! That is telling you a lot!

There was a rumour that Presonous was going to offer Sonar users a Cross-Grade price but I see none. Studio One costs too much initially and each upgrade after that is too expensive. I won't pay more than $200 for a new full-version DAW and no more then about $100 for upgrades. Tracktion/Waveform costs $100 for full-version and $50 for upgrades.

Tracktion has everything I like about Studio One (actually Tracktion had these features first. Presonous definitely copied Tracktion's Plugin Racks (for sophisticated routing) and I wouldn't be surprised if Presonous also copied hybrid-buffers to from Tracktion (one larger buffer for Mixing and one small buffer for Tracking wich allows for tracking at anytime cause it's separate.), Tracktion had these things long befor Studio-One. And while Sonar was the first end-to-end 64-bit Audio-Engine Tracktion had the first 64-bit Audio-Engine.). Tracktion had some innovations when it was first released, its development was derailed for a while cause it suffered the same fate as Sonar long ago when Mackie bought the Tracktion company then after a while let the DAW languish but then eventually sold it back to the original developer.

There is a bad pattern and trend with big companies who know nothing about the DAW world buying little DAW companies and eventually killing them. And also failing at their own DAW. Taascam failed twice in the DAW world now, Gibson failed twice in the DAW world now, Roland failed once, Mackie failed once, Peavy failed. These companies know nothing about the DAW world and thus only ruin the smaller DAW companies they buy. They are determined to get into the DAW world but refuse to make the sacrifices needed for success. Innovation and determination are often with the smaller under-dogs.

[Nestor]

To be honest, Presonus copied everything from everyone, this is the truth. They have created a hybrid, best in its class, kind of DAW in this way. They have come to the conclusion that it was time to get the best of every DAW out there and make it available as one single solution with the best and latest technology and features, and this is exactly what they have done. Indisputably, there are many elements that come from: Cubase (most of all I would say), then Cakewalk, Traction, Bitwig and even Samplitude… there might be some more that I am not aware of.


For what Studio One offers you, honestly, I think it is not expensive.

If there is something Presonus is great at, is listening to their customers. If you get to their forums around the web and see what people asked for and what they have offered them after, you can see they truly respond to the demands of the musician using the software. Try to do the same with Steinberg, and then tell me…

Studio One has some smart features that makes it worth the effort, just for these things it is worth it over much more expensive DAWs. For instance: sample rate management: you can do a better use of your system and its resources thanks to this. This is important to consider, after all, most of your money will not go the “software path” but the “hardware path”. If there is a feature that makes your system stronger because it uses it in a more efficient way, you could consider it also as a saving tool. Routing is the best available in Studio One, you don’t need to learn one thousand things to get started, or repeat many processes clicking like crazy for 30 minutes, it is so intuitive that it surprises me, you can do all the routings in one single minute. You don’t need to understand what you are doing, what you need is to do it. Studio One is FASTER than any other DAW when it comes to building up a full detailed project to start your composition, I mean, with all the instruments included and VST channels loaded with everything you need in place, without unnecessary obstacles. It is really responsive, extremely light and fast, which is great and (I can tell by now) VERY STABLE!!! Stability has no price for me, or if you want to say it in the opposite way: it is the characteristic I would gladly pay more money for! Studio One is seriously configurable too, in every aspect. You can go crazy making it something as different as you want it to be.

My final words for you brother:

Jingle bells, jingle bells, Presonus all the way.
Oh, what fun it is to run Studio One in a system full of grace.
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Presonus all the way.
Oh, what fun to dump Cakewalk away, in exchange of something grate!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Presonus all the way….

[valis]

The one thing Studio One led the pack with was a 64bit FLT mix engine. Much like the days of 32bit FLT vs. INT (pro tools or our scope) processing, this led to another round of 'OMG' type debates and led a few other DAWs to follow (Logic now has a 64bit summing engine too).

Samplitude/Sequoia were the first to have a hybrid mix engine I believe, with a 'mix' buffer and a 'record' or 'live' buffer. Logic did actually have this starting in V5.3 (or thereabouts, I forget) as well, but it wasn't well exposed nor was it that obvious, and you had to pretty much slap the i/o plugin on things you wanted to switch to the 'live' buffer (on multicore systems that was a quick fix way to make the DAW more multithreaded, so I remember this clearly).

I haven't used Cubase in years, and Sonar was so glitchy for my workflows in its first few versions that I had little desire to add it to my arsenal of WAY too much software (which is as good a reason as any to not buy yet another tool).

Still, they will be missed. Anytime the market shrinks or loses a player of that class, we all suffer.

[sunmachine]

Regarding the Studio One crossgrade offer, see this blog post: http://blog.presonus.com/index.php/pres ... ade-offer/

We typically offer a significant discount for customers that are coming from other DAWs to Studio One so that they can get it for about 25% off the price of a standalone copy of Studio One Professional. However, through the end of this year, we want Cakewalk customers to enjoy Studio One Professional at half off the existing crossgrade price—around $149 USD; exact pricing and currency will vary by region, of course.

We will offer this special crossgrade through a handful of select dealers worldwide and also through our direct shop.

[Nestor]

Sounddesigner, brother, go for it! You are done with it! People do not realize how good this DAW is until they actually work with it. At least, download a trial version and see it for yourself. Take advantage of this offering

[Nestor]

BTW: New 3.5 update is FREE of charge.

[Marco]

Arturia 6.0 is out! 399€ until 12.1.2018 with DX7 and Fairlight etc.

[Nestor]

GREAT! I'm willing to see what's new on it by myself! Thanks