Not Deal - Wasn't Expecting Sonar Free Dealbreaker This Early

Tagged: Sonar

This topic has 7 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 7 months, 4 weeks ago by dsteinschneider.

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July 17, 2025 at 1:33 pm #1000032091
dsteinschneider
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I use Reaper and Mixbus for my DAW daily drivers. When I helped our band’s singer songwriter migrate his studio from analog to digital 2 years ago, I chose Cakewalk because I thought it was more user friendly for someone who had never used a DAW or plugin. I was very satisfied with Cakewalk by Bandlab and the studio users liked it for tracking and mixing. We moved over to Sonar “Free” and created 9 projects, each a song from a recent live performance.

Yesterday I was over there, the singer had been mixing one of the songs. He, being the non-digital native he is, didn’t save when he was done the day before and instead just left the project open. We mixed it a bit more and when I clicked on Save Project it informed me that Sonar needed to be activated to save. Instead of letting us go on BandLab and login it insisted on requiring an update to activate. So, we had to abandon all the work done and close the Project unsaved and update Sonar.

I told the singer that this is the end for Sonar. We will be going forward with Reaper.

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July 17, 2025 at 1:42 pm #1000032093
bselack
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Just a reminder that nothing in life is actually free. 🙂 (Certainly not free from issues)

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July 17, 2025 at 2:08 pm #1000032095
peter
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The old saying in the business world is, if you’re not paying to use the product, you’re the product, is almost always true.

The way that Meng has heavy-handedly required activation for free product and then stopped it for Cakewalk by BandLab should be of major concern for anyone who plans on opening Cakewalk by BandLab or Cakewalk Sonar project files a year from now without paying for a subscription. That’s what stopped me.

Now, Sonar is failing so bad they’re taking their strategies all over the board. Based on a hint from the social media manager (Ashwin), BandLab is probably going to release a perpetual license version. My business experience leads me to believe that it’s too late for that product to succeed. They’ve too badly damaged the brand. But if they release a perpetual license, they’ll very likely kill off the free version so that it won’t activate anymore.

Even so, I would probably pay for the perpetual license version. No, I would never use it to make new projects. I would buy it to open up my existing projects from Cakewalk by BandLab. There is no chance whatsoever that I think it’s a smart idea for anyone who wants to be able to open up a project created today three years from now, that Sonar is a safe or smart bet. It is neither.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music.

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July 17, 2025 at 4:37 pm #1000032099
MagicRuss
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That Reaper plugin to import Sonar projects seems to work pretty well as far as I have tested it.

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July 17, 2025 at 4:47 pm #1000032100
peter
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On July 17, 2025 at 4:37 pm MagicRuss said

That Reaper plugin to import Sonar projects seems to work pretty well as far as I have tested it.

I didn’t even know that there was such a tool for Reaper. That’s great! (I switched to Studio One Pro and have yet to try the conversion app that Bapu has made a couple of posts about — which means I can’t recall the name of it at the moment!).

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

Check out my music.
July 17, 2025 at 5:09 pm #1000032105
William Heins
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I switched from CbB(after switching from Sonar)to Samplitude for a bit. Samplitude blows it out of the water as far as capability goes but it was just awkward to use. Soon after a cheap crossgrade to Cubase came up and I started using that and took no time at all to get acclimated. A year or so after that I went all in and went to Nuendo. Now I’m running Nuendo, Wavelab, Halion, and Dorico…guess I’m all in with Steinberg 😉 I have a Presonus Studio One something or other that came with my interface that I never opened as well as Digital Performer Lite that came with a MIDI interface…also Mixbus and LUNA but Nuendo hits the spot for me 🙂

A lot of demo stuff here- https://www.reverbnation.com/daylight

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July 18, 2025 at 7:23 am #1000032117
Zargg
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The tool from Azslow is called CWP2Song, and can be used for Studio One. I have used it on several songs with success. It’s in public Beta now.

The REAPER tool is called ReaCWP.

All the best.

Present past for the future

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July 27, 2025 at 5:46 pm #1000032476
dsteinschneider
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Returning back to comment that the last couple of updates have much improved the Cakewalk Sonar user experience. The banner and countdown are gone. Hopefully next they can move the evaluation notice to the title bar.
- This reply was modified 7 months, 4 weeks ago by dsteinschneider.
- This reply was modified 7 months, 4 weeks ago by dsteinschneider.
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