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December 7, 2025 at 7:31 pm in reply to: Song Athletics: 8 ways to destroy your sound (for £10) #1000040045
Interesting.
My favorite plug-in for utter sonic annihilation is Freakshow Industries’ Dumpster Fire.
Now on sale at Plugin Boutique for 1% off. Regularly a bargain at $20, now for a short time $19.80.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com1November 26, 2025 at 6:24 pm in reply to: What’s On Your Black Friday Wish List This Year? #1000039499What’s your take on Pianoverse? I love it, and think they’re some of the best-sounding sampled pianos I’ve ever played.Meldway Grand is still my favorite sampled grand ever, but I was surprised by how much I liked Pianoverse after I got it in that IK Humble Bundle earlier this year. It came with the Black Pearl and Royal Upright models.
Meldway Grand is still my go to for playing solo, but I will be trying the Pianoverse ones in mixes that include acoustic pianos.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com1November 26, 2025 at 12:13 pm in reply to: What Deals Have You Picked Up This Black Friday Season? #1000039446So far I took advantage of an A|A|S upgrade offer of $99 to complete my set of their synths.
Lounge Lizard EP-5, Multiphonics CV-3, Strum GS-2 and String Studio VS-3. $25 each was a deal I couldn’t pass up.
Since I’m a sucker for creative glitch FX, I’m going to get something at Pluginboutique to qualify for the Time BOGO. Probably a preset pack for Hybrid 3.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com2October 13, 2025 at 10:46 am in reply to: Would You Find a LM Directory of Developers w/Ratings and Reviews Useful? #1000036183September 17, 2025 at 9:26 am in reply to: MeldaProduction Guitar Focus Sale – (see post for deals) #1000034741September 14, 2025 at 8:56 pm in reply to: What Is Your Absolute Go-To Physical and Virtual Gear? #1000034625I think it’s hitting me harder because of my tendency to be long-winded. Not putting myself down, I just like to write, so I do. My replies can turn into articles/editorials. And I love talking about my favorite gear.
Whether anyone reads it (all) or not, hey, whatever, but I do put effort into it, from my end it’s not just “jibba jabba.”
Lists like this can get long, although I don’t think mine was even as long as those of @fretman or @lastcall.
I guess I could adopt the method that @bluescat mentioned, copying the posts somewhere else until I’m sure they make it, but, damn, that’s some rigmarole to go through just to shoot the poo with some online friends about my toys.
I’ll go over to the test topic and post some rando essays or something, I guess it’s like other software testing, we’ll have to force the mystery behavior to be able to fix it.
The whole thing is a pain in the backend (har har).
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.comSeptember 10, 2025 at 6:02 am in reply to: What Is Your Absolute Go-To Physical and Virtual Gear? #1000034433I wrote up a nice long reply to this listing my favorite stuff and now I see that it isn’t here. Either it didn’t get posted or somehow got deleted.
I don’t know what’s going wrong, but this isn’t the first (or even the second) time I’ve written up a long post on this forum and had it vanish into the aether.
My guess is that others are not having this issue, but I am and it’s really not fun at all. It’s kind of a disincentive for me to keep participating. In the absence of someone looking over my shoulder while I post, I’m not sure what can be done to ensure that I’m doing it right. I have decades of experience on more platforms than I can even remember and this has never happened to such an extent before.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com1Soundfonts are not entirely dead.
When I want to use them, I use sforzando. Garritan Personal Orchestra’s Aria player is a modified version of it.
The factory soundbanks include a pretty useful Mellotron. Used to be my go to before I got SampleTron 2.
If you click on the “instrument banks” button, there’s a pretty extensive and interesting collection of sounds.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com2July 18, 2025 at 6:51 pm in reply to: MeldaProduction MTrackAlign BETA Intro Price $22 reg. $115 #1000032149July 9, 2025 at 1:54 am in reply to: Bandlab Raises Price of Cakewalk Sonar Subscription to $179 Per Year #1000031612July 8, 2025 at 4:02 pm in reply to: 🔥🔥🔥Sonuscore Orchestra Essentials -NOW $39.20 Until July 13th #1000031598July 8, 2025 at 3:58 pm in reply to: What are your top 3 favorite piano sample libraries / VSTs that you own? #1000031597June 24, 2025 at 9:25 pm in reply to: The Best Service Website Is BACK!!! [The Deals are Back!!!] #1000031054June 21, 2025 at 11:13 am in reply to: 🆓 Tape Echo by IK Multimedia reg. $99.99 now FREE #1000030939….Are you sure there is any difference?
Drat, I had a detailed reply typed out that listed all the differences between T-RackS 5 plug-ins and T-RackS 6 versions. The forum ate it. So here it is again:
There are multiple changes to the v6 versions.
The file naming and structure of the VST3’s is different. v6 uses the newer way where there’s a folder named Tape Echo v6.vst3. v5 just has single DLL files with the .vst3 extension.
The names are reported differently in DAW’s. v5’s naming is “TR5 Tape Echo” and v6’s is simply “Tape Echo.”
The logos/branding are different, the v6 ones don’t actually say “T-RackS” on the face of the UI. The v6 ones have no bottom toolbar, those functions have been moved to the hamburger menu at top right.
The v6 dynamics processors have a button at the top that enables an external sidechain input.
All I can think of off the top of my head….
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com3So Brian and (presumably) FineAlly got emails with the license code, Fretman, Teebacca, and I got emails with no license code.
I went as far as examining the email messages’ raw source code.
My guess is that they underestimated how many people would want to check this thing out and whatever range they chose, the license code generator ran out. And because that was never going to happen, the server throws no error.
It’s always kinda sad when a company hands out freebie licenses to get users excited about their tech prowess….and then the process gets messed up for technical reasons.
I’m sure the companies in question would say that this sort of failure is an IT issue so in no way reflects on the product, but I would not agree. Especially in these times, if we’re going to be comfortable with software that needs to phone home, then there damn well better always be a server at home to answer the call.
In the case of Stutter here, it doesn’t seem to be part of their regular lineup, so there’s no way to even download a trial version. If you want to play with it, you have to register it via this process.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.comSo far I’ve tried 3 different email addresses from 3 different domains, tried viewing them with 2 different browsers, plus a standalone email client, and I still can’t get an email message with any license code I can see.
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This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by
superabbit.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.comI finally got a response by giving them my Gmail address, but the response I got had no license code:
“To redeem your free plugin, please follow these steps:
1. Download the inMusic Software Manager.
2. Create a free account or sign in.
3. In the menu, select “Add Product”, then choose “Software Product”.
4. Copy and paste your license code below to redeem.The Software Manager will take care of the rest for you.”
That’s a copy/paste of the contents of the email, and as you can see, there is no license code.
Those of you who received replies, was a license code visible? Were you able to use it to add the product in the InMusic Software Manager?
I can’t believe the amount of hassle I’m experiencing trying to get this. If I didn’t find the damn thing so interesting, I’d cease pursuit.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.comHot off the presses.
https://discuss.cakewalk.com/topic/85283-sonar-202506-overview/
Some interesting new features even aside from the free tier.
They finally included a pane for the BandLab Sounds Collection in Sonar’s Browser, that’s a good idea, long overdue.
The list of features the premium version has that the free version lacks is pretty short.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.comI got mine straight away so that is a bit odd.
I just tried a second time and still nothing.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com1If it came out that the new subscription had less than 50,000 subscribers, even less than 25,000, I would not find it surprising. And we’re just going to have to agree to disagree if you think that targeting DAW users with the subscription-only model…What “new subscription” are you referring to?AFAIK, there has never been any “subscription” to Sonar and/or Next, only a membership to BandLab that includes those products. How would BandLab be able to determine how many people bought memberships primarily to get the Cakewalk DAW’s?Do you think that BandLab only have between 25,000 and 50,000 paid members?You still seem to be assuming that BandLab’s goal in buying the Cakewalk IP was to market Cakewalk’s flagship product, SONAR/CbB/Sonar, as a standalone product, maybe with incidental connection to the BandLab ecosystem. And that BnadLab’s “success” or “failure” with Sonar should be measured in Sonar’s market share.And for all I know, you may be right.But what if they don’t and maybe have never cared about how well Sonar did or does in the DAW market? What if the goal was/is to have Sonar just be a small part of a collection of products and services that are marketed as one package?From the perspective of the Cakewalk faithful, BandLab membership as a product is just a distraction from the important thing: the almighty Sonar. People like me who spent hours a day reading and replying on the forum, who pretty much always have Sonar running on our computers. It would be fine with me if nothing BandLab did apart from Sonar even existed. I’d love it if Cakewalk still had a booth at Winter NAMM and magazine reviews and YouTube channels and all that.I now think that my perspective was ass backward for a long time. I don’t know if Cakewalk’s loyal following and existing user base ever meant much to BandLab. I certainly never thought they were excited about attracting former SONAR users to BandLab. I now believe that Sonar is just a trinket whose success is about whether its presence in the package makes people more likely to pay their membership fees.You may think of BandLab as a pack of fools who botched their Cakewalk experiment, but what if SoulfulKeys is right and they’ve never cared about the criteria by which you are measuring “success?”It’s even possible that making the Cakewalk brand too prominent would be seen as drawing attention away from the main event. You don’t want to be blown off the stage by the opening act.If a “successful” DAW is one that has a lot of loyal users and gets a lot of attention from influencers, then Sonar is decidedly unsuccessful. Stick a fork in it, it’s done. However, if a “successful” DAW is one that’s a nice little addition to a larger package of services, then maybe it’s already performing that role adequately.No question, what happened with the premature announcement of Sonar, the relations with what was left of the older user base and the seeming lack of consideration for the value of the ecosystem of YouTube channels, those were botched. As I’ve put it before, it was like watching someone shoot their foot off, then use the severed foot to beat themselves about the head and shoulders. Quite a spectacle.Even if all Sonar is something tossed in the bag with the main product, a happy and thriving user community does make it a better thing to have in the bag no matter how incidental it is. But in the context of Sonar being an accessory, it’s not the end of the world. Few people who are considering BandLab memberships based on the core features are going to stop and think “I’d pay for these services, but they include Sonar, and BandLab alienated Sonar’s userbase, therefore I must decline.”Sonar is already part of the BandLab ecosystem; it didn’t take long for CbB to get the rudimentary ability for 2-way transfer back and forth with BandLab DAW. Transfer between Next and Bandlab is even tighter, as is transfer between Sonar and Next. If Sonar becomes better integrated, then it will likely have a better chance of maintaining its place in the BandLab package.It’s been interesting to watch how SONAR/CbB/Sonar has fared in the BandLab era. It’s not always gone to my liking, but at least the product is still around and not officially under the turf. Development continues. They’re coming out with a new free version, so I can still recommend it to friends who want to get in on making music on their computers on the cheap. BandLab have so far offered a free to use version for 7 years and have announced pans for that to continue. I don’t feel betrayed or hard done by.I very much wish they hadn’t been so rude to certain loyal long term users that I hold in high esteem, but there’s little I can do about that. The Cakewalk world is lessened by their departure from it and that’s punishment enough, I think. New users coming along will have lost the potential benefit of the advice of people decades of experience with the product and that’s a shame.-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com2The point I was trying to make about BandLab and Cakewalk is that you’re still looking at Sonar as a standalone product when you have to look at it as a feature. It’s like the air conditioning in a car, car manufacturers aren’t trying to sell you the AC separately, it’s a feature that makes the car more appealing to the buyer. Sonar is a feature BandLab uses to sell their Membership subscriptions, not the main product itself.It’s not about Sonar dominating the DAW market again, it’s about keeping users inside BandLab’s ecosystem as they level up. It’s an ecosystem retention tool, not a standalone money-maker.
This.
Automobile air conditioner comparison is a good one: your car’s manufacturer doesn’t care if you never turn the air conditioner on as long as it helped them sell you the car. Is air conditioning now standard in vehicles? I haven’t bought a new one in 40 years. If not, then maybe the heater.😊
To us, the BandLab membership package is something that we get along with the subscription to our (formerly in some cases) favorite DAW. A $9.95 Sonar-only sub would be more attractive.
To BandLab, the Cakewalk DAW’s are extras that they toss in when you subscribe to their package of services. The Cakewalk name adds a whiff of legitimacy, the DAW’s are made by people who were experienced in the industry long before BandLab came along. They aren’t just slapped together crap. Maybe they’ll get their membership, check out the DAW’s and be pleasantly surprised at how capable they are. Or they’ll never even bother to install them. Who cares as long as the company gets their monthly or yearly fees?
I think the Cakewalk DAW’s will be around as long as BandLab believes that they help sell memberships. How long that will be, I have no idea. Does Adobe care about Audition’s market share? Does Adobe think that being able to use Audition is anyone’s primary reason for subscribing? Probably not, but they keep it in the lineup anyway because it lets them claim that the package covers every kind of content creation.
The Cakewalk DAW’s don’t live or die based on how many YouTube tutorials they inspire or how many influencers talk about them or even how many people use them. They live or die based on how much the people in charge at BandLab believe they help them sell memberships.
At some point the BandLab restaurant might decide to start selling their tasty Sonar salad dressing in bottles, but I don’t know how important that scenario is to the restauranteurs.😏
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com1June 20, 2025 at 7:12 am in reply to: If / When Bestservice.com Is Operational, Will You Buy From Them Again? #1000030858They certainly have some ‘splainin’ to do.
I might be tempted to buy a license that they are reselling, because they do seem to often have the best price by a few dollars, but is it worth a few dollars to avoid this sort of scare?
They’re still not back on line.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com1This looks great! I signed up, but no clue how to actually get the license so far…
While poking around Air’s site, I noticed this interesting plug-in, seems to be a knockoff of XLN’s RC-20:
https://www.airmusictech.com/effects/flavor-pro/
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.comAww, Peter, I was just yankin’ yer chain.❤
I’m fully aware that you have some serious chops as far as market analysis and that you weren’t talking based on a fallacy. I certainly didn’t mean to disparage your skills. I didn’t actually disagree with anything you said. I was trying to goof on the idea that BandLab’s handling of the Cakewalk was fathomable on any level. I’m the one doing the speculating based on my own armchair hunches, not you.
Your analysis is based on actual data and observation. My “analysis” is pure speculation based on my own personal experiences and following the software business as an insider and outsider.
One thing I do differ with you on is that you seem to be working from an assumption that someone, anyone, at the BandLab home offices cares a whit about Sonar and Next’s share of the DAW market. I’m with SoulfulKeys on this. I think the desktop DAW’s are there so that BandLab can tout the membership as being all that you’ll ever need in your musical career. They’re in the business of selling memberships, not DAW licenses. I’m not sure they’d measure Sonar’s “success” in terms of how many people use it or not. Sonar succeeds if it helps sell memberships. To that end, it should seem like a reasonably full-featured DAW. If its presence in the market helps that, then it will be encouraged.
I’d be surprised if the free tiered Sonar doesn’t come with some button(s) you can click to purchase a full membership. If they do this, I just hope it’s not too intrusive.
Caveat: this is all just speculation on my part. Maybe they do want Sonar and Next to grab market share.
Question I have for you as a pro: you say that Adobe have been “successful” with their subscription model. Is that true? Are they continuing to grow as far as revenue? Market share? I’m sure they still have the pro market nailed down as far as photo editing. I don’t have access to that information the way you do and I’m curious.
One thing I have been observing is that viable alternatives to Photoshop and other pieces of the Creative bundle are starting to gain (here’s that word again) traction. Digidesign and Avid threw their weight around with Pro Tools, resulting in their competitors slowly but surely grabbing more and more market share until we now have a situation where Pro Tools is something that seems to be used by mostly legacy users and people who have to use it because they work in Hollywood.
They especially lagged behind on composition-friendly tools, which left room for competitors to overtake them in that area. Among people who compose film and TV music, I think more of them use Cubase or Logic.
Here’s some of my career experiences: I was a software QA engineer at a variety of SF Bay Area software companies, including Informix, Macromedia (pre Adobe), Berkeley Systems, and The Learning Company.
Later I started my own successful guitar stompbox company. My products were reviewed positively in Guitar Player magazine in the US and Guitarist magazine in the UK. Unfortunately, burnout set in and I haven’t sold a pedal in over a decade.
The product that I worked on at Macromedia was xRes, which was intended to be a competitor to Photoshop (as if). It was, I believe, the first such editor to use proxies to be able to edit very large files that couldn’t fit in the memory restrictions of the time.
It was working on xRes that gained me insight as to the challenges of trying to keep a host compatible with plug-ins designed for a different host. xRes was supposed to be able to use Photoshop plug-ins. So when I observe plug-in format politics, it’s from a boots-on-the-ground perspective. It’s why I agree that if your DAW is acting weird, the first thing to do is turn off all plug-ins and see if it stops acting weird.
Macromedia was famous for acquiring and killing once-viable programs. They got it right from time to time, such as their acquisition of Future Splash, later Flash. I was there when that acquisition happened. But they killed xRes, Deck, Fontographer, and more I can’t remember. Most of what was left was nuked by Adobe when they bought the company.
Right before I bailed on Macromedia, they got a new CEO who knew nothing about even using computers. I know this because I had moved into IT and was sent down to his palace in Atherton to help troubleshoot his home office. So, as you mentioned about the importance of people at a company understanding the market, they had tossed this into the bin. This guy knew how to please Wall Street analysts and that was it.
At that point I swore never again to work at a publicly traded company. When my next employer was sold to an international conglomerate, I took the bonus and left, later starting my audio electronics company.
Now I play games, fiddle with my DAW, observe, and, thanks to this forum, speculate. Maybe I’ll make something else happen someday, but for now, (mental) health issues have me pinned down.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com3Ah, Peter.
You’re making the mistake that I did for so many years, even after the way premature announcement of Sonar: you’re evaluating and predicting the actions of BandLab management in the context of how you would be thinking. Which is, I think, “what would I do if I wanted my investment in IP and subsequent development to deliver the greatest ROI?” Whether that ROI be in measurable cash taken in or brand good will.
When it became obvious that the first objective was being ignored, I assumed that they were going for the second objective.
In my own many decades of observing corporate and brand management successes and failures, starting with being the stepson of a management consultant who worked for Booz, Allen, and Hamilton and Stanford Research as well as being a fairly successful freelancer.
This relationship began in the 1970’s, when large corporations “diversifying” by buying up companies that had only passing connections to their own core businesses was all the rage.This is the period that gave us CBS-owned Fender Musical Instruments, AMF Voit-owned Harley Davidson (the world needed lightweight Harley dirtbikes, didn’t it? Didn’t it?), Baldwin-owned Gretsch, ad nauseum.
These acquisitions may have seemed like good ideas at first, after all, how different can piano manufacturing and marketing be from guitar and drum manufacturing and marketing? (spoiler: PLENTY, if you stop and think about it for more than 60 seconds).
With few exceptions (and none that I can think of), the only successes are when the acquiring company is serious about keeping the management and staff that made the acquired company desirable in the first place. This is now better understood, but 50 years ago there was a more macho mentality of “our people are obviously smarter; if they knew what they were doing, they would be buying US, haw haw haw.”
This attitude afforded much in the way of schadenfreude, but at the cost of many great brands whose absence is still felt (Slingerland, Rogers, Rhodes, etc.). Even Fender was on virtual life support for most of the 1980’s.
One of the first business biographies I ever read was the autobiography Clive Davis wrote after leaving Columbia Records. I learned a LOT from that. Columbia/CBS was a company that worked miracles as a New York-based producer, distributor, and manufacturer of movies, TV, radio, and music. At some point, someone decided that they weren’t diversified enough, so they went shopping for entertainment-related businesses they might acquire.
Leo Fender was deep into a hypochondriac response to his company having grown bigger than he felt comfortable with and was looking to sell. Apparently Rogers Drums was as well, so CBS snapped them up and moved Rogers design and manufacturing to the Fender plant in California. CBS apparently thought that making and selling musical instruments had synergy with producing and selling musical entertainment.
The big problem was that it actually didn’t. One of the worst miscalculations was around who CBS would appoint to manage the MI division. While you might think that ambitious executives would line up for such an opportunity, you would be wrong wrong wrong. CBS was full of ambitious young management hopefuls who had gotten jobs there because they wanted a glamorous career in the entertainment business in New York. To be sent to Anaheim, California to run a guitar factory was seen as career-ending punishment. Especially in those days when New York was still the broadcasting capital of the world. It was 30 years before the public would hear of the Internet, so to be given that post was to become invisible to the folks back in New York. It was being sent down to the minors.
Which is why CBS Musical Instruments didn’t even get the best that CBS could send, they got people that the New Yorkers wanted to get rid of. The ones who wound up running the place believed that the only way they could be seen as any kind of successful would be to maximize profits by cutting every possible corner. This despite the fact that Fender products were already efficiently and frugally designed and made. There wasn’t much fat to cut off the bone.
The experiment yielded results that are utterly predictable in hindsight. Within a few years, instruments produced post takeover were seen as very inferior. Not too long ago I worked on an early 70’s Precision Bass for a friend and I was appalled at the low quality. I had heard things were bad, but I had no idea they were THAT bad. I wouldn’t have sold that piece of crap as a factory second. The design was still good, it was still a Fender P-Bass, but the finishing work was just awful. Like saw marks in the wood that were then sprayed over with finish, fasteners the wrong length, etc. It had a maple fretboard and i could tell that they put the neck together, put the frets in and then sprayed the finish on. I guess they buffed the poly off the fret surfaces and called it ready to ship. If you turned it in as a project in high school shop class you might get a C-. $90 basses from Temu look better than this thing did. WAY better.
This story played out in many other corporations, and it still plays out in corporations who aren’t smart enough to have learned from the mistakes of others. For an example of it working out pretty much okay, look no further than the reborn Fender’s acquisition of PreSonus. They kept the PreSonus crew that made the company successful to begin with and the business wasn’t so far removed from their core business that nobody from headquarters wanted to go work there. The synergy was actual, not imaginary.
It’s easy to imagine similar goings-on in the relationship between BandLab and Cakewalk. One of Meng’s “things” for a while, don’t know if it still is, was buying up famous old brands that had either failed completely or fallen on hard times. Harmony Guitars, IIRC? He also has or had Heritage Guitars, What he was doing with Harmony showed promise half a dozen years ago, but never really went anywhere. Remember those BandLab-branded audio interfaces? I guess that was a dead end.
If you’re going to buy up a great old brand, it’s good to have a plan for what you’re going to do with it, As far as I can tell, BandLab’s plans for Cakewalk didn’t go much further than rehiring a handful of staff, then setting that staff to work on polishing Sonar and developing a standalone program that could act as a more integrated desktop version of BandLab DAW. That was about it. No big plans to return the Cakewalk name to greatness.
Cakewalk/Sonar iwouldn’t seem to fit very well into the BandLab scenario. Adobe Audition tells us what we need to know about the prospects of a DAW that’s only available along with a bunch of other programs/services via subscription. When you try to sell it like that, your user base is going to consist of either people who are okay with paying for a bunch of other products and services along with their DAW, or people who will use a DAW just because it came free with a bunch of other products and services they were already buying.
AND both of those groups have to be comfortable with the possibility of losing access to the DAW in the event of personal financial difficulty. As I’ve said before, subscription-only licensing is NOT “where the industry is headed” (assuming that we’re talking about the same industry). Audio software isn’t Netflix or Amazon Prime or AppleTV+ or cable TV or Time magazine or Costco or any number of other things that people have happily bought via subscription for decades. The most popular DAW on the market isn’t sold via subscription, it’s the opposite: buy one license and all subsequent updates are free until either you or the company dies.
The person or persons in charge of Cakewalk-related decisions may wish that they could stick to running the web-based services business without messing about with desktop programs. In this day and age, desktop programs are NOT sexy, I imagine that desktop software is not what’s attracting the ambitious young idiots who want to be on the best path to SUCCESS in the fast-paced world of high tech. It’s probably down there with hardware.
My guess is that the Cakewalk team made their recommendations to the head office based on their decades of experience creating and selling a desktop DAW and were told that the way that headquarters wanted to proceed at first was to make Sonar and Next part of the membership bundle. Then if that didn’t work, they’d explore other options. And I suspect, as Peter does, that it didn’t work in a fairly spectacular way, like how the Tacoma Narrows Bridge didn’t work.
Or maybe it’s part of a plan to launder money through the Cakewalk group.
One thing it ain’t is predictable using ideas and indicators known to us.
Maybe Sonar and Next will be completely gone in 12 months. Maybe the employees in the Cakewalk group will buy the IP at bargain basement prices even lower than BandLab paid and continue to develop them and sell licenses via Plugin Boutique or Gumroad. That’s an idea that could get some,,,um,,,Tracktion.
Maybe there will be revived interest due to the free tier and Sonar will continue to limp along like CbB did, as a cult DAW. Waveform seems to be doing okay in that space. Maybe it is too late for that. Maybe maybe maybe. Cakewalk’s history is full of surprises.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com6June 17, 2025 at 10:55 pm in reply to: The Best Service Website Is BACK!!! [The Deals are Back!!!] #1000030752I haven’t seen any rumors posted here, only questions and speculation.
A LOT of people have personal stakes in the continued existence of Best Service.
For starters, it is a chilling reminder that all of these license validations that require a handshake with a server depend on that server being around for a long time.
When designing and engineering products, the consideration “what becomes of our customers if we go out of business” seems never to be on the table. Who wants to think about that or bring it up?
One of the things that I respect about BandLab is their keeping Cakewalk’s old registration server online over these many years. It would be nice if they also got rid of Cakewalk’s zombie website, but….forget it, Jake, it’s BandLab.
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.com1June 12, 2025 at 3:31 pm in reply to: 🔥🔥🔥 FREE Native Instruments Komplete 15 Select @Sweetwater #1000030506So it was only for 72 hours? That’s about the shortest length for a deal I’ve seen. Even iZotope glitches last longer than that.😄
Hmm, I wonder if they’re onto the “deals” forum thing, where we’ll get threads like this. The freebie is gone, but the topic remains, and it’s “still a great deal.” Smart, if so. Worth giving out some free licenses in order to get the advertising. Would most of the people who snapped up the freebie have ever bought it at $50?
-Erik
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superabbit.bandcamp.comHow about “ceased developing” rather than “discontinued?” Or maybe “discontinued development of?”
CbB still does get the occasional patch, and it’s still downloadable and free to use as long as you keep it validated. So far they haven’t gone back on the original pledge to keep it free to use.
Maybe it’s splitting hairs, but I think it’s still a great choice as a free DAW. Even if they do completely pull the plug on it, the skills you get from using Cakewalk translate pretty well to other DAW’s such as Mixcraft and Studio One. I’m not sure about Cubase because I’ve never used it, but when I moved from Mixcraft to Cakewalk I didn’t feel lost, and when I later checked out Studio One it didn’t seem like an alien landscape.
Of those three, I mostly prefer the way of doing things in Cakewalk, with inevitable exceptions.
-Erik
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