Sonar renamed as Cakewalk by BandLab and is now FREE

Fretwired

In a stunning move, Sonar has been rebranded as Cakewalk by BandLab and better still, has made the DAW free. Most features are retained, such as the Skylight user interface, flexible ProChannel modules, and 64-bit mix engine.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/sonar-renamed-as-cakewalk-by-bandlab-and-is-now-free

TTony

Isn't that a bit of a bargain???

DiscoStu

Does that mean that Reaper's in trouble? Is Cakewalk easier to use?

Fretwired

TTony said:

Isn't that a bit of a bargain???

Oh yes .. this now up ..

https://cakewalk.bandlab.com/


The product info:

https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk

Heartfeltdawn

DiscoStu said:

Does that mean that Reaper's in trouble? Is Cakewalk easier to use?

No in my opinion to both. 

The interface looks old and cluttered. I can't see it grabbing the electronic guys into Ableton, Bitwig, and Reason, and the MIDI editing is quite clunky compared to Reaper. 

blobb

well, BandLab itself is geared towards online collaboration. Presumably they are looking towards a full collaborative DAW system? A cloud based studio with multi tracking would fill a niche. Cubase has had a go at it.

siremoon

DiscoStu said:

Does that mean that Reaper's in trouble? Is Cakewalk easier to use?

I switched from Sonar to Reaper because I was fed up with the glitches and bugs in Sonar.  Reaper has the very occasional hiccup but my experience so far is that it is in a different league in terms of stability.  Unless that gets sorted out then I'm not interested in Cakewalk/Sonar whether it's free or not.

Which one is easier to use is subjective.  Reaper is certainly different but now I've got used to it it's no more difficult than Sonar imo.

Heartfeltdawn

It's a pretty niche market at the minute. Bandlab on iOS is successful but the operation of that compared to Cakewalk is very different. Now if they could get Cakewalk to the point where someone allocated as the producer of a track using Cakewalk could easily pull in recordings made by band members using Bandlab then there is some potential. But it's still very much geared toward the rock guys doing things traditionally. 

Still not liking the user interface though

Fretwired

Heartfeltdawn said:

It's a pretty niche market at the minute. Bandlab on iOS is successful but the operation of that compared to Cakewalk is very different. Now if they could get Cakewalk to the point where someone allocated as the producer of a track using Cakewalk could easily pull in recordings made by band members using Bandlab then there is some potential. But it's still very much geared toward the rock guys doing things traditionally. 

Still not liking the user interface though

I've read they are redeveloping it from the ground up. I guess by making it free and providing support they can hang on to some of the user base. It will be interesting to see what they can come up with.

Heartfeltdawn

They'll have to if they want to sell it to a younger crowd. The lack of Mac version right now is an obvious thing they have to do if there is to be integration between Bandlab users (who will be iOS based) who want to move up to something more advanced in the form of Cakewalk.  

From what I was reading on the Sonar forums, the old school crowd are indeed old school. They weren't liking the Bandlab assistant, no obvious option to install the software where you wanted, and the assistant loading on Windows startup is annoying. No offline installer was perturbing for some.