Current state of Cakewalk?

[zzz00m]

2 - All the additional plugins which came with the DAW are no longer offered with Cakewalk by BandLab (BandLab has bought only what was made by Cakewalk themselves, not the plugins coming from third parties)

But... If you had kept Sonar Platinum installed on your computer, keep it installed even with Cakewalk freshly installed so that your additional plugins which came with Sonar Platinum will perfectly work in Cakewalk by BandLab !

Not just Sonar Platinum!

The same should apply to any past version of Sonar. Keep it installed so that the bundled plugins you had in the past, that are not included in the re-released Cakewalk, are picked up by the plugin scanner. Along with any other 3rd party plugins you may have installed on your machine.

Cakewalk may not come with a lot of bundled extras in the free version, but you can bring all you own! Cakewalk still includes the built-in 16-bit bridge for 16-bit plugins.

[BlackWinny]

2 - All the additional plugins which came with the DAW are no longer offered with Cakewalk by BandLab (BandLab has bought only what was made by Cakewalk themselves, not the plugins coming from third parties)

But... If you had kept Sonar Platinum installed on your computer, keep it installed even with Cakewalk freshly installed so that your additional plugins which came with Sonar Platinum will perfectly work in Cakewalk by BandLab !

Not just Sonar Platinum!

The same should apply to any past version of Sonar. Keep it installed so that the bundled plugins you had in the past, that are not included in the re-released Cakewalk, are picked up by the plugin scanner. Along with any other 3rd party plugins you may have installed on your machine.

Cakewalk may not come with a lot of bundled extras in the free version, but you can bring all you own! Cakewalk still includes the built-in 16-bit bridge for 16-bit plugins.

Exact. Adding "Platinum" in my comment was too restrictive.


You're right, it actually applies to all the other versions and editions. That's really great!

[glokraw]

In my case, Cakewalk website doesn't allow making new accounts, and the
old account used to purchase products in 2014, used an email provider
who bit the dust in 2017, and the current cakewalk account login
has nothing to find.

Dimension Pro, for example, has several numbers that could
be verified, if the old account data is on some server somewhere.
But if hundreds of Rapture, z3ta, and Dimension users came forward,
needing manual re-authorizations, Bandlab might need to get
an extra intern or two
Cheers

[adammonroe]

Nevertheless it's a good top tier DAW IMO, I've been checking some alternatives recently for second DAW candidate, Studio One, DP, Samplitude... and I think at the moment Sonar is better, disregarding the price. I'm quite surprised it doesn't seem to start dominate the DAW market, being free, it's a no brainer. Must be bad karma from troubled past.

Always been the case, people dislike Sonar for some reason. It's still my preferred DAW; I can't quite get into the "feel" of Reaper, Ableton, FL, Logic, Protools, Studio One, ect. Everytime I have to open up another DAW to test a plugin or something the UIs just depress the hell out of me. I'm still using my old copy of Professional until I have to wipe and reinstall Windows.

[an-electric-heart]

In my case, Cakewalk website doesn't allow making new accounts, and the
old account used to purchase products in 2014, used an email provider
who bit the dust in 2017, and the current cakewalk account login
has nothing to find.

Dimension Pro, for example, has several numbers that could
be verified, if the old account data is on some server somewhere.
But if hundreds of Rapture, z3ta, and Dimension users came forward,
needing manual re-authorizations, Bandlab might need to get
an extra intern or two
Cheers

Yip, that's what I was saying at the beginning; My problem was simply that I couldn't remember my password, password reset doesn't work, and there's no support. Luckily I tried a bunch and eventually guessed my password, so if you've got an account and can get in you can access stuff you own... but otherwise the website doesn't work and has been abandoned.

[Zombie Queen]

Everytime I have to open up another DAW to test a plugin or something the UIs just depress the hell out of me.

I know the feeling... Though it's probably us being familiar with Sonar for too long. I really wanted to like Reaper, but it's such a mess... There's one DAW of my test batch that really impressed me, Bitwig.

[AKJ]

Yes, I think I actually preferred the original Rapture, but it just straight up didn't work in Windows 10, so I had to get "pro" if I wanted to use it.

That's strange, because I have the classic version of Rapture v1.22 x64 running on the latest version of Windows 10 here. Both the VST2 plugin and standalone work.

Me, too. Works fine here. (I use V1.21 with the original serial and provided reg code that never expires and does not need online activation. However, I did not try with newer versions that might need CR activation).

[zzz00m]

In my case, Cakewalk website doesn't allow making new accounts, and the
old account used to purchase products in 2014, used an email provider
who bit the dust in 2017, and the current cakewalk account login
has nothing to find.

Dimension Pro, for example, has several numbers that could
be verified, if the old account data is on some server somewhere.
But if hundreds of Rapture, z3ta, and Dimension users came forward,
needing manual re-authorizations, Bandlab might need to get
an extra intern or two
Cheers

You should try contacting support@cakewalk.com which will put you in touch with the current support team at BandLab. The support pages at the old Cakewalk site are no longer active, and new account creation is not possible.

There have been folks with similar issues that have been helped over the hurdle of getting access to their old accounts so they can download and activate the legacy instruments. The new team are trying to be nice guys!

Per the Cakewalk staff over at the official forum:

As such, the best method for service regarding your Cakewalk.com account is to reach out to us directly at support@cakewalk.com or support@bandlab.com. We can modify a username or email address on file, and auto-generate a new password for you, but the Cakewalk site will not generate those emails as it's now a manual process.

[glokraw]

Thanks for the tip. Sent them a copy of the
confirmation email from the previous Cakewalk,
hopefully they have plenty of staff penciled in
for the coming week.
Cheers

[Saffran]

Thanks for the tip. Sent them a copy of the
confirmation email from the previous Cakewalk,
hopefully they have plenty of staff penciled in
for the coming week.Cheers

I wouldn't bet on that.
They seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to release a working update before the holidays.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

It does seem from the outside, and checking the occasional release notes, that the priority with Sonar has shifted towards bug fixes and making some smaller, workflow like improvements, both of which are much needed. I bailed on Sonar around X1 or X2. I had one too many projects get corrupted, one too many "disk is full" errors when trying to record (hint: disk was not full), and one too many crashes to desktop ("disappearing Sonar"). The priority at the time seemed like "more bells, more whistles" versus, fixing the sh*t that had been broken for a decade. The X-series GUI didn't help either with that obscenely wide standard mixer channel. Then came the "we're making a Mac version" debacle. That seemed impossible to me at the time because Cakewalk had always ingrained Microsoft tech deep into Sonar. They may as well have started over from scratch if that was the plan.

When I left Sonar, Studio One felt like a breath of fresh air. You mean I can paste something without having to answer a pop-up box? Workflow improved! But Studio One lacked so many MIDI features, I got frustrated with trying to work around that and left that behind as a primary DAW. So then came Cubase. In my mind, it falls right in between Sonar (huge feature set with lots of legacy code issues) and Studio One (in that Cubase has been trying to improve workflow as of late). But oddly, even though Cubase has a hugely robust MIDI feature set, remote control of Cubase is the worst of any DAW I've used. So lately I've been on a big Reaper kick and being super productive there. Super customizable if you're willing to learn how, and between custom scripts and actions, there's almost always a way to do whatever you need it to (even if that implementation or solution is a bit clunky compared to other DAWs). It's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, master of quite a few type DAW.

Anyway, I'm glad Sonar isn't totally dead. Still have a lot of old projects in that format. I check the release notes every few months and it totally looks they've been moving it in the right direction. I don't think I'd ever go back to it as a primary DAW, but one of these days I'll install the newest version and check it out.

Sonar feels a bit like an ex-girlfriend. I hope she's doing well, and mean to check in to say hi and see how she's doing (which I never do), but I don't want to get back into a committed relationship with her.

[EvilDragon]

Sonar feels a bit like an ex-girlfriend. I hope she's doing well, and mean to check in to say hi and see how she's doing (which I never do), but I don't want to get back into a committed relationship with her.

BUT you still wouldn't throw her out of the bed, amirite?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Sonar feels a bit like an ex-girlfriend. I hope she's doing well, and mean to check in to say hi and see how she's doing (which I never do), but I don't want to get back into a committed relationship with her.

BUT you still wouldn't throw her out of the bed, amirite?

Nah, not if she came over but understood she had to go in the morning.

[glokraw]

Thanks for the tip. Sent them a copy of the
confirmation email from the previous Cakewalk,
hopefully they have plenty of staff penciled in
for the coming week.Cheers

I wouldn't bet on that.
They seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to release a working update before the holidays.

I won't bet either, but at least I do hear from
reasonable and polite support staff on other issues.
Not some Berlin Bots pointing to some link

[glokraw]

Not being a windows guy, and not being the
sharpest pencil in the can, I finally got Dimension Pro
running again by, simply by starting the standalone version
as administrator and it happily accepted
the reg code

(found the info when rumaging around
the cakewalk knowledge base, dibs on calling
RATKB