Some of you may know that a well-loved music software company, Cakewalk, was acquired in 2013, and then killed in 2016, by Gibson Corp.
Cakewalk had a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, i.e. audio recording software) called Sonar that was very popular. When Gibson killed Cakewalk, Sonar died too.
But there is good news for people who liked to use Sonar, as well as for anyone looking for a free DAW: Cakewalk's IP has been purchased from Gibson Corp by a business group calling themselves BandLab. In a rather unusual move, Bandlab has made Sonar free, and appears to be promising to keep it free.
Here is a Guitar World article about this: Cakewalk Returns, Now Available for Free - Guitar World
Here is a direct link to the Bandlab website where you can download the free Cakewalk software: BandLab: Music Starts Here
DISCLAIMER: I have never used any Cakewalk product, and have no affiliation with the company, in present or past incarnations. I'm just passing on information about a free DAW, that might be of interest to some of you.
(I've never used any Cakewalk product, not because I dislike the software, but because it's been a long time - seventeen years now - since I've used Windows on any of my own computers.)
-Gnobuddy
Cakewalk had a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, i.e. audio recording software) called Sonar that was very popular. When Gibson killed Cakewalk, Sonar died too.
But there is good news for people who liked to use Sonar, as well as for anyone looking for a free DAW: Cakewalk's IP has been purchased from Gibson Corp by a business group calling themselves BandLab. In a rather unusual move, Bandlab has made Sonar free, and appears to be promising to keep it free.
Here is a Guitar World article about this: Cakewalk Returns, Now Available for Free - Guitar World
Here is a direct link to the Bandlab website where you can download the free Cakewalk software: BandLab: Music Starts Here
DISCLAIMER: I have never used any Cakewalk product, and have no affiliation with the company, in present or past incarnations. I'm just passing on information about a free DAW, that might be of interest to some of you.
(I've never used any Cakewalk product, not because I dislike the software, but because it's been a long time - seventeen years now - since I've used Windows on any of my own computers.)
-Gnobuddy
Mebbe your "membership" will be extended - for free - after October?
Who knows what a marketing executive means when she / he says "Free".
-Gnobuddy
I have been a loyal Cakewalk user since Cakewalk V3.0 in the late 80's. About a year ago Gibson offered "lifetime updates" to the old faithful users for a fee of over $100, then they kill the company. Bandlab now gives away a produce that I paid a lot of money for over nearly 30 years. I downloaded the new free version, but haven't installed it yet since my full version of Sonar Pro still works.
They had a Mac version in Beta when the plug was pulled. There were rumors of a Linux version, but never any official word. Cakewalk and Ableton Live are two reasons I have Windows PC's.
They had a Mac version in Beta when the plug was pulled. There were rumors of a Linux version, but never any official word. Cakewalk and Ableton Live are two reasons I have Windows PC's.
I do want a DAW, and have had a lot of failures, and only one very brief success, trying to use the most recommended one on Linux (Ardour).
Mebbe Sonar will turn out to be a reason to have Windows on a computer again. Then again, the only Windows CD I have is a version of XP, which is probably too old for a new version of Cakewalk to run on.
(Before someone points out the security implications of running Windows XP in 2018, I would never connect a WinXP computer to the Internet today.)
-Gnobuddy
You can use VirtualBox (open source) or (what I prefer) Parallels on MacOS and install any OS in a virtual machine. Parallels has a free version that is limited compared to the paid version, but for the purpose of simply installing and running an Intel-compatible OS in a VM, it works fine.
What I don't know is if you will have issues with a DAW in a VM on Parallels Free on Mac hardware. But no issues with the paid version, so maybe.
For installation help, check out the tutorials at osxdaily dotcom
Mac users should also look at Nanostudio, a free beat / synthesis app that is a nice complement to a DAW
I'm a longtime user of Amadeus (now Amadeus Pro) which is a useful multitrack application, not expensive, but not quite a full featured DAW. Of course there is always GarageBand.
Reaper for OSX has an unlimited / unrestricted demo mode. Full feature DAW (recording, mixing, mastering).
MixCraft is an incredibly full featured DAW for about $80, developed by a company that makes real (hardware) consoles. acoustica dotcom
Cakewalk is an old standard, and maybe the new developers will support it going forward, but nobody knows for sure. Gibson just sold the Onkyo "brand" to an Asian low-cost TV manufacturing company (worldwide except within Japan ... strange ... ) and who knows what will happen to their other brands once the half-billion $ note comes due later this summer.
What I don't know is if you will have issues with a DAW in a VM on Parallels Free on Mac hardware. But no issues with the paid version, so maybe.
For installation help, check out the tutorials at osxdaily dotcom
Mac users should also look at Nanostudio, a free beat / synthesis app that is a nice complement to a DAW
I'm a longtime user of Amadeus (now Amadeus Pro) which is a useful multitrack application, not expensive, but not quite a full featured DAW. Of course there is always GarageBand.
Reaper for OSX has an unlimited / unrestricted demo mode. Full feature DAW (recording, mixing, mastering).
MixCraft is an incredibly full featured DAW for about $80, developed by a company that makes real (hardware) consoles. acoustica dotcom
Cakewalk is an old standard, and maybe the new developers will support it going forward, but nobody knows for sure. Gibson just sold the Onkyo "brand" to an Asian low-cost TV manufacturing company (worldwide except within Japan ... strange ... ) and who knows what will happen to their other brands once the half-billion $ note comes due later this summer.
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I tried installing Windows XP on VirtualBox for a friend a few years ago to try and get his Windows-only external USB hardware mixer working.
Windows on VirtualBox worked fine, but at the time, accessing external USB devices through VirtualBox turned out to be unusably slow. Dunno if that's changed since.
Indeed!
-Gnobuddy
I tried Ardour a few years back and found it lacking compared to the three Windows DAW's that I had been using. It may be worth another look since it looks like a Linux box may be in my near future.....a real cheap CNC machine is on it's way to me from China. I look at it as a learning tool before I start building a bigger DIY CNC machine capable of cutting guitar bodies.
I started with a pirated copy of Cakewalk 3.0 from Twelve Tone Systems some time in the late 1980's. I got a Roland MPU 401 interface and connected my Korg DW-8000 to my PC. I soon purchased a licensed copy of Cakewalk 4.0 after finding out how much fun it was. Cakewalk was a DOS MIDI sequencer, with limited record capability. There was no audio in or out. You could stick notes on a piano roll screen and have them played back to you, or record one track of MIDI at a time from a keyboard, while having other tracks played on a different MIDI channels. This led to the purchase of a Roland MT32 box for multi timbral playback.
Sometime in the early 90's Media Vision gave us quality digital audio recording and playback with it's 16 bit Pro Audio Spectrum card. Cakewalk supported this and ran under Windows 3.1. I was hooked, I could have the DAW playing bass, drums and keyboards via MIDI while recording guitar through the PAS16. The Roland MT32 sounded pretty rough compared to 16 bit digital audio, so I got a Roland JV-880 which is still in my rack today and driven by Sonar or Live.
Twelve Tone Systems changed their name to Cakewalk and their DAW has used several names since then. When audio support was added Cakewalk, the DAW became "Cakewalk Pro Audio" but was usually called "Cakewalk" or "Pro Audio" or even "Cakewalk Pro." Pro Audio Version 9 also got called "Number 9" after the Beatles song.
Version 10 was renamed Sonar before it's release because of the new UI. I have upgrade my original Cakewalk 4.0 purchase each time all the way to Sonar Platinum over the years skipping only a few of the Pro Audio releases. It has been my DAW of choice until a few years ago, and still what I use to meddle around with a guitar. It still works fine with a 10 year old M-Audio Delta 1010 interface in Win 7.
Some time around 2000 I got a pirate copy of Fruity Loops from a co-worker after hearing some of the music his kid was making with it. It was the origins of the loop based sequencer tech used by thousands of EDM producers today. I thought it was cool, but never really used it much.
Fast Forward to Christmas 2011. Amazon is running "Lightning Rounds" of timed "deals." I pick up a copy of FL Studio Fruity Edition for $49 (modernized Fruity Loops) ....."We changed the name from Fruity Loops to FL Studio after Kellogg decided people were confusing our product with their breakfast cereal. Eating CD's can be dangerous apparently
" I played with it a bit, but my attention had been diverted by a new shiny object......Ableton Live. I have downloaded the free upgrade to FL studio 11 and 12 since then, but haven't found a reason to play with them much.According to my account history on Ableton's web site I had registered a copy of Live Lite 4 and Live Lite 5 back in the mid 2000's. I don't remember using them much. They were the free versions that came with some hardware purchases.
M-Audio has had a history of dumping their failed products cheap on Amazon. I got one of $600 Venom Synthesizers for $139 during one of those "lightning round" feeding frenzies. It came with an entry version of Pro Tools which I never tried. Their Trigger Finger was a well respected instrument, but like the Venom, the Trigger Finger Pro had problems, and the $500 instrument was quickly abandoned by M-Audio and the leftovers were dumped on the secondary market. I got one for around $130 from Amazon. It came with Live 9 Intro.
Live has taken the looping concept to a new level and in doing so helped to create the EDM revolution. It has also blurred the lines between "musician" and 'DJ." True, someone can make "music" with minimal skills or music knowledge using Ableton Live, and some of them have become EDM heroes.
In the 60's and early 70's I spent some considerable time tinkering with tape recorders, large Hammond reverb springs, and Echoplex devices. I would record things at one speed, play them at another, splice tapes of various sounds together to create new ones, and make tape loops and play them on a machine I had made that used a Lionel Train transformer for speed control. Live had a built in sampler and the tools to make loops, chop and cut them in ways I couldn't have imagined them in the 60's. Live also had a "granulator," another cool tool to take bits (granules) out of one sample and use them in a totally different manner. It's like the old Casio SK1 on steroids. I found myself chasing the cat with an iPAD to grab her sounds and make something out of them, among lots of other things......Yes this can be done in Sonar, but not easily in 5 minutes.
You can arrange all these sound "clips" along with any of the thousands of built in instruments into a "song" with a few mouse clicks, or stack them up and trigger them live against a drum and bass (or any other) beat by pushing buttons on a beat pad or similar DJ box. A good "real' musician can make a good live show by using this technology.
Check out what two real musicians, Ableton Live 9, a few plastic boxes, a few real instruments, and a human voice can do. DJ's need not apply.
YouTube
I still use Sonar because I know it well. I currently "play" with Live, but as I learn all the ins and outs of Live, and due to the uncertainty of Sonar's future, Live may become my DAW of choice.
For a FREE DAW, I would jump on Sonar, especially since there are NO other free DAWs with it's capability and power. Note, I have all the free Sonar "instruments" including Zeta, Dimension and Rapture, and all the VST's that it came with, and know how to use them.
It remains to be seen how many of these will be offered for Sonar, and what they will cost. Maybe Sonar will remain free, but the goodies will cost.
That would make sense from a standpoint of not alienating lifelong users who paid lots of money over the years, and Bandlab's marketing strategy. Ableton and others, including Cakewalk in the Roland years, gave out lite versions of their DAW to hardware manufacturers to get users hooked, then offered cost reduced upgrades and plug ins.
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