What about Cakewalk?

[payoak]

I am currently using REAPER and It is an amazing DAW but I am curious about the Cakewalk movement, being free since 2018 and costing hundreds of dollars before. ´
Anyone is using it? How good is it for VO?

[Samulis]

I off and on use Sonar Platinum, the predecessor to the current Cakewalk. It is a very solid DAW, having every typical functionality one might desire. Cakewalk/Sonar itself is very old, having its roots in the early to mid 90's. It was developed here in Boston by a dedicated team up until the rather abrupt and apparently somewhat unexpected closing of Cakewalk by its owner, Gibson, in around 2018ish.

I have not yet tried the "new" Bandlab Cakewalk, but I cannot help but have questions as to how it is economical for them to develop it. To my knowledge, the only thing supposedly missing are the bundled plugins which shipped with Sonar Platinum, due to incompatible licensing.

However, I would note, Reaper is much more customizable and flexible via reascripts and the like. Each DAW has its own advantages and disadvantages, and unless you find yourself dissatisfied with your current DAW of choice, then there's really no reason to switch to another. That's not to say I would discourage you from trying other DAWs, by all means, try all of them! I'm just trying to say that switching DAWs may not improve anything in particular over just learning to make do with/tweak the DAW which you find most usable and 'in line' with your personal philosophy.

[Mattias Westlund]

I don't have any real experience with Cakewalk either (though I did use its distant ancestor Cakewalk Pro Audio ages ago); I tried the Bandlab version when it came out and it seemed like a solid enough DAW. I know many who use or have used Sonar and they've been pretty happy with it. However...

(03-12-2020, 06:40 AM)Samulis Wrote: but I cannot help but have questions as to how it is economical for them to develop it.

Yeah, that. What's the catch here? How do they finance the continued development? Is it ad-supported? Does the program gather user data to be sold to advertizers? Will there even be any continued development? I wouldn't trust the longevity of a DAW based on such a model. If you already have REAPER, Cakewalk offers nothing that REAPER doesn't already have.

On a related note , Behringer is apparently developing their own completely free DAW. No idea when that will be released though, might be years from now.