OffsetGuitars.com

Ugh, what a bummer! I have fond memories cutting my teeth on Cakewalk as well. It was my first step into digital in the late-90s, early-00s. Damn you Gibson!!!

I can't wrap my mind around this.

So, let's say that the cost of developing Sonar was more than the software sales were really bringing in... it was a money loser. I could see Gibson getting out of the game at that point, but why just stop developing it? That can't help anything regarding the sale of it, can it? All the people who have devoted years of their life to it and know the software will be fired or quit, and software will become rapidly outdated, and any customer who buys Sonar will be getting a bunch of outdated code and no one to update it who knows it well. It adds to the cost.

Alternately, Gibson has no plans to sell it, and instead it's just a dead end. Why on earth would they do that? We know it has value since Roland bought it and Gibson bought it from them.

I really can't figure out what could possibly be going on here.

mackerelmint wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 21, 2017 6:38 pm

And I'm just fine with my outdated Studio one 2.0. How long will I keep using it? Probably until the computer it's on breathes its last. It does what I need it to do.

it does what you need it to do? keep you in teh dark ages? *shots fired* x)

soggy mittens wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 21, 2017 8:17 pm

mackerelmint wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 21, 2017 6:38 pm

And I'm just fine with my outdated Studio one 2.0. How long will I keep using it? Probably until the computer it's on breathes its last. It does what I need it to do.

it does what you need it to do? keep you in teh dark ages? *shots fired* x)

Yep. And here in the dark ages I'll languish for a while.

Really, barring something really revolutionary happening with the software, there's just no real added benefit to me updating it. It runs like a top on my somewhat aging system, and I have more plugs than I'd ever need, I've thinned the herd quite a bit in fact, keeping the paid ones but mostly content using slick EQ and stock plugs. Not real interested in VSTis, and I'm thinking I'll get a couple of hardware reverb units to get that off the processor. I'd rather put my effort into building some nice DIs and eventually a handful of CAPI pres. At some point I'll have to give up on my firewire setup and go thunderbolt, but not today.

I was just thinking, will this effect epiphone at all?

I think Epiphone is Gibson's moneymaker, really.

But if I had to guess, I think that Gibson is trying to position themselves as a consumer electronics company rather than as a musical instruments company at least to some degree. It's not bad thinking, actually, the guitar market is super saturated and sales are also going down. A bad bet.

I don't see how the consumer electronics field is any less saturated, though. I'm very skeptical of what Gibson is doing. They are in a tough spot, though.

I still can't explain what this thing with Cakewalk is, though. Like they couldn't even bother selling it?

Larry Mal wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 22, 2017 5:05 am

I still can't explain what this thing with Cakewalk is, though. Like they couldn't even bother selling it?

The only thing I can guess is that folding Sonar provides them with a bigger financial benefit than its market value if they were to find a buyer (who knows, maybe they had offers on the table to buy it). Sadly, the board at Gibson wouldn't be thinking about the benefit to artists of allowing Sonar to go on ("They'll just migrate to a competing product").

I don't know anything about U.S. corporate law, but I assume the losses they were able to write off from folding the business can be applied against the profits from their healthier subsidiaries like Epiphone. If the write-off exceeds the market value of the company, it's a pretty easy business decision - they would go with the option that maximizes profits/minimizes losses for the company.

Yeah, that's got to be it.

Fucking rude, though, I guess Gibson doesn't care about all the people that depended on Sonar and the countless projects made with it- so, those people have to keep some legacy computer and software around for that from now on?

Puts a bad taste in one's mouth. It's hard to be a Gibson supporter and while I still think the guitars are good, it's hard to have much affection towards a company as out of touch as this.

They did the same thing to Opcode years ago just killed it... been a cakewalk user for 20 years this is bad news. Especially as I took out a years subscription for sonar professional 3 months ago and now I'm not going to get the monthly updated and bug fixes the deal included.

The more I think about this the more pissed off I become.

dezb1 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 25, 2017 5:46 pm

The more I think about this the more pissed off I become.

Dont blame you for being pissed. They did it with no notice and didnt even try and sell it not too long after releasing new software. There was no reason to kill cakewalk even if they didnt want to keep developing it.

Yeah, they could've released the source code for it to continue on as an open source project.

Instead it's just dead in the water.

maybe someone could reverse engineer a similar version that would be compatible and call it cakewake :3

Or cockblock.

Looks like I'm going to be a Reaper user from here on in... really like the work flow in it (even more than I liked Sonar)