However, users who previously bought these products as part of a Sonar Platinum bundle will continue to be able to use them in the new DAW, as will those who have independent licences.īandLab Technologies CEO Meng Ru Kuok describes an “aggressive feature development roadmap ahead” for Cakewalk by BandLab and this new version already sports some previously unreleased features such as integration with BandLab Assistant (which replaces Sonar’s Command Centre) for dragging and dropping loop content to Cakewalk from Assistant. It’s worth noting that third-party products that used to be bundled with Sonar Platinum, such as Melodyne Essential, Addictive Drums and a few others are not currently included with Cakewalk by BandLab. This makes sense of comments by BandLab Technologies CEO Meng Ru Kuok who had previously stated that current Sonar users ' will not need to spend any money to cross-over/cross-grade to the future flagship product.'Ĭakewalk by BandLab includes the core premium features found in the very capable Sonar Platinum (which used to cost £399 $499), including the Skylight user interface, flexible ProChannel modules, ARA integration and an end-to-end 64-bit mix engine. BandLab Technologies have relaunched Sonar, with the entire Sonar Platinum feature set and made it completely free, under the new title of ‘Cakewalk by BandLab’. Today, though, they’ve done something even more unexpected.

Then, three months later, BandLab Technologies announced they would be bringing it back, having acquired the DAW-maker's intellectual property. In November, Gibson publicly killed Cakewalk.

Cakewalk free software