There have been tweaks and improvements in X4 (the unofficial name of this new version) including enhancements to the Control Bar. Cakewalk says that under this new system it will be issuing more frequent updates to members. If you don’t renew, you still get the same support you always would have, but your software version is ‘frozen’ at the version it’s currently on, and you won’t get updates without re-subscribing. This entitles you to new feature updates, custom content, videos, new presets and free tech support every month.Įven if you don’t renew your membership, you keep everything you’ve already received.

Cakewalk also reckons you will be able to roll back to previous versions of SONAR without affecting the rest of your system, which could be handy for troubleshooting.Īnother interesting development is that you now get 12 months of SONAR membership with any version of the software. You can download different sets of content separately, which is handy when you have the Platinum version with all its goodies, and also manage updates and reinstalls from inside the app. Tied to your Cakewalk user account, it provides access to download all your purchased products and also handles installation too, so there’s less fiddling about generally. As a concept this is becoming increasingly popular, and NI, Steinberg and others use systems with similar (though not identical) elements. Cakewalk does a lot of work under the hood and SONAR was one of the first truly 64-bit DAWs, so performance has always been more than respectable.Ĭommand and Control The first big new feature is Command Centre, an application that acts as a hub for your authorisations and downloads. For now you’ll need Windows 7 or 8, 32 or 64-bit, though overall the system requirements are fairly modest by today’s standards.

Performer becoming available for PC, so never say never. Stranger things have happened though, like Wavelab getting Mac support or Digital Cakewalk actually does develop some of its instruments as dual platform for Mac and PC and also codes for the iPad, but it seems likely that SONAR’s long history of being Windows-only means there’s too much legacy code to facilitate easy porting to the Mac. There are relatively few DAWs that are single-platform, but SONAR is one. That all changed with the new Skylight interface in Sonar X1 which brought a sleek new design and dockable sections to make it feel much more up to date For a long time this could be at least partly attributed to its interface, which had started to lag behind the others in terms of usability and looks.

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