This was really fun to see thank you for putting it together. I am the marketing director that you have a little clip of towards the beginning of the video. I wish I'd known you were doing it I could have contributed some historical information and imagery. Getting to work for Cakewalk at that time was really special, we were finally at the point where computer processing was starting a revolution and people were empowered to take control of their music production on their own terms. A couple key features that you missed in SONAR 1 and 2 were the introduction of audio quantizing and loop based sequencing, which were co-opted from Sonic Foundry acid. You also mentioned virtual instruments later, but the actual support for then came into play around that time which was also a big deal. SONAR was the first digital audio workstation to support both 64-bit processing and 64-bit audio quality, I think we introduced that around version 4. This was really well received by companies like Intel and Microsoft, because they viewed us as being cutting edge and used the program to showcase those technologies. Another overlooked feature of the product was its support for accessibility functions. This is one of the things that I'm most proud of. Vision impaired musicians could compose music and make arrangements without the need of anyone else to drive the computer. That led to an endorsement by Ray Charles, and getting to know Ray was one of the most amazing things that's happened in my career. Some of the other notable users of the product included BB King, Public Enemy, Slipknot and Jon Anderson of Yes. Plasma that you mentioned was actually a light version of a full sequencer called Project 5. The thing that made Project 5 great was its workflow, it was really fast for creating music. Unfortunately the small team at Cakewalk and our limited budgets made it difficult to support two flagship products and it was eventually abandoned. The last thing that I want to say is I believe the downfall of Cakewalk was the fact that we didn't port to the Mac. The product was great, really one of the best, but we had this uphill battle of not only convincing people to use Sonar, but also to embrace an entire operating system, when the zeitgeist of the moment was that Mac was for creatives. If you have any questions let me know. Thanks again for giving me this walk down memory lane I'm feeling really nostalgic this morning.
If you’d like I’d be happy to chat with you for a video on my channel since it was so hard to get info about the program only searching online and with the way back machine :)
Great info! Although Macs are great, I never understood the blind allegiance to the Macs-are-for-creatives mantra. The new Apple silicon is impressive, but I've always been able to build (or have built) a music production PC that smokes a Mac for a fraction of the price.
@@randallharp7010 Yes I find that brand allegiance for the sake of brand allegiance is kind of weird and holding the idea that a competing brand is automatic garbage is pretty culty.
I've used Cakewalk since the DOS version. Still use it and I've tried the others to see how they were. Never left Cakewalk. Still recording music daily with Cakewalk and couldn't be happier.
I used the original DOS version at my school as a 14 year old. I have continued to use Cakewalk/Sonar throughout my life. I recorded and mixed somewhere in the 100's of local bands and musicians, 1 of which gained traction and is now in their 10th year of touring. I used it on jobs for law enforcement (noise removal for surveillance video/audio), as well as national TV shows (Dirtiest Jobs/Deadliest Catch, Sesame Street, Hawaii 5-0. etc), and dozens of commercial spots. Once the OMF format was a part of Cakewalk the road was wide open, and I was able to easily collaborate world-wide with Pro-Tools-based studios as well. Over the years I dabbled in Cubase and Pro-Tools, but they were always lacking something that Cakewalk had long included, so there was simply no desire to conform to Pro-Tools when I got more out of Cakewalk.
You should do an episode on Cool Edit Pro / Adobe Audition... I first got started with Cool Edit back at the turn of the millenium... Made so much stuff with it
I used Cakewalk from v4.0 (on MSDOS) until SONAR 8.5. I started with Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold which used the same interface as the DOS version of Cakewalk. The instrument definition was a nice feature in Cakewalk that made it easy to import or create patch/bank list with program change from pretty much any keyboard brand, this was a time saver when you had to browse through thousands of patches across multiple banks, something that was either limited or nonexistent in other DAWs that I used or tested.
Excellent video. Lots of stuff I didn't know about. I'm the original author of the current Cakewalk by Bandlab Wikipedia entry. It was initially more comprehensive, but some more high-powered Wikipedia editor cut a bunch of stuff out because while it was true, they didn't think the references I used (the actual manufacturer's product pages) were sufficient. At the time I created the entry, I did some cleanup on the Cakewalk SONAR article, which was a mess. I moved some of the content to the new article, but then it got removed. So that's the story on the Wikipedia entries. At least Cakewalk by Bandlab does have its own entry. Please do some editing, as your knowledge of the history is far greater than mine, and you seem to be very good at finding references.
It was 1989, using an old IBM XT with 5.25 floppy disks to start up Cakewalk. Starting that computer was like starting an old car. It was a joy working with that software. It's impressive to see how far things have improved.
What TRIP down memory lane. I bought Greg's Calkwalk in September of 1988 along with a Roland D50, Swan's AT clone with a 30(!) meg hard drive & EGA (!) monitor, Sound Quest's D-50 editor librarian, and a Music Quest MQX-32M pc buss card. I still have most everything scattered about! Those were the dayz.
Damn I feel old after watching this video. These kids today don’t know how good they have it with currents DAW, VST’s and Plugins. The struggle was real back in the day. They’ll never experience the poor man’s multi track tape recorder (which was any dual cassette recorder of the day).., who remembers doing this! How about the way we used to hack cheap headphones and turn them into mics!!!!! The good o’l 1980’s.
Been using Cakewalk since the 90's but only as a sequencer back then because the computers that us mortals could afford were simply not fast enough to do sound yet. Too much latency to deal with and besides, I had a couple of Alesis 24 track hard drive recorders that worked great and sounded quite good for the cost. But in the early 2000's I had the money to have a computer built that at the time was a rocket. Put Sonar 3 on it and began to enjoy the many wonders of visual digital editing. Game changer!! Latency was no longer a problem. I used lightwire interfaces (needed two in order to get the 48 tracks I was use to). Had and still have, a Yamaha DX 2000 board. This was, and still is, a dream set up. And now with Cakewalk on steroids free, it's Disney world in my studio. And the plugs we have now, wow. I go back to when we spliced 2 track, 1/4 inch tape (early 60's) with a razor blade so you can imagine how much I love what we have now. You young folks have no way of knowing the world you live in lol! No worry. Just enjoy it!! Sometimes I'd love to be 30 again in todays marvel of technology world. But I did live long enough to build a highly successful youtube music channel, something we didn't even see coming 20 years or more ago.
@@JamZorro If by sound fonts you meant samples like piano, harp, bass, guitar, and the like, I do use a sampled piano, but play most other instruments I need. But yes, again, the world we now live in, at least from a tech standpoint, is beyond belief. I do have some interesting sound packs that I have yet to explore, but eager to get to them.
Thanks for putting this together. love Cake Walk. I started when it came together with the Sound Blaster many years ago. I have seen the developments and I thank Band Lab for the continued support and the terrific work they done every day.
Our band has always been Cakewalk/Sonar users (having used the first versions on the PC when we switched from Master Tracks Pro on Atari Mega 2 in the early 90s). The current version of Cakewalk is so good and we’ve used it so much in recent years that I’ve forgotten all the versions and feature improvements along the way. But we are forever grateful to Bandlab for keeping Cakewalk going (tried doing a couple of projects in Cuebase right after Gibson stopped support of Sonar, but didn’t like Cuebase nearly as well). Thanks for this informative and fun video. -Jer of the band Mitch the Needle
One small correction: Sonitus:fx is a bundle, not an all in one plugin. They were actually pretty powerful, I recall missing them quite a bit when I switched to PT in the mid aughts.
Loved CakeWalk until Gibson bought it a promised lifetime upgrades for a couple of hundred bucks. Well, myself and everyone else who purchased that knows what happened next. So F CakeWalk. I moved the Cubase and couldn’t be happier. Yamaha/Steinberg is a better company. Also Gibson guitars are overrated and definitely overpriced. Including my LesPaul Custom! 😕Yeah I’m sour!
You already heard from Carl Jacobson below, but you can also hook up with Noel Borthwick and Ron Kuper. I'm pretty sure Greg Hendershott would talk to you as well. Cakewalk was a fabulous company, and I had many years of association with them. One of the best aspects of the company was the way they listened to users, and hosted (some might say tolerated) insane levels of debate over the direction of the software and company. I have the fondest memories of my long association with them (starting with good old DOS sequencing). It's not an exaggeration to say that my entire career as a musician was very much a product of my early association with Cakewalk products, and that their products were the scaffold upon which I was able to stand. Very happy to see you highlight this excellent company.
In the 90's I was a beta tester for Cakewalk. I loved it. But I stopped using it when I sold my gear and focused more on acoustic jazz...Version 6 and 7 was when I was doing that.
Excellent video, but you mised out one important version which was Sonar 8.5 - Considered by many as the pinnacle of the Sonar lineup before they ruined it with X1. It was much more than a point 5 update reallly, it should have been called Sonar 9. I used it for a decade as the early versions of the X series were horrible.
I still use a windows XP system with Sonar 4 Producer to record bands and all of my own music. It has never been on the internet (apart from windows installation) or updated, has never glitched and is still running today with 3 M-Audio Delta 1010's at 48khz 24 bit recording, which is still industry standard today. Every iteration of Sonar that came out after Sonar 4 producer, was just reshaped buttons and a couple of new toys that ended up being pretty useless. I use Waves and other third party plugins from the same era too and who can really tell which reverb or chorus someone used in a full mix? Every piece of music on my channel has been done on this system and I have future proofed with spare pc's that were free, when people threw them away. Sonar 4 is where I will stay until some kind of paradigm shift in audio happens. Never once has someone questioned the DAW I use and never once has quality been an issue. I can run it blind while sitting backwards on a motorbike, what's the point of changing?? Thanks for the video and the work that you put in with it, it was a blast to see it. If you want to know anything about Sonar 4 just ask.
Not bad, given the limited resources you had. I have cakewalk professional 3.1 and it still is a beauty to use. Fast when it comes to getting ideas down quickly.
I bought it way back when and I still use it for sequencing today. It is by for the easiest and quickest workflow for sequencing that i have ever used ... maybe that's because i am a bit of a dinosour haha! I have to have a dedicated XP computer to run it unfortunately. I would however pay money for someone to adapt this version to run on a 64 bit computer! I have tried VM but with little success. I'm curios to know how you and others are you running it?
Huge omission was the Gibson lifetime free updates scam. As a Sonar Platinum user, I paid like $500 to get lifetime free updates. Gibson killed cakewalk less than a year later and kept everything from all of the lifetime payers. I'll never buy, support, use, or record anyone using a Gibson product ever again in my life. I do thank them for doing one thing: forcing me to pick Cubase (my current DAW). Best decision I ever made. I still have my final Sonar Platinum version and a current version of Bandlab Cakewalk, but I don't use it anymore because of how much I like Cubase. Cakewalk did come with some great plugins, Z3TA being my absolute favorite...one of the best wavetable / VA softsynths to this very day. I'd stack it up against Sylenth, Spire, Hive, or Serum any day. Glad to see that it's free and supported. Great option for those who want a professional free DAW with literally all of the capabilities of the big paid DAWs.
I used Cakewalk and all of it's iterations for more than thirty years only to be left out in the cold. Even though I still have Platinum installed on my studio computer, I have found a new home on Presonus Sphere. I miss "Project 5".
Great video. I have used Cakewalk since it's first release. Unfortunately I don't have any of the older software to show you. Cakewalk in my opinion was way underated as it competed with pro tools and still does in alot of ways even as a free software.
I go back as far as Cakewalk 3.0 Professional running under Windows 3.1 on a 486 sx machine with 8 mb of RAM. I bought a MIDI 2portSE interface and used SMPTE codes to lock Computer to a 4 track Fostex Cassette recorder. It was like magic to me and I could record analog guitars and vocals and lay down drums and synth parts on the computer. We then mixed to 2 track stereo on cassette. It was primitive as HELL, but we got some passable demos that worked for developing live arrangements for bands I played in. It was great fun but I lacked the skills to get professional recordings. I stayed with Cakewalk, owning various iterations all the way through the Gibson debacle. I use Bandlab now but only as a pastime since I no longer play music in public. Thank you for this walk down memory lane. I will say that Bandlab’s version kicks butt! I am so glad to have it.
I used cakewalk for dos in the early 90s. But my main sequencer was Voyetra's Sequencer Plus Gold, the one Cakewalk was inspired from. I always thought the Cakewalk name came from Debussy's piece.
Love the video. I wish you had called out Gibson's shameless money grab of offering "lifetime" updates for a $200 fee right before they punted. Really burned my bacon with that one. I've been using Cakewalk since 1999. Tried Studio 1, but the free aspect for (plus all my old premium plugins like Dimension) was too much to pass up. Still use it. Love it. Highly recommended even in 2023.
This was such a nostalgia trip. Please do Band-in-a-box at some point. I think there may be a lot of former jazz school kids who'll appreciate that. Actually a remarkable software for the time.
My first steps into recording music was in 1989 using Cakewalk in DOS. It's great to see the way TwelveTone managed to develop over time, but seeing these old DOS screens... I just love it! I remember my first Memory Dump action to and from the Roland D-10. (SysEx)
Cakewalk Project 5 should've been mentioned somewhere around Music Creator LE. It never got big, but it had Ableton like clips, but with sonar like features and plugins. I don't think it ever got out there so much because cakewalk had Sonar already. They couldn't push for two daws.
I worked in the Cakewalk Project 5. It was a great alternative Ableton. It is a pity that the development of the program has stopped. The appearance of early versions of Bitwig is very similar to Project 5 )))
I have every disk (3 1/2" , CDs. and DVDs) for every version since Cakewalk 3.1 for Windows - including all the manuals. I just have to dig them up from some stored boxes in the basement.
I started on Cakewalk Home Studio then 2002. So, Sonar began concurrently with these consumer level offerings? Also, the Cakewalk Roland VS-20/Guitar Tracks line of 2009. DAW Controller/Guitar modeler. I don’t think it was very popular but they did upgrade Guitar Tracks occasionally. But the VS-20 is rather cool.
I'm 34 and have used Cakewalk for music production since I was 9. In fact, a CD of Cakewalk 7 was my 9-y BD, with a Begginer Yamaha 4 octaves keyboard. Those were the best presents I ever gained. Now, moving on among VSTi's, Kontakt libraries and other plugins, my Sonar X3 seems to be crashing too much and no longer working properly. It's been a long term relationship, but I'm able to move on, maybe to Cubase.
I have been a user of Cakewalk since the Pro Audio days. There are a lot of features left out during the Sonar X days. Sonar x1 to Sonar X3 had many great improvements and you could still order the program on DVD. The next version of Sonar was called Sonar platinum. The main changes with this version was that you had to download an installer from the internet and that installer would setup cakewalk for you. No more DVD sets. Sonar started a pay as you go program and people were mad because they thought that Sonar would become a subscription service. This was not true but people thought they would need to subscribe rather than buy a license. There were a few upgrades to platinum and you would purchase the new upgrades every year for about 100.00. There were bug fixes and new program features. Usually these upgrades had new features and people requested what they wanted in the upgrades via the forum. The thing that destroyed Sonar was the fact that Gibson purchased the program. In the springtime the yearly upgrades were offered which were around 100.00. About a month or two after everyone purchased the yearly upgrade Gibson announce a lifetime update. If you purchased the lifetime update then you would never need to buy another update. You got the rest of the updates for free. Of course, this was about 150.00. (i don't remember the exact amount) but everyone purchased the lifetime update. Gibson got over double for the update fees because of this. Now all of a sudden Gibson had no money coming in to develop Sonar. That is when they announced that they were abandoning the development of Sonar. They only had the software a little over a year and they destroyed the whole platform. At that time the CEO of Gibson was a real jackass and he led the company into 350 million dollars of debt. I never purchased another Gibson product after that. Gibson had effectively killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Everyone felt that they were ripped off. Gibson had a lot of restructuring to do. They sold Sonar to Bandlab and they changed the name back to Cakewalk. Bandlab saved the software and they gave it away for free. In the process of saving the software some plugins were stripped away. These were good plugins but they are no longer found in cakewalk. Session Drummer 3 is awesome but it is only available if you have an older version of Sonar. Today's Cakewalk has many new features and innovations but it is still a stripped down version of what Sonar once was. Former Sonar users went on to use other DAW apps. Many went to Studio 1 and Many went to Reaper. Both are good DAW apps. The cool thing is that Cakewalk by Bandlab imports all the plugins from Sonar Platinum so I still have them. I think it is a shame that new users don't have access to them and they can't even purchase them.
I began using Cakewalk in 1987 or 1988. Cakewalk ran great on my Kaypro 2000 laptop with Korg DS-8 keyboard. I can't believe I was at the very beginning of all the MIDI sequencer technology! How did I afford a Kaypro 2000 and Korg DS-8 in the late 1980s?
I was a Registered User for the Twelve Tone System's Cakewalk Apprentice 1.0. That software came with the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro "MIDI Kit" (a MIDI cable adapter for the soundcart Joystick port). These allowed to connect an external synthesizer to the computer, and use the sequencing program on Windows 3.1 to record and play MID and native WRK files. I used a cheap Casio MT at the time. Promotional material was sent on the international mail, and included the QuarterTone quaterly magazine, a small newspaper. In this way, I was able to upgrade to the Cakewalk Audio. With a SB16 soundcard, you could play MIDI and audio at the same time, a feature not possible on the early SBPro. It may sound an idiocy today, but I was able to arrange great theatrical music and SFX for live plays at school using that nimble software and a tape recorder. What great memories!
I believe I got a copy of Cakewalk with my 1st computer in 1996. It was a Pentium 100 and I paid an extra $100 for a Soundblaster AWE 32. I think cakewalk came with it. Maybe a light version. I might even still have it installed on an old computer in the office. Maybe I’ll plug it in and see.
Don't forget Guitar Tracks by Cakewalk.... c. 2000, this was my first experience with digital recording. The software always worked perfectly on my under-powered HP computer.
I used Cakewalk in the late 80s. Probably 88/89 with a Roland MPU-401 interface on an IBM PC/XT clone running DOS. Prior to that I used something called Robert Keller’s 48 Track PC, but I digress. Anyway, I’m pretty positive the DOS version of Cakewalk back then had piano roll editing also. It had to be done using ASCII characters simulating true graphics, and it supported the Microsoft Mouse. This was BEFORE Windows. It was ahead of its time. Not much later I got a Mac SE and switched over to MOTU Performer as well as Opcode Vision. Just remembered another great feature of that old DOS version of Cakewalk. You had slots in which could store system exclusive dumps with your sequence and even designate certain ones to be sent upon loading a sequence from disk. That way, you’d load a sequence and before you hit play, sysex messages would be sent out to your attached synths setting all the right patches before playback.
I started my career using Cakewalk with a Roland JV-80 in 1994. I had a Creative Labs Soundblaster Pro soundcard in my computer, where the joystick port could be used for MIDI if you bought the optional "Midi Kit". That kit had a version of Cakewalk, called Cakewalk Apprentice, bundled with it.
I still use WINCAKE for Windows 3.0 whenever I can...It still works GREAT TODAY (provided you are running a 32bit OS). The TROUBLE with the PRO-AUDIO was the MIDI EDITING was horrible..
I recall occasionally using Cakewalk 9 Pro in the late 90s and Cakewalk Sonar 5 in the mid 00s. Since 2015 (Sonar X3 Platinum) I have been using Sonar/CbB almost exclusively. Perfect workflow is the main reason, besides stability and dependability.
My first DAW was Cakewalk Gold 8.0, after which I used Pro Audio 9, Sonar 4, Sonar 6, and currently use X3, but also have Platinum. As I have used Cakewalk by Bandlab out of curiosity, I highly recommend it.
I thought that tascam/teac owned it for a while? That one was pretty short-lived. Also there was wdm midi / audio drivers that at least 4 me gave perfect MIDI no lag hardware like latency. I would use giga sampler and eventually threw away my Roland s760, I think I came in around pro audio 9. Bandlab has fixed so many issues, God bless those people and Gibson ;-(.... I paid a lifetime subscription. So mismanaged rumor had it there was a kid whose job was to open and close the front door when people came to Gibson headquarters. OMG!! Gr8 vid!!
I WAS A HUUUUGE CAKEHEAD...used it from ME until, well...FL STUDIOS "caught up" (wast as reliable/useful at the time...or maybe it was a resource hog...i cant quite remember why i didnt use it first...oh, i just remembered...Cakewalk had music notation interface too...note by note...as i was more in the compositional side of things and Fruity didnt have that)...now i use mostly fl studio, ableton and protools and sibelius...but i still got my copy of sonar x3 still loaded...and the new bandlabs version now....eh hem..'cakewalk' i mean). CAKE was the DAW though...remember it fondly in its hayday!! (great manuals...plenty of other books at your local borders (sad, gone too) to help you out as well....) One thing that did make me chuckle that you mentioned here is that it seemed to have a new (and rather expensive) update almost every year that users JUST HAD TO GET!! (we were CAKEHEADS after all!)...so required savin' up your dollars for the next $299 or so update....and back then that was very expensive for software! :-)
The "first" Midi Daw ever that everyone copied is the reality. Steinburg pretty much ripped Cakewalk and called it Cubase. Makes me laugh when people using other DAWs "believe" Cakewalk is for beginner's when they are using DAWs that called a bus and group lol Nice Video
Thank you for this trip down memory lane relative to Cakewalk/Twelve Tone/Voyetra/Sonar iterations. I still have the original CW/Twelve Tone System DOS floopy disk! I once visited Twelve Tone Systems headquarters in Pelham, NY circa 1986...I was surprised to find this amazing music software company housed in an extremely tiny storefront office. It was weird...although it was during office hours, the place was closed that day. Thanks again for the memories... :-)
I first purchased my first Cakewalk software (Express version) in 1989 to work alongside my Korg M1. All due to magazine cover shown at 1:14 and the adds ran in Keyboard Magazine.
MIDI sequencing with 12 Tone Systems Cakewalk was the first program my PC was capable of running, which was really useful. I did briefly try installing Windows, but that drove my PC to a halt - I EVEN had a full 64K of memory and a 5MB hard drive! What a waste! The Cakewalk allowed me to transcribe flea market scores and I learned trumpet by playing along.. The MIDI cable was connected to my Roland D5, which is still working and in occasional use.
Cakewalk software helped me to be a better drummer and musician. I loved it for the "Staff view", which I always used to edit MIDI data, because studied to read music in school back in the early years. Yes, CUBASE also had its own Stuff view, but to me it was not so comfortable and usefull as in Cakewalk. My first encounter was with Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 somewhere in the beginning of the 2000s. I found it on pirate soft CD and decidied to install "why not?" )) Since then it became main *.MID file type association program. Later in 2008 I started to play e-Drums Yamaha and decided to try the new Sonar 7. I needed ASIO, VSTi and I still wanted my beloved Staff view wich I always prefer instead of Piano roll.. After 2011 I decided to stick with Sonar 8.5 because the new X1 seemed too "alien" to me, and I still use 8.5 to date. And the most powerfull thing was seeing the notes you play on a synth (drumset module) instantly as drum scores on a screen during record session. Immediately realizing and correcting mistakes. Amazing! Thank you, Cakewalk.
Oh my... I've used Cakewalk Sonar since the 2.2, and my ex GF had Win ME. Luckily the software developed into somethinig better (and I still use Sonar to this day) and my ex has gone along with her ME computer... :D
I used Cakewalk products since the late 90s. I think Cakewalk Home Studio 8 or something. I upgraded to every new version until Sonar platinum (not mentioned in video). After bandlab acquired them and renamed Sonar back to Cakewalk I was still very much happy with the product. But now after nearly 25 years of use I think I'm moving to a different DAW.
Cakewalk Home Studio 7 taught me how to think beyond the two-track recording limit of my PSR-520 Yamaha keyboard. What an incredible leap! I can't estimate how many hours I spent creating .wrk files left and right, each filled with dozens of tracks capturing the strange musical ideas of my teenage self. I eventually moved to Garageband, Logic, Ableton, and Pro Tools, but while each have their strengths and encourage me to think in different ways, my use of them is built on the foundation that Cakewalk gave me. I've never felt nostalgia for a DAW like I have for Cakewalk. Thank you for creating this video and letting me see my old musical training ground again.
I have been using Cakewalk since Pro Audio 9.. I use the Bandlab version now.. but with some glitches, and random crashes, it's a really easy DAW to use, and I've learned Pro Tools..
Great video, I went from "Tracker" in Dos, to Cakewalk, Sonar, CuBase and now Ableton. Miss those days with outboard midi, and spaceship like mixing decks and racks :) Thanks again for the nostalgia trip.
Six months after I bought sonar cakewalk professional. Gibson sold it. I still use it and I like it. I have 2 other DAW's but I stick to cakewalk by SONAR its the one i am most familiar with
My first DAW was Sonar when it came out, my last (and current) is X3 - I upgraded through all versions in between. It still runs on a PC based around a motherboard that I know is at least 13 years old, and aside from changing its CR2032 battery is still going just fine.
I started with Cakewalk apprentice version 1 and bought ever upgrade all the way through pro audio and then every version of SONAR stopping at Sonar X3 which I still use.
Wow seriously thanks for posting this memory jog. I had started with Cakewalk v3 on my trusty Amstrad PC and went on to upgrade all the way through the last Lifetime offering. Think I even have a copy of the Sonar/Mac prototype somewhere (there was an attempt). The G*son thing ticked something off though and I proceeded to become kind of a DAW collector. Very happy that BandLab picked up the ball, however like some others I have become more Mac-centric and gravitating more toward dual - or more - platform applications.
I loved cakewalk. I released an album using it way back 2011. Sadly I am now trapped in the apple ecosystem of software and the new machines have really spotty compatibility.
I used the original version of the sequencer when it came out and it wasn't even called Cakewalk. I'm pretty sure it was Twelve Tone Dr. Music that then became Cakewalk very shortly after. I was using it in my studio and chaselocked it to my multitrack. I used it until Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 before closing my first studio. When I jumped back in to studio like in 2020, Cakewalk was now free and blows the doors off of the PAID version I used. I've tried pretty much every DAW. They all pretty much do the same so use whatever best supports your workflow. I see no reason to switch from Cakewalk at this time because I'm creating Pro level recordings with it AND mastering. Cool video.
I used to use Cakewalk back in the mid 90s. My goal was to turn the PC into a sampling workstation which required finding the right sound card. At the time I used a Creative Sound Blaster that had built in RAM which was a new concept. It was designed to have samples in the SoundFont format, so I had to record the audio into an audio editor (I used Sonic Foundry Sound Forge for sample recording and editing). Then I'd load the samples onto the sound card (which replaced the MIDI GS sounds) and call them up within Cakewalk to record a performance. From there Cakewalk allowed me to precisely compose sequences in a way that none of my friends could do since they were using sampling keyboard workstations like the Ensoniq ASR 16. I tried using Sonar around this time but ended up using Sonic Foundry ACID quite a bit in the following years. It was a new way to use sample loops and had on the fly time stretch and pitch features that were not accessible to me prior to using ACID. The 'painting' of audio tracks was wild and really allowed you to manipulate loops like never before. I've searched recently for modern versions of ACID but it seems like the 'painting' type of composition is no longer used. I'd love a modern version that uses that method. I'm not sure what happened, but as DAWs became more complex and prevalent, I became less enchanted by them. However I did use Reason for many years following the Cakewalk days because it captured my imagination with the virtual rack layout. Really like the "entire history of.." videos you are making! Great job!
Sonar 2 was my first daw. Thank you limewire. Then I bought Sonar 5 and still have the disk. Downloaded Cakewalk by bandlab but haven't had much opportunity to use it as I mostly work with mainstage and Logic now.
What, the "Entire" History of Cakewalk and no mention of Bapu??! 😆😆😆 Can't believe it's been going so long, I still remember helping Greg debug the first version over the phone back in 1987 (for a General MIDI issue)... Wow.
@@SteveStrummerUK *Pfft...* Of course! EVERYONE uses lowercase and has numbers in their name! 🙄 (What a tosser!) People Everywhere Need Imprudence Steve! 😜
I still have Cakewalk 3 and use from time to time,Purchased it on disk at Comp USA many years back.. Sill works great. I have protools and Abelton but the cake walk still keeps going.
I’ve been with cakewalk from the beginning. My favourite part was the CAL system. I hoped by now we’d be able to run in OSX but alas that’s not on the radar. Shame.
The dos version went to version 8! I started at version 6! It was good until Version 8 when it just run very well on my PC. Then Went on to Sonar up until the Chinese company bought it! My favorite Sonar was when Roland bought it!!
Thanks for the succinct Cakewalk History video. I've book marked it for reference. A number of comments reflect on the lack of a Mac OS version of Cakewalk. I haven't seen any mention of Cakewalks attempt to develop a Mac OS version around the time they released the phone recording app (called Momentum?) I think they released a beta version and dropped it soon after that.
8.5 introduced internal side chains for some of the included plugins and a delay compensated external hardware insert. It had bugs though and I wish they had stayed on that development path and fixed bugs, expanded internal modulation and so on, instead of going on the new X1 versions. I did not care for the new stuff very much. So I stayed with 8.5 and now am looking for a new DAW to use. I am between Reaper, FL Studio and maybe Studio One. I understand the bandlab version is free but I am suspicious of the free subscription model. If they decide to discontinue support oor go under then you loose access to all your work? If they offered a paid version you could own and install on all of your computers as the earlier versions then I would likely stay with this sequencer. Nice history of this product.
I started with pro audio 9 on Windows 98. I moved to xp with a better pc in 2001. Later i got sonar 6 then 8 producer edition which is still my favorite. I mostly use it for midi and do audio and mix down in Harrison mixbus
I'm surprised to even see a video about Cakewalk! It was my genesis! So there was a series from Cakewalk called Guitar Tracks. I'm not sure exactly what the point of the series was, just that GT3 was the first DAW I'd ever used. As far as I can remember, it was the same as any other DAW at the time. I somehow managed to stretch my use of that program to like 8 years before switching to Cubase.
In the Home Studio era when you still needed a dedicated sound card to run any high quality audio from a PC the cards would use the same processing circuits for either recording OR playback. You needed a higher end “full duplex” card to be able to record while listening to previously recorded tracks.
WOW just looking at this video at 1:47 brings back so many memories. So many... that was the first music software i started using.. I even kept the original box and disk just as a keep sake.
Really enjoyed that. Thank you. I had every version of Sonar all the way up to Sonar Platinum. Found the X line so unstable I ended up moving back to Cubase. The skylight interface has now become pretty much standard across the industry. Ahead of it's time,
I have had Cakewalk and Sonar for years. I still have the manual and discs. Haha. I use Pro Tools now but from time to time I fire up the old school stuff to have fun.
I used a hacked version of Pro Audio 9 back in the early 00s, had a lot of fun with it once I worked out how to use it . I like the Bandlab Cakewalk well enough but just do not use it or any sort of DAW as much.
This was really fun to see thank you for putting it together. I am the marketing director that you have a little clip of towards the beginning of the video. I wish I'd known you were doing it I could have contributed some historical information and imagery. Getting to work for Cakewalk at that time was really special, we were finally at the point where computer processing was starting a revolution and people were empowered to take control of their music production on their own terms.
A couple key features that you missed in SONAR 1 and 2 were the introduction of audio quantizing and loop based sequencing, which were co-opted from Sonic Foundry acid. You also mentioned virtual instruments later, but the actual support for then came into play around that time which was also a big deal.
SONAR was the first digital audio workstation to support both 64-bit processing and 64-bit audio quality, I think we introduced that around version 4. This was really well received by companies like Intel and Microsoft, because they viewed us as being cutting edge and used the program to showcase those technologies.
Another overlooked feature of the product was its support for accessibility functions. This is one of the things that I'm most proud of. Vision impaired musicians could compose music and make arrangements without the need of anyone else to drive the computer. That led to an endorsement by Ray Charles, and getting to know Ray was one of the most amazing things that's happened in my career. Some of the other notable users of the product included BB King, Public Enemy, Slipknot and Jon Anderson of Yes.
Plasma that you mentioned was actually a light version of a full sequencer called Project 5. The thing that made Project 5 great was its workflow, it was really fast for creating music. Unfortunately the small team at Cakewalk and our limited budgets made it difficult to support two flagship products and it was eventually abandoned.
The last thing that I want to say is I believe the downfall of Cakewalk was the fact that we didn't port to the Mac. The product was great, really one of the best, but we had this uphill battle of not only convincing people to use Sonar, but also to embrace an entire operating system, when the zeitgeist of the moment was that Mac was for creatives.
If you have any questions let me know. Thanks again for giving me this walk down memory lane I'm feeling really nostalgic this morning.
Awesome, man. Thanks for checking in.
If you’d like I’d be happy to chat with you for a video on my channel since it was so hard to get info about the program only searching online and with the way back machine :)
You can email me at afunnylookingsquash@gmail.com if you’d like to get it touch
Great info! Although Macs are great, I never understood the blind allegiance to the Macs-are-for-creatives mantra. The new Apple silicon is impressive, but I've always been able to build (or have built) a music production PC that smokes a Mac for a fraction of the price.
@@randallharp7010 Yes I find that brand allegiance for the sake of brand allegiance is kind of weird and holding the idea that a competing brand is automatic garbage is pretty culty.
Can't believe my video request came through lmao. Cakewalk by Bandlab is a seriously underrated Daw. Thanks for the video champ
We stan our viewers here at the squash channel
I've used Cakewalk since the DOS version. Still use it and I've tried the others to see how they were. Never left Cakewalk. Still recording music daily with Cakewalk and couldn't be happier.
I used the original DOS version at my school as a 14 year old. I have continued to use Cakewalk/Sonar throughout my life. I recorded and mixed somewhere in the 100's of local bands and musicians, 1 of which gained traction and is now in their 10th year of touring. I used it on jobs for law enforcement (noise removal for surveillance video/audio), as well as national TV shows (Dirtiest Jobs/Deadliest Catch, Sesame Street, Hawaii 5-0. etc), and dozens of commercial spots. Once the OMF format was a part of Cakewalk the road was wide open, and I was able to easily collaborate world-wide with Pro-Tools-based studios as well. Over the years I dabbled in Cubase and Pro-Tools, but they were always lacking something that Cakewalk had long included, so there was simply no desire to conform to Pro-Tools when I got more out of Cakewalk.
You should do an episode on Cool Edit Pro / Adobe Audition... I first got started with Cool Edit back at the turn of the millenium... Made so much stuff with it
I used Cakewalk from v4.0 (on MSDOS) until SONAR 8.5. I started with Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold which used the same interface as the DOS version of Cakewalk. The instrument definition was a nice feature in Cakewalk that made it easy to import or create patch/bank list with program change from pretty much any keyboard brand, this was a time saver when you had to browse through thousands of patches across multiple banks, something that was either limited or nonexistent in other DAWs that I used or tested.
Exactly!
Lovely, I had my father bye Calkewalk 2.0 för ms dos 3.1 in the US (I'm in Sweden) in the -89. I keept using it until Pro Audio 9 and loved it!
What a great trip down memory lane! Thank you.
(I was a user from the beginning. YIKES!!)
Excellent video. Lots of stuff I didn't know about. I'm the original author of the current Cakewalk by Bandlab Wikipedia entry. It was initially more comprehensive, but some more high-powered Wikipedia editor cut a bunch of stuff out because while it was true, they didn't think the references I used (the actual manufacturer's product pages) were sufficient. At the time I created the entry, I did some cleanup on the Cakewalk SONAR article, which was a mess. I moved some of the content to the new article, but then it got removed. So that's the story on the Wikipedia entries. At least Cakewalk by Bandlab does have its own entry. Please do some editing, as your knowledge of the history is far greater than mine, and you seem to be very good at finding references.
It was 1989, using an old IBM XT with 5.25 floppy disks to start up Cakewalk. Starting that computer was like starting an old car. It was a joy working with that software. It's impressive to see how far things have improved.
What TRIP down memory lane. I bought Greg's Calkwalk in September of 1988 along with a Roland D50, Swan's AT clone with a 30(!) meg hard drive & EGA (!) monitor, Sound Quest's D-50 editor librarian, and a Music Quest MQX-32M pc buss card. I still have most everything scattered about! Those were the dayz.
Damn I feel old after watching this video. These kids today don’t know how good they have it with currents DAW, VST’s and Plugins. The struggle was real back in the day. They’ll never experience the poor man’s multi track tape recorder (which was any dual cassette recorder of the day).., who remembers doing this! How about the way we used to hack cheap headphones and turn them into mics!!!!! The good o’l 1980’s.
Been using Cakewalk since the 90's but only as a sequencer back then because the computers that us mortals could afford were simply not fast enough to do sound yet. Too much latency to deal with and besides, I had a couple of Alesis 24 track hard drive recorders that worked great and sounded quite good for the cost. But in the early 2000's I had the money to have a computer built that at the time was a rocket. Put Sonar 3 on it and began to enjoy the many wonders of visual digital editing. Game changer!! Latency was no longer a problem. I used lightwire interfaces (needed two in order to get the 48 tracks I was use to). Had and still have, a Yamaha DX 2000 board. This was, and still is, a dream set up. And now with Cakewalk on steroids free, it's Disney world in my studio. And the plugs we have now, wow. I go back to when we spliced 2 track, 1/4 inch tape (early 60's) with a razor blade so you can imagine how much I love what we have now. You young folks have no way of knowing the world you live in lol! No worry. Just enjoy it!! Sometimes I'd love to be 30 again in todays marvel of technology world. But I did live long enough to build a highly successful youtube music channel, something we didn't even see coming 20 years or more ago.
Still using Sonar 3 here also... It's always done everything I've needed to do and more 👍... Use any Sound Fonts? (just curious)
@@JamZorro If by sound fonts you meant samples like piano, harp, bass, guitar, and the like, I do use a sampled piano, but play most other instruments I need. But yes, again, the world we now live in, at least from a tech standpoint, is beyond belief. I do have some interesting sound packs that I have yet to explore, but eager to get to them.
I used Cakewalk 3.0 for DOS in the early 90s. Still have the 5.25 floppy
Merry Christmas Squash and everyone!
Thanks for putting this together. love Cake Walk. I started when it came together with the Sound Blaster many years ago. I have seen the developments and I thank Band Lab for the continued support and the terrific work they done every day.
Our band has always been Cakewalk/Sonar users (having used the first versions on the PC when we switched from Master Tracks Pro on Atari Mega 2 in the early 90s). The current version of Cakewalk is so good and we’ve used it so much in recent years that I’ve forgotten all the versions and feature improvements along the way. But we are forever grateful to Bandlab for keeping Cakewalk going (tried doing a couple of projects in Cuebase right after Gibson stopped support of Sonar, but didn’t like Cuebase nearly as well). Thanks for this informative and fun video. -Jer of the band Mitch the Needle
One small correction: Sonitus:fx is a bundle, not an all in one plugin. They were actually pretty powerful, I recall missing them quite a bit when I switched to PT in the mid aughts.
Loved CakeWalk until Gibson bought it a promised lifetime upgrades for a couple of hundred bucks. Well, myself and everyone else who purchased that knows what happened next. So F CakeWalk. I moved the Cubase and couldn’t be happier. Yamaha/Steinberg is a better company. Also Gibson guitars are overrated and definitely overpriced. Including my LesPaul Custom! 😕Yeah I’m sour!
You missed out 'Project 5' Came out until version 2 and died later. But was a great program like Ableton clip window and sequencer.Regards
You already heard from Carl Jacobson below, but you can also hook up with Noel Borthwick and Ron Kuper. I'm pretty sure Greg Hendershott would talk to you as well. Cakewalk was a fabulous company, and I had many years of association with them. One of the best aspects of the company was the way they listened to users, and hosted (some might say tolerated) insane levels of debate over the direction of the software and company. I have the fondest memories of my long association with them (starting with good old DOS sequencing). It's not an exaggeration to say that my entire career as a musician was very much a product of my early association with Cakewalk products, and that their products were the scaffold upon which I was able to stand. Very happy to see you highlight this excellent company.
In the 90's I was a beta tester for Cakewalk. I loved it. But I stopped using it when I sold my gear and focused more on acoustic jazz...Version 6 and 7 was when I was doing that.
Excellent video, but you mised out one important version which was Sonar 8.5 - Considered by many as the pinnacle of the Sonar lineup before they ruined it with X1. It was much more than a point 5 update reallly, it should have been called Sonar 9. I used it for a decade as the early versions of the X series were horrible.
I still use a windows XP system with Sonar 4 Producer to record bands and all of my own music. It has never been on the internet (apart from windows installation) or updated, has never glitched and is still running today with 3 M-Audio Delta 1010's at 48khz 24 bit recording, which is still industry standard today. Every iteration of Sonar that came out after Sonar 4 producer, was just reshaped buttons and a couple of new toys that ended up being pretty useless. I use Waves and other third party plugins from the same era too and who can really tell which reverb or chorus someone used in a full mix? Every piece of music on my channel has been done on this system and I have future proofed with spare pc's that were free, when people threw them away. Sonar 4 is where I will stay until some kind of paradigm shift in audio happens. Never once has someone questioned the DAW I use and never once has quality been an issue. I can run it blind while sitting backwards on a motorbike, what's the point of changing?? Thanks for the video and the work that you put in with it, it was a blast to see it. If you want to know anything about Sonar 4 just ask.
Not bad, given the limited resources you had. I have cakewalk professional 3.1 and it still is a beauty to use. Fast when it comes to getting ideas down quickly.
I bought it way back when and I still use it for sequencing today. It is by for the easiest and quickest workflow for sequencing that i have ever used ... maybe that's because i am a bit of a dinosour haha! I have to have a dedicated XP computer to run it unfortunately. I would however pay money for someone to adapt this version to run on a 64 bit computer! I have tried VM but with little success. I'm curios to know how you and others are you running it?
i'm no producer but learning about all these various daws is really interesting
Huge omission was the Gibson lifetime free updates scam. As a Sonar Platinum user, I paid like $500 to get lifetime free updates. Gibson killed cakewalk less than a year later and kept everything from all of the lifetime payers.
I'll never buy, support, use, or record anyone using a Gibson product ever again in my life.
I do thank them for doing one thing: forcing me to pick Cubase (my current DAW). Best decision I ever made. I still have my final Sonar Platinum version and a current version of Bandlab Cakewalk, but I don't use it anymore because of how much I like Cubase.
Cakewalk did come with some great plugins, Z3TA being my absolute favorite...one of the best wavetable / VA softsynths to this very day. I'd stack it up against Sylenth, Spire, Hive, or Serum any day.
Glad to see that it's free and supported. Great option for those who want a professional free DAW with literally all of the capabilities of the big paid DAWs.
I used Cakewalk and all of it's iterations for more than thirty years only to be left out in the cold. Even though I still have Platinum installed on my studio computer, I have found a new home on Presonus Sphere. I miss "Project 5".
Great video. I have used Cakewalk since it's first release. Unfortunately I don't have any of the older software to show you. Cakewalk in my opinion was way underated as it competed with pro tools and still does in alot of ways even as a free software.
One of the best things about pro audio 9 was the sound font integration .if you had a creative sound card you could play and rec them.
i spent hours in the soundfont creator.. .. and a fortune on RAM upgrades :)
Great trip down memory lane!
I go back as far as Cakewalk 3.0 Professional running under Windows 3.1 on a 486 sx machine with 8 mb of RAM. I bought a MIDI 2portSE interface and used SMPTE codes to lock Computer to a 4 track Fostex Cassette recorder. It was like magic to me and I could record analog guitars and vocals and lay down drums and synth parts on the computer. We then mixed to 2 track stereo on cassette. It was primitive as HELL, but we got some passable demos that worked for developing live arrangements for bands I played in. It was great fun but I lacked the skills to get professional recordings.
I stayed with Cakewalk, owning various iterations all the way through the Gibson debacle.
I use Bandlab now but only as a pastime since I no longer play music in public.
Thank you for this walk down memory lane. I will say that Bandlab’s version kicks butt! I am so glad to have it.
Congratulations to all who created and developed this terrific DAW over the years. It was a journey and a hard work.
I used cakewalk for dos in the early 90s. But my main sequencer was Voyetra's Sequencer Plus Gold, the one Cakewalk was inspired from. I always thought the Cakewalk name came from Debussy's piece.
Oh, nice insight!
Love the video. I wish you had called out Gibson's shameless money grab of offering "lifetime" updates for a $200 fee right before they punted. Really burned my bacon with that one. I've been using Cakewalk since 1999. Tried Studio 1, but the free aspect for (plus all my old premium plugins like Dimension) was too much to pass up. Still use it. Love it. Highly recommended even in 2023.
It was very deceptive.
This was such a nostalgia trip. Please do Band-in-a-box at some point. I think there may be a lot of former jazz school kids who'll appreciate that. Actually a remarkable software for the time.
My first steps into recording music was in 1989 using Cakewalk in DOS. It's great to see the way TwelveTone managed to develop over time, but seeing these old DOS screens... I just love it! I remember my first Memory Dump action to and from the Roland D-10. (SysEx)
This is a great retrospective... thanks for all the research and attention put towards enlightening the history of Cakewalk!
:)
Cakewalk Project 5 should've been mentioned somewhere around Music Creator LE. It never got big, but it had Ableton like clips, but with sonar like features and plugins. I don't think it ever got out there so much because cakewalk had Sonar already. They couldn't push for two daws.
I worked in the Cakewalk Project 5. It was a great alternative Ableton. It is a pity that the development of the program has stopped. The appearance of early versions of Bitwig is very similar to Project 5 )))
I have every disk (3 1/2" , CDs. and DVDs) for every version since Cakewalk 3.1 for Windows - including all the manuals. I just have to dig them up from some stored boxes in the basement.
If you want to get photos or scans of anything, just ask.
I started with sonar 8.5
I started on Cakewalk Home Studio then 2002. So, Sonar began concurrently with these consumer level offerings? Also, the Cakewalk Roland VS-20/Guitar Tracks line of 2009. DAW Controller/Guitar modeler. I don’t think it was very popular but they did upgrade Guitar Tracks occasionally. But the VS-20 is rather cool.
I didn't knew this DAW had such an interesting (and crazy) story, great video, sir.
I'm 34 and have used Cakewalk for music production since I was 9.
In fact, a CD of Cakewalk 7 was my 9-y BD, with a Begginer Yamaha 4 octaves keyboard.
Those were the best presents I ever gained.
Now, moving on among VSTi's, Kontakt libraries and other plugins, my Sonar X3 seems to be crashing too much and no longer working properly.
It's been a long term relationship, but I'm able to move on, maybe to Cubase.
I have been a user of Cakewalk since the Pro Audio days. There are a lot of features left out during the Sonar X days. Sonar x1 to Sonar X3 had many great improvements and you could still order the program on DVD. The next version of Sonar was called Sonar platinum. The main changes with this version was that you had to download an installer from the internet and that installer would setup cakewalk for you. No more DVD sets. Sonar started a pay as you go program and people were mad because they thought that Sonar would become a subscription service. This was not true but people thought they would need to subscribe rather than buy a license. There were a few upgrades to platinum and you would purchase the new upgrades every year for about 100.00. There were bug fixes and new program features.
Usually these upgrades had new features and people requested what they wanted in the upgrades via the forum. The thing that destroyed Sonar was the fact that Gibson purchased the program. In the springtime the yearly upgrades were offered which were around 100.00. About a month or two after everyone purchased the yearly upgrade Gibson announce a lifetime update. If you purchased the lifetime update then you would never need to buy another update. You got the rest of the updates for free. Of course, this was about 150.00. (i don't remember the exact amount) but everyone purchased the lifetime update. Gibson got over double for the update fees because of this. Now all of a sudden Gibson had no money coming in to develop Sonar. That is when they announced that they were abandoning the development of Sonar. They only had the software a little over a year and they destroyed the whole platform.
At that time the CEO of Gibson was a real jackass and he led the company into 350 million dollars of debt. I never purchased another Gibson product after that. Gibson had effectively killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Everyone felt that they were ripped off. Gibson had a lot of restructuring to do. They sold Sonar to Bandlab and they changed the name back to Cakewalk. Bandlab saved the software and they gave it away for free. In the process of saving the software some plugins were stripped away. These were good plugins but they are no longer found in cakewalk. Session Drummer 3 is awesome but it is only available if you have an older version of Sonar.
Today's Cakewalk has many new features and innovations but it is still a stripped down version of what Sonar once was. Former Sonar users went on to use other DAW apps. Many went to Studio 1 and Many went to Reaper. Both are good DAW apps. The cool thing is that Cakewalk by Bandlab imports all the plugins from Sonar Platinum so I still have them. I think it is a shame that new users don't have access to them and they can't even purchase them.
Nice blast from the past. Thank you.
you could load soundfonts into your RAM easily through cakewalk with the Soundblaster Audigy. that was magic :)
I began using Cakewalk in 1987 or 1988. Cakewalk ran great on my Kaypro 2000 laptop with Korg DS-8 keyboard. I can't believe I was at the very beginning of all the MIDI sequencer technology! How did I afford a Kaypro 2000 and Korg DS-8 in the late 1980s?
Sonar was the best.. I missed a lot😢
I was a Registered User for the Twelve Tone System's Cakewalk Apprentice 1.0. That software came with the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro "MIDI Kit" (a MIDI cable adapter for the soundcart Joystick port). These allowed to connect an external synthesizer to the computer, and use the sequencing program on Windows 3.1 to record and play MID and native WRK files. I used a cheap Casio MT at the time.
Promotional material was sent on the international mail, and included the QuarterTone quaterly magazine, a small newspaper. In this way, I was able to upgrade to the Cakewalk Audio. With a SB16 soundcard, you could play MIDI and audio at the same time, a feature not possible on the early SBPro. It may sound an idiocy today, but I was able to arrange great theatrical music and SFX for live plays at school using that nimble software and a tape recorder. What great memories!
Please UPDATE with a new video that includes the new "Cakewalk Sonar" - released in 2024. I just paid $112 for 1 year to use this. I'm excited.
a funny looking squash explaining the most rudimentary things like "oxygyn is a gas that humans breathe to survive"
I believe I got a copy of Cakewalk with my 1st computer in 1996. It was a Pentium 100 and I paid an extra $100 for a Soundblaster AWE 32. I think cakewalk came with it. Maybe a light version. I might even still have it installed on an old computer in the office. Maybe I’ll plug it in and see.
Don't forget Guitar Tracks by Cakewalk.... c. 2000, this was my first experience with digital recording. The software always worked perfectly on my under-powered HP computer.
I used Cakewalk in the late 80s. Probably 88/89 with a Roland MPU-401 interface on an IBM PC/XT clone running DOS. Prior to that I used something called Robert Keller’s 48 Track PC, but I digress. Anyway, I’m pretty positive the DOS version of Cakewalk back then had piano roll editing also. It had to be done using ASCII characters simulating true graphics, and it supported the Microsoft Mouse. This was BEFORE Windows. It was ahead of its time. Not much later I got a Mac SE and switched over to MOTU Performer as well as Opcode Vision.
Just remembered another great feature of that old DOS version of Cakewalk. You had slots in which could store system exclusive dumps with your sequence and even designate certain ones to be sent upon loading a sequence from disk. That way, you’d load a sequence and before you hit play, sysex messages would be sent out to your attached synths setting all the right patches before playback.
I started my career using Cakewalk with a Roland JV-80 in 1994. I had a Creative Labs Soundblaster Pro soundcard in my computer, where the joystick port could be used for MIDI if you bought the optional "Midi Kit". That kit had a version of Cakewalk, called Cakewalk Apprentice, bundled with it.
I still use WINCAKE for Windows 3.0 whenever I can...It still works GREAT TODAY (provided you are running a 32bit OS). The TROUBLE with the PRO-AUDIO was the MIDI EDITING was horrible..
I recall occasionally using Cakewalk 9 Pro in the late 90s and Cakewalk Sonar 5 in the mid 00s. Since 2015 (Sonar X3 Platinum) I have been using Sonar/CbB almost exclusively. Perfect workflow is the main reason, besides stability and dependability.
My first DAW was Cakewalk Gold 8.0, after which I used Pro Audio 9, Sonar 4, Sonar 6, and currently use X3, but also have Platinum. As I have used Cakewalk by Bandlab out of curiosity, I highly recommend it.
I thought that tascam/teac owned it for a while? That one was pretty short-lived.
Also there was wdm midi / audio drivers that at least 4 me gave perfect MIDI no lag hardware like latency. I would use giga sampler and eventually threw away my Roland s760, I think I came in around pro audio 9. Bandlab has fixed so many issues, God bless those people and Gibson ;-(.... I paid a lifetime subscription.
So mismanaged rumor had it there was a kid whose job was to open and close the front door when people came to Gibson headquarters. OMG!! Gr8 vid!!
I WAS A HUUUUGE CAKEHEAD...used it from ME until, well...FL STUDIOS "caught up" (wast as reliable/useful at the time...or maybe it was a resource hog...i cant quite remember why i didnt use it first...oh, i just remembered...Cakewalk had music notation interface too...note by note...as i was more in the compositional side of things and Fruity didnt have that)...now i use mostly fl studio, ableton and protools and sibelius...but i still got my copy of sonar x3 still loaded...and the new bandlabs version now....eh hem..'cakewalk' i mean). CAKE was the DAW though...remember it fondly in its hayday!! (great manuals...plenty of other books at your local borders (sad, gone too) to help you out as well....)
One thing that did make me chuckle that you mentioned here is that it seemed to have a new (and rather expensive) update almost every year that users JUST HAD TO GET!! (we were CAKEHEADS after all!)...so required savin' up your dollars for the next $299 or so update....and back then that was very expensive for software! :-)
The "first" Midi Daw ever that everyone copied is the reality. Steinburg pretty much ripped Cakewalk and called it Cubase. Makes me laugh when people using other DAWs "believe" Cakewalk is for beginner's when they are using DAWs that called a bus and group lol Nice Video
Thank you for this trip down memory lane relative to Cakewalk/Twelve Tone/Voyetra/Sonar iterations. I still have the original CW/Twelve Tone System DOS floopy disk! I once visited Twelve Tone Systems headquarters in Pelham, NY circa 1986...I was surprised to find this amazing music software company housed in an extremely tiny storefront office. It was weird...although it was during office hours, the place was closed that day. Thanks again for the memories... :-)
I first purchased my first Cakewalk software (Express version) in 1989 to work alongside my Korg M1. All due to magazine cover shown at 1:14 and the adds ran in Keyboard Magazine.
MIDI sequencing with 12 Tone Systems Cakewalk was the first program my PC was capable of running, which was really useful. I did briefly try installing Windows, but that drove my PC to a halt - I EVEN had a full 64K of memory and a 5MB hard drive! What a waste! The Cakewalk allowed me to transcribe flea market scores and I learned trumpet by playing along.. The MIDI cable was connected to my Roland D5, which is still working and in occasional use.
Cakewalk software helped me to be a better drummer and musician. I loved it for the "Staff view", which I always used to edit MIDI data, because studied to read music in school back in the early years. Yes, CUBASE also had its own Stuff view, but to me it was not so comfortable and usefull as in Cakewalk. My first encounter was with Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 somewhere in the beginning of the 2000s. I found it on pirate soft CD and decidied to install "why not?" )) Since then it became main *.MID file type association program. Later in 2008 I started to play e-Drums Yamaha and decided to try the new Sonar 7. I needed ASIO, VSTi and I still wanted my beloved Staff view wich I always prefer instead of Piano roll.. After 2011 I decided to stick with Sonar 8.5 because the new X1 seemed too "alien" to me, and I still use 8.5 to date. And the most powerfull thing was seeing the notes you play on a synth (drumset module) instantly as drum scores on a screen during record session. Immediately realizing and correcting mistakes. Amazing! Thank you, Cakewalk.
Oh my... I've used Cakewalk Sonar since the 2.2, and my ex GF had Win ME. Luckily the software developed into somethinig better (and I still use Sonar to this day) and my ex has gone along with her ME computer... :D
I used Cakewalk products since the late 90s. I think Cakewalk Home Studio 8 or something. I upgraded to every new version until Sonar platinum (not mentioned in video). After bandlab acquired them and renamed Sonar back to Cakewalk I was still very much happy with the product. But now after nearly 25 years of use I think I'm moving to a different DAW.
Cakewalk Home Studio 7 taught me how to think beyond the two-track recording limit of my PSR-520 Yamaha keyboard. What an incredible leap! I can't estimate how many hours I spent creating .wrk files left and right, each filled with dozens of tracks capturing the strange musical ideas of my teenage self. I eventually moved to Garageband, Logic, Ableton, and Pro Tools, but while each have their strengths and encourage me to think in different ways, my use of them is built on the foundation that Cakewalk gave me. I've never felt nostalgia for a DAW like I have for Cakewalk. Thank you for creating this video and letting me see my old musical training ground again.
I have been using Cakewalk since Pro Audio 9.. I use the Bandlab version now.. but with some glitches, and random crashes, it's a really easy DAW to use, and I've learned Pro Tools..
Great video, I went from "Tracker" in Dos, to Cakewalk, Sonar, CuBase and now Ableton. Miss those days with outboard midi, and spaceship like mixing decks and racks :) Thanks again for the nostalgia trip.
Six months after I bought sonar cakewalk professional. Gibson sold it. I still use it and I like it. I have 2 other DAW's but I stick to cakewalk by SONAR its the one i am most familiar with
My first DAW was Sonar when it came out, my last (and current) is X3 - I upgraded through all versions in between. It still runs on a PC based around a motherboard that I know is at least 13 years old, and aside from changing its CR2032 battery is still going just fine.
I started with Cakewalk apprentice version 1 and bought ever upgrade all the way through pro audio and then every version of SONAR stopping at Sonar X3 which I still use.
Wow seriously thanks for posting this memory jog. I had started with Cakewalk v3 on my trusty Amstrad PC and went on to upgrade all the way through the last Lifetime offering. Think I even have a copy of the Sonar/Mac prototype somewhere (there was an attempt). The G*son thing ticked something off though and I proceeded to become kind of a DAW collector. Very happy that BandLab picked up the ball, however like some others I have become more Mac-centric and gravitating more toward dual - or more - platform applications.
I've got the manual for Pro Audio 4.5/5.0 version. It's stored with my VIC-20 manuals ... very logical I know!
I loved cakewalk. I released an album using it way back 2011. Sadly I am now trapped in the apple ecosystem of software and the new machines have really spotty compatibility.
I used the original version of the sequencer when it came out and it wasn't even called Cakewalk. I'm pretty sure it was Twelve Tone Dr. Music that then became Cakewalk very shortly after. I was using it in my studio and chaselocked it to my multitrack. I used it until Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 before closing my first studio. When I jumped back in to studio like in 2020, Cakewalk was now free and blows the doors off of the PAID version I used. I've tried pretty much every DAW. They all pretty much do the same so use whatever best supports your workflow. I see no reason to switch from Cakewalk at this time because I'm creating Pro level recordings with it AND mastering. Cool video.
I used to use Cakewalk back in the mid 90s. My goal was to turn the PC into a sampling workstation which required finding the right sound card. At the time I used a Creative Sound Blaster that had built in RAM which was a new concept. It was designed to have samples in the SoundFont format, so I had to record the audio into an audio editor (I used Sonic Foundry Sound Forge for sample recording and editing). Then I'd load the samples onto the sound card (which replaced the MIDI GS sounds) and call them up within Cakewalk to record a performance. From there Cakewalk allowed me to precisely compose sequences in a way that none of my friends could do since they were using sampling keyboard workstations like the Ensoniq ASR 16.
I tried using Sonar around this time but ended up using Sonic Foundry ACID quite a bit in the following years. It was a new way to use sample loops and had on the fly time stretch and pitch features that were not accessible to me prior to using ACID. The 'painting' of audio tracks was wild and really allowed you to manipulate loops like never before. I've searched recently for modern versions of ACID but it seems like the 'painting' type of composition is no longer used. I'd love a modern version that uses that method. I'm not sure what happened, but as DAWs became more complex and prevalent, I became less enchanted by them. However I did use Reason for many years following the Cakewalk days because it captured my imagination with the virtual rack layout.
Really like the "entire history of.." videos you are making! Great job!
Sonar 2 was my first daw. Thank you limewire. Then I bought Sonar 5 and still have the disk. Downloaded Cakewalk by bandlab but haven't had much opportunity to use it as I mostly work with mainstage and Logic now.
What, the "Entire" History of Cakewalk and no mention of Bapu??! 😆😆😆
Can't believe it's been going so long, I still remember helping Greg debug the first version over the phone back in 1987 (for a General MIDI issue)... Wow.
craigb63 - is that your real name!!!
@@SteveStrummerUK *Pfft...* Of course! EVERYONE uses lowercase and has numbers in their name! 🙄
(What a tosser!)
People Everywhere Need Imprudence Steve!
😜
A criminal omission
Will you be doing The Entire History of Waveform by Tracktion?
It threw me back bigtime seeing the dos version. Feeling nostalgic even.
I still have Cakewalk 3 and use from time to time,Purchased it on disk at Comp USA many years back.. Sill works great. I have protools and Abelton but the cake walk still keeps going.
I’ve been with cakewalk from the beginning. My favourite part was the CAL system. I hoped by now we’d be able to run in OSX but alas that’s not on the radar. Shame.
The dos version went to version 8! I started at version 6! It was good until Version 8 when it just run very well on my PC. Then Went on to Sonar up until the Chinese company bought it! My favorite Sonar was when Roland bought it!!
Thanks for the succinct Cakewalk History video. I've book marked it for reference. A number of comments reflect on the lack of a Mac OS version of Cakewalk. I haven't seen any mention of Cakewalks attempt to develop a Mac OS version around the time they released the phone recording app (called Momentum?) I think they released a beta version and dropped it soon after that.
Was using Cakewalk in 1997 and 1998…… went to Cubasis VST and then Cubase after that…..
8.5 introduced internal side chains for some of the included plugins and a delay compensated external hardware insert. It had bugs though and I wish they had stayed on that development path and fixed bugs, expanded internal modulation and so on, instead of going on the new X1 versions. I did not care for the new stuff very much. So I stayed with 8.5 and now am looking for a new DAW to use. I am between Reaper, FL Studio and maybe Studio One. I understand the bandlab version is free but I am suspicious of the free subscription model. If they decide to discontinue support oor go under then you loose access to all your work? If they offered a paid version you could own and install on all of your computers as the earlier versions then I would likely stay with this sequencer. Nice history of this product.
I started with pro audio 9 on Windows 98. I moved to xp with a better pc in 2001. Later i got sonar 6 then 8 producer edition which is still my favorite. I mostly use it for midi and do audio and mix down in Harrison mixbus
I'm surprised to even see a video about Cakewalk! It was my genesis! So there was a series from Cakewalk called Guitar Tracks. I'm not sure exactly what the point of the series was, just that GT3 was the first DAW I'd ever used. As far as I can remember, it was the same as any other DAW at the time. I somehow managed to stretch my use of that program to like 8 years before switching to Cubase.
I'm still using Sonar X1 Studio. I paid $99 for it back in 2010. Now it's free. FML.
In the Home Studio era when you still needed a dedicated sound card to run any high quality audio from a PC the cards would use the same processing circuits for either recording OR playback. You needed a higher end “full duplex” card to be able to record while listening to previously recorded tracks.
you should make a history of bandlab
hmmm, interesting idea
Yes
As someone who started using Sonar back in 2000, this video certainly brought back a lot of memories of the old versions. Kudos!
Funny thing: I have been using cakewalk home studio since windows 98 and it still works in windows 10 - very few old programs will do that!
WOW just looking at this video at 1:47 brings back so many memories. So many... that was the first music software i started using.. I even kept the original box and disk just as a keep sake.
Great vid. Oh, the amount of sequences I've lost due to bad .bun file extraction attempts...
Really enjoyed that. Thank you. I had every version of Sonar all the way up to Sonar Platinum. Found the X line so unstable I ended up moving back to Cubase. The skylight interface has now become pretty much standard across the industry. Ahead of it's time,
I have had Cakewalk and Sonar for years. I still have the manual and discs. Haha. I use Pro Tools now but from time to time I fire up the old school stuff to have fun.
I used a hacked version of Pro Audio 9 back in the early 00s, had a lot of fun with it once I worked out how to use it . I like the Bandlab Cakewalk well enough but just do not use it or any sort of DAW as much.
You totally left out cakewalk pro audio 9...I love this version of cakewalk.