Cakewalk-band lab

I've been using Cakewalk/Sonar for years and now that my desktop quit working, I'm going to need to start all over on a different computer. I had plenty of files in Sonar and was just working on a project before my desktop stopped working. I went to cakewalk.com home page expecting to download the most current version/upgrade and found out that a new company had taken over. Sound Lab from Singapore took over Cakewalk/Sonar and is giving a free download to the new version. I had to download the soundlab assistant which after installing the app, asked me to sign in with either my face book account or Google account.

I chose my Google account as it was already open. I could not log in and just kept getting "please try logging in again" with no success. I tried contacting band lab only to go thru the same B.S. as it asked me to log in to my e-mail account. I found an e-mail address for band lab Admin@bandlab.com only to find that my e-mail came back to me. The reason? "We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (Admin) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group"

So...I'm wondering why is it that I can't even contact these people? Is Cakewalk by Sound Lab just a scam? I think that I will find another DAW to download as this one has definitely been disappointing!

All those great reviews you see on the internet regarding the DAW are probably phony! There are too many so called good reviews and not one reveling any negative aspects. Let's face it I've never come across a perfect software program yet alone a DAW . 

I decided to give it one more try at it, this time using my Facebook account and it worked. I was able to download the actual program and install it. There were a few problems in getting the right driver set up as it recognized an Asio driver and not the MME. There was no sound until I discovered the MME driver and switched it.

It's got nothing over on my Sonar 8.5 Producer DAW and for me it was a bit disappointing. To me, the new Cakewalk is perhaps a mediocre version without too many frills. I had installed 27 vst plugins and none of them were recognized. I did manage to record a new tune on it using 5 tracks and using some fx on the tracks and the Master Bus. I decided to export my new made tune as a .wav file but lo and behold it allowed me to export it as an mp3 file.

So far my observation is that the new Cakewalk by soundlab maybe okay for the beginner but I need something with a bit more meat to it.

I finally got a hold of support@cakewalk.com and have been corresponding with them regarding my issues with the DAW. I received some suggestions and after completing it and re-scanning for VST plugins, it shows that I have 162 of them. I have no idea where they are as they don't show up in the fx section nor in the insert softsynth area. The only ones that show up there are the plugins that came with the program.

The DAW is unstable and keeps crashing. Yesterday, it crashed 4 times. It's frustrating when you are in the middle of a project and the program crashes and then you have to start all over. Thus far this DAW is nothing more than mediocre at best with little help from support. I tried contacting support again only to find out that they put me on the spam list and now have no way of contacting them. I even tried to sign up for their forum only to find out I've been banned from their site. Ha Ha I guess I' m on my own! That's what I get for trying to solve some issues with Cakewalk's DAW. The DAW has a lot of potential to be a good one like Sonar but what do you expect from a DAW that was free?

There are a few good points in the DAW. Some of the softsynths, such as the drum and bass are awesome. There is even a string synth which I use often. The cakewalk default  softsynth which we saw in Sonar has been improved with some better sounds. My favorite is the jazz guitar. You can even add an amp simulator that comes as an fx to make it sound even more realistic.

There is also a piano softsynth which is missing the acoustic piano but the electric piano is okay and needs a bit tweaking which you can do. There's a couple of other softsynths which I haven't gotten into because I don't use them nor do I need them, however I will check them out and give you my thoughts on them a bit later.