I have been using sonar for my recording. They have closed their doors. Is their any recommendation for a new recording software that works like Cakewalk and will import the songs I saved in Sonar?

Each DAW stores content in their own proprietary format. There are some folks who tried to write some converters, with limited success. It requires fully understanding the source and target file formats (which are not necessarily published).

There are any number of powerful DAWs, although none will "be" Sonar, as each approach audio creating/editing/mixing/mastering in their own way. If you log onto the Sonar User Forum, you'll see lots of folks discussing what they are doing and how they are handling it (and also a lot of griping about the current state of Cakewalk and Gibson).

While not necessarily endorsing any one product (everyone's workflow is different) many have switched to PreSonus Studio One v3, or Reaper v5, or Magix Samplitude Pro X3, or Cubase, or MixBus. For many of these, you can still find some nice cross-grade offers, but I suspect the further away we get from the demise of Cakewalk, the fewer the offers will be available.

From what I've seen, the best bet is (while you can still use Sonar) is to save each track as a WAV file (even MIDI tracks, assuming you want to preserve the current sound you get). You should also save each project with MIDI as a MIDI file, although you will lose all softsynth and effects settings when you bring it into a new DAW. So, that would mean taking notes about each project so as to re-apply settings and effects you made within the confines of a new DAW after you import the file.

Once you have everything exported, you can import the content into the new DAW, but you'll still have to do do a lot of tweaking once there. Unfortunately, unlike notation with MusicXML, there isn't a common DAW format that you can save/export to and then import in to another DAW. They each do their own thing.

thank you, looks like I have a lot of work and learning ahead of me

I second what John said. Personnaly, I use PreSonus Studio One as my DAW. I played around with Sonar in the past, like it but never made the switch. I thought the learning curve on Studio One was pretty easy, but nothing compares to Sonar/Cakewalk for handling Midi. If you're interested, you can download Studio One Prime, which is a free version of Studio One, but lacks some of the features and plugins.

If you're presently using an older Sonar version what you have will continue to work as good as it has in the past. There is little reason for that to change unless you're computer runs Windows 10 and Microsoft changes the operating system so drastically that the operating system "break" what presently works.

The issue is that what you have will not be updated so new and upcoming features such as VST3 or the midi improvements announced at NAMM 2018 will not be available for use to you.

The suggestion to check out the Cakewalk forum is a wise suggestion. One Cakewalk user is alpha testing a utility program that converts Cakewalk projects to Reaper projects. Information is available about how to download Cakewalk's consumer product, Sonar Home Studio, for free (the same info is available in this forum) and many marketing offers to attract Sonar users.

I'm about to purchase Studio One.
They were running a deal for Sonar users.
All the best.

https://www.presonus.com/products/Studio-One

I'm an avid Reaper user.

I went from Splat to Studio One Pro (SO3) and I have no regrets! As you know I work mostly in MIDI and while I do miss the ease of working with MIDI in Splat I can still do a lot of things in SO3. It's not as easy but it still can be done.

SO3 is a lot faster and very stable on my Win 10 system. I have been using it since December and I have never had a crash. The ease of adding MIDI instruments as well as all effects, MIDI and audio, is amazing.

I like SO3 so much that I took Splat off my system. YMMV

if you ARE going to buy Studio One and ahven't pulled trigger yet see this thread it will save you about $30

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=458330#Post458330


Yes I have bought lots of SW at JRR Shop

Larry

Cakewalk was bought today from Gibson

Cakewalk is now going to be a part of Bandlab. What they do with it is yet to be determined.

That said.... your present Cakewalk software will continue to run just fine. I'd suggest, if you haven't already done so, to set up a DAW that is a dedicated machine. Preferably off line so it doesn't get automatic OS updates and patches. I did that years ago and my DAW works as well today as it did the day I installed Sonar on it.

Until the computer itself dies, it should continue to run the same way. And even then, as long as I can get parts I can keep it running. Since I have the OS, I can reinstall that to a new machine w/o any issues, or perhaps it might be time to move up to 64 bits if the machine dies..... and when that happens, I'll have a look around at the market to see what's available.

In the mean time.... do good backup on your data. Always save your songs not only in the cakewalk format but also save the individual track files in a folder as waves. With waves, you can import them into ANY DAW and recreate the project if you need to do so. I tend to find that I rarely need to or want to go back to a project once it's completed.

Save as a cakewalk project, save as the individual track files, and save a clean wave of the finished song.

I am going to mostly agree with Herb here but add one thing:

Luckily, I do all my first recordings in Real Band and only mix in Sonar.

I really like Real Band for recording audio. I think it is easy, easy top work with, easy to edit in, clean, and never clips. I don't see why people are so harsh about it. I love Real Band.

Then, when I have everything, I export all to individual files.

So, no matter what happens with any DAW, I will always have those master files of each track.

For effects, I have a folder with presets for almost every VST I use so in a worst case scenario, I could start any song over in any DAW and be done in an hour, or heck, mix it in Real Band.

The world won't stop because Sonar went out of business, and I will still use it as long as I can.

I will cry for a little while though if it crashes and never comes back, because I love the interface.

I have been playing around with Reaper for several weeks now. Whilst I still prefer some things in Sonar there are many things Reaper does better. For example, Reaper makes slicing audio then moving or deleting parts and putting the audio back together much easier than Sonar. Reaper makes varying tempo easier.

As Jim said there is work on opening CakeWalk CWP in Reaper using ReaCWP. This does work fairly well but obviously there are issues with CakeWalk only VSTs but in general it seems to work pretty well.

My two bobs worth and personal experiences.

Tony

There's just so much you can do with Reaper with scripts and actions. https://reapack.com/
Like I can import Biab musicXML then extract the chords from it to Regions, Markers or Text Items, what other DAW can you do that in ? Rather than going to the wishing well and waiting years you just create what feature you need.