Cakewalk
Cakewalk, formerly SONAR, is a comprehensive audio software for music composition, audio recording, editing, mixing and mastering. It features a full suite of high quality audio and MIDI effects and instruments and composition tools ranging from drum sequencer and piano roll...
Cost / License
- Free Personal
- Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Windows
Features
Properties
- Customizable
Features
- Support for VST Plugins
- Ad-free
- Digital Audio Workstation
- Support for MIDI
- Multitrack editing
- Step Sequencer
- Dark Mode
- Works Offline
- Virtual Instrument
- Music Looper
- Lossless Audio
- Music Sequencer
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
- Audio Recording
- Mix Music
- Melodyne Intergration
- Music Recording
- Piano Roll
- MultiTrack
Tags
- midi-editor
Cakewalk News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
- DeeJayLSP liked Cakewalk
POX added Cakewalk as alternative to Melodic Mind- giveususfree liked Cakewalk
- arc24angel liked Cakewalk
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What is Cakewalk?
Cakewalk, formerly SONAR, is a comprehensive audio software for music composition, audio recording, editing, mixing and mastering. It features a full suite of high quality audio and MIDI effects and instruments and composition tools ranging from drum sequencer and piano roll editor to a sophisticated score composer. It's all powered by an advanced console for mixing and mastering unlimited tracks, complete with a pro channel section for analyzing audio and applying mastering and other studio effects like console emulation, tape emulation and convolution reverb.
FEATURES Professional mixing console for mixing and mastering unlimited tracks. Comprehensive suite of core audio effects for applying delays, filters and reverbs. Modular guitar amp modeler featuring 3-D mic placement, blending and phase inversion, assorted ambience types and granular amp and fx controls. Mastering suite for compression, tape and console emulation and audio analysis. Bundled instruments ranging from drums and bass to piano and strings. Built in time-stretching and slice-based audio manipulation. MIDI effects including chord analyzer, transposer and arpeggiator. World class convolution reverb with nice selection of impulse responses. VST and DirectX instrument and effect support as well as Rewire support for connecting to other audio apps.
Cakewalk information
Developed by
BandLab Technologies Licensing
Proprietary and Free Personal product.Rating
Average rating of 4.5Alternatives
115 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
Comments and Reviews
It's free! Easily the best free DAW out there but also competes with the big DAWs. Beside the obvious features for composing and editing, the gorgeous visuals make it a joy to create stuff.
Notable features:
Cakewalk's history dates back to the days of DOS, where it established a solid design and workflow for music composition in the digital world. It evolved around that design and its named was later updated to Cakewalk Sonar, or Sonar for short. It was later discontinued but amazingly picked up by Bandlab and then set free. So the years of evolution as a powerhouse commercial DAW are now available to anyone at no cost, just a simple registration through Bandlab which offers a helpful music discovery and social network.
The notable features above are the product of its commercial history. It's rare that any free DAW has even one of those features, let alone all. Most commercial DAWs only include those types of features in the highest price tier. Meanwhile, the workflow is very similar to those DAWs as well. It's a workflow it helped establish early on. And Bandlab has continued with updates even though the app is free. All that amounts to an incredible value and something substantial in the world of free software.
This is a beautiful software with years of evolution. And the mixer is pure eye candy.
[Edited by Ugotsta, August 21]
As of July 2022, Cakewalk by Bandlab is being replaced with new products. Existing installations should continue to work, but no updates will be made, and probably no new installs will be possible. Cakewalk is no longer available as a free alternative.
It's still available but won't be forever. I couldn't find any info about if there will be a freemium version of Next. From their website: "We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until both Cakewalk Next and Sonar become publicly available. At some point after the release of Next and Sonar, Cakewalk by BandLab will no longer be supported. Existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar. In the meantime, Cakewalk by BandLab continues to be available." I used Cakewalk a long time ago and was disappointed the first time it was discontinued, so I'm going to wait and see what happens and not invest time a deprecated product.
I think this is the best free alternative to a feature rich DAW comaparing with many highend alternatives. Can work with videos
For a free DAW,( unless you choose to offer a financial contribution) you get a LOT of pretty high end tools at your disposal.
The development team are very responsive to queries and this package gets updated pretty much every month.
My only criticism is that, although the documentation is comprehensive( it is basically the sonar documentation), there are only references to the accompanying images, thees slots are just blank placeholders where the pictures should be. Hopefully the development team will give the docs a bit of TLC here( but it will take time, there are several thousand images referenced).
This seriously knocks the socks off Apples garage band!!!
Once the pictures are included in the online documentation cakewalk will have earned the full compliment of 5 stars.( I'm keeping the fifth star in my back pocket for now)
Before they released the new CAKEWALK, the Bandlab team were absolutely the greatest. Customer service and tech support were second to none and Bandlab was constantly updated and they actually listened to your input and implemented the changes many times. But now that Cakewalk by Bandlab has been released, it is hands down my absolute favorite available for free DAW. Its every bit as awesome as the ones I've paid for already. And with the Bandlab team behind it, I have no doubt whatsoever that this release will be a history making event, and we'll start to see actual new talented artist emerge who started right there through _CAKEWALK by Bandlab_.
Cakewalk by Bandlab is the best free DAW