Sonar was a

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

created by the former Boston, Massachusetts-based music production software company

Cakewalk The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black Slavery in the United States, slave plantations before and after End ...

. It was acquired by Singaporean music company

BandLab Technologies BandLab Technologies is a Singaporean company that operates a social music platform, called BandLab, and also owns a variety of music-related brands. Founded in 2015, these include Harmony and Heritage Guitars; ''Guitar.com'', ''NME'', ''Uncut'' ...

and renamed

Cakewalk by BandLab Cakewalk by BandLab is a full-featured Digital Audio Workstation software package for audio and MIDI composing, recording, arranging, editing, mixing and mastering. It is developed and published under a free subscription licensing model by B ...

Notable features

Sonar's features included: * Record and manipulate an amount of multitrack digital audio limited by hardware only * Record and manipulate

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

data * Apply any

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...

special effects, such as reverberation and delay * Automate the process of mixing audio * Use virtual instruments, such as software: synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines * Connect to other multimedia applications via Rewire * Some versions included a 64-bit mastering suite

Video and audio formats

Sonar provided limited facilities for

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

surround sound Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener ( surround channels). Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to sur ...

(5.1, 7.1), and supported

.avi Audio Video Interleave (also Audio Video Interleaved and known by its initials and filename extension AVI, usually pronounced ), is a proprietary multimedia container format and Windows standard introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as par ...

.mpeg MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making ...

.wmv Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/ digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ASF is part of the Media Foundation framework ...

, and .mov files. Sonar had the ability to show videos as thumbnails contained in a separate track. With appropriate hardware, it was also possible to output the video to an external monitor screen via

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

. Common SMPTE formats, frame sizes, and frame rates were supported. It was possible to transfer audio loop files from other compatible software into Sonar and complete a final mixdown. Various audio export options (including 64-bit masters) were AIFF, AU, CAF, FLAC, RAW, SD2, W64 (Sony Wave-64), and WAV (Microsoft). Starting with version 6, Sonar could take advantage of 64-bit internal processing, a 64-bit audio engine, and a 64-bit mixer on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Before the introduction of Sonar X2 in October 2012, the entry-level Essential versions of Sonar (Sonar Home Studio and Sonar Essential) were 32-bit only. With Sonar X2, the full program family became native 64-bit. Starting with Sonar Platinum (February 2015), releases moved to a monthly cycle, with new features and demo products introduced with each update.

Discontinuation and Relaunch

On 17 November 2017, parent company

Gibson Gibson may refer to: People * Gibson (surname) Businesses * Gibson Brands, Inc., an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and audio equipment * Gibson Technology, and English automotive and motorsport company based * Gi ...

announced that it was ceasing active development and production of Cakewalk branded products, including all versions of SONAR. After 30 years of existence, Cakewalk, Inc. ceased operation, with only the company's web forum and license authorization servers still functional. On 23 February 2018, Singapore-based

announced its purchase of some of Cakewalk, Inc.’s assets and all of its

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

. BandLab's stated goal was continued development of the former company's flagship product, SONAR (now renamed Cakewalk by BandLab), as part of its portfolio of freeware digital audio workstation software.

References

External links

*
Cakewalk brings back the E-MU Proteus
{{Audio editors Digital audio workstation software

Notable features

Video and audio formats

Discontinuation and Relaunch

See also

References

External links