Free Cakewalk Sonar (Now Cakewalk by Bandlab)

I'd be interested if they'd just offer the software as a download, but its through their bandlab spamware and protection installed all over your computer, the program is shared through their portal. I hate when they do that, if its free then just give me the damn software bundle in installer form. I don't need their content, demos or apps. too bad I thought it might be a good score. and besides, for true music recording folks like myself the worst possible setup is having your daw on a computer attached to the net, just asking for trouble

wavephonic wrote: ↑ for true music recording folks like myself the worst possible setup is having your daw on a computer attached to the net, just asking for trouble

Sorry for the dumb question but if I am an amatuer or I just want to try out music recording, would those issues affect me too?

OyaPoya wrote: ↑ Sorry for the dumb question but if I am an amatuer or I just want to try out music recording, would those issues affect me too?

for the beginner cakewalk sonar is not only complicated but as I said loads a ton of spamware and at the end you don't really even have the software bundle and installer. a much better start would be audacity, its free, does a ton of things, you can download the software bundle and keep it, perfect for learning, stable, multitrack recording, editing etc, and even built in mp3 or wave file exporting, and the full manual is on the site.
https://www.audacityteam.org/

if you want to go even further with free effects, buy the computer music magazine, lots of free content and articles, I think the latest issue comes with the dvd full of goodies, well worth the price of the mag, I used to find it cheap at bookstores.

edit: the other thing I wanted to mention, I had cakewalk sonar a few years back, it came free with my soundcard, didn't really like it and found out the uninstaller was horrible I never did get all of its crap off my computer, ended up wiping my drive.

wavephonic wrote: ↑ for the beginner cakewalk sonar is not only complicated but as I said loads a ton of spamware and at the end you don't really even have the software bundle and installer. a much better start would be audacity, its free, does a ton of things, you can download the software bundle and keep it, perfect for learning, stable, multitrack recording, editing etc, and even built in mp3 or wave file exporting, and the full manual is on the site.
https://www.audacityteam.org/

Wow thank you so much for the information on Audacity and computer music magazine! Does Audacity have spamware?

I dislike when uninstaller are basically useless, thank you for the heads up on CakeWalk.

OyaPoya wrote: ↑ Does Audacity have spamware?

nope! clean as a new whistle.
almost all of the efx (reverbs, echoes, choruses, etc) I used for my album were free from computer music mag. not that you'll like the music but it'll give you an idea of the quality you get in that mag..
https://wavephonic.bandcamp.com/album/radioscience