Cakewalk Sonar shut down by Gibson

Muziekschuur

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Tascam DM24
Cakewalk Announcement
After 30 years of Cakewalk's long and illustrious history, I am saddened to announce that we ceased new product development and reduced overall operations this past Friday. You can read the formal announcement from Gibson here, which states that this decision was made in order to align with the company’s acquisition strategy, focused on growth in the global consumer electronics audio business.

Working at Cakewalk has been an incredibly positive experience for all of us who worked here. This can largely be attributed to the incredible people who worked here, past and present. I've been at Cakewalk 19 years and I've never come across a more dedicated and talented group of people. Our greatest motivation was the joy in producing software for an astonishingly passionate base of artists, musicians and producers who used our software to create music on a daily basis.

So what does this mean for you, our loyal customers who've been with us all these years? Cakewalk's servers will continue to operate, you will still have access to all of your online assets, and your software will continue to work normally. A dedicated team has been established during this transition period to continue to serve the Cakewalk community. Monthly updates to SONAR from Cakewalk will however cease during this time. We will continue to post notifications to keep you informed with any relevant developments. A sincere thank you to everyone in the Cakewalk community.

Sincerely,
Noel Borthwick,
CTO, Cakewalk
 
Another acquisition killed by Gibson.... Tascam/TEAC next?
 
That might be so. As they seem to be talking with Philips. Tho the brand name may remain.
 
I am dutch so I did some digging around. In 2016 they bought WOOX innovations. Wich was the Philips audio video plant based in the USA. And with a leg in China obviously. They paid 97 million for that. So now we need to figure out what they are upto. Since Gibson still wants to create consumer based stuff. But what? And why Tascam too?
 
And also that ridiculously over priced Project Track Factory Tascam released last year was based on Sonar. Doh! Now what? It’s like Gibson is hell bent on making bad decisions all the time these days.
 
It wasn't two weeks ago I watched a few videos about the Memphis plant being raped by the US government, seized all the raw materials that came in from India and other places, court battles, law suits and all kind of other shit. Swat teams came in and rendered the place desolate. Dun know but it looks like writing on the wall IMHO. DOH! is right.
 
I really feel some government is putting Gibson against the wall. Why?
 
Since a few years I don't really see any major sales made by all the companies Gibson bought. Wich is really strange. Was there no vision behind those purchases?
 
I'm not sure I'm following. What does any government have to do with Gibson's failures? All manufactures are to comply with new eco friendly guidelines. This is not a conspiracy against Gibson. Gibson's poor quality control, over pricing and ridiculous design decisions (including that ridiculous automatic tuning machine mechanism on all model) are self inflicted.
 
Since a few years I don't really see any major sales made by all the companies Gibson bought. Wich is really strange. Was there no vision behind those purchases?

That's the way things work at Gibson and they have for a long time. I have some friends who have worked (and one who still works) for Gibson Canada, and man, some of the internal stuff they do is pretty whacky. I think some execs at the top just throw darts at a dart board for ideas on what they want to do do next. Lots of their "ventures" are doomed for failure from before they even start, but even when they know that they are doomed they still try them anyway. On the flip side they like to acquire companies for their intellectual property and shut them down, which I think is what they decided here. They wanted the patents but they didn't want to actually build up or work on the product so they milked it for a while and then just pulled the plug when they got bored and decided it wasn't following their acquisition strategy.

Note the "acquisition strategy" part of that previous statement, that seems to be all they do these days is acquire, not innovate. It's just about the bottom line ($$$). Same thing is happening with a lot of the larger companies in all of the different industries. Innovation is dead, making cool things are dead, long live the almighty dollar.
 
It is strange they will dump money into 7/8 companies who are hardware & software companies who could definitively benefit from working together. And then halfway stop. Gibson had invested in something like audiowire. Audio over ethernet. But their time to market seemed too slow. Tho they could still pull this off. I have been following severall of their beta stuff and it all seemed to center around a multitrack technology over ethernet. But that idea seemed to have faded away when their 48 track multitracker didn't seem to pick up in sales.

They now seem to focus on home automation. Wich offcourse is a new market.

https://pcmweb.nl/artikelen/nieuws/hoe-philips-en-gibson-innoveren-met-geluid/
 
Home automation? They are late to the game. Amazon Echo is already in the lead crushing it’s competitors. This will undoubtedly fail as well and seems like a very odd market to enter for a guitar manufacturing company.
 
Yeah. But Philips was allways good at manufacturing these small items. And in such a market there are allways a couple of brands.
 
That's the way things work at Gibson and they have for a long time. I have some friends who have worked (and one who still works) for Gibson Canada, and man, some of the internal stuff they do is pretty whacky. I think some execs at the top just throw darts at a dart board for ideas on what they want to do do next. Lots of their "ventures" are doomed for failure from before they even start, but even when they know that they are doomed they still try them anyway. On the flip side they like to acquire companies for their intellectual property and shut them down, which I think is what they decided here. They wanted the patents but they didn't want to actually build up or work on the product so they milked it for a while and then just pulled the plug when they got bored and decided it wasn't following their acquisition strategy.

Note the "acquisition strategy" part of that previous statement, that seems to be all they do these days is acquire, not innovate. It's just about the bottom line ($$$). Same thing is happening with a lot of the larger companies in all of the different industries. Innovation is dead, making cool things are dead, long live the almighty dollar.

This is usually the sign of a company that has a lot of input from venture capital.
Once a company becomes cash poor they turn to the vultures for relief.
Trouble is most of them would rather take the quick sure buck than work to turn a troubled company around.
It always reminds me of the scene in Goodfellas where they just max out the credit on the restaurant buying stuff and selling it out the backdoor. As they say it doesn't matter. It's all profit.
 
It saddens me. As the team had such a great potential. If they would have improved the audio engine to become gapless it would have never died. And sales would have gone through the roof. They were so close.
 
I'm not sure I'm following. What does any government have to do with Gibson's failures? All manufactures are to comply with new eco friendly guidelines. This is not a conspiracy against Gibson. Gibson's poor quality control, over pricing and ridiculous design decisions (including that ridiculous automatic tuning machine mechanism on all model) are self inflicted.
I was under the impression their access to wood in stock was frozen due to 'issues': https://www.npr.org/sections/therec...n-guitar-was-raided-by-the-justice-department
 
The "when I win the lottery" scenario for me in this is....
Gibson who is partnered with Phillips and Tascam uses the software technology from Cakewalk to make a "digital workstation". Basically a Tascam multitrack integrated directly into an onboard, full computer interface (not the little screen thing but a full fold up laptop typed desktop) with all the hardware convenience of a Tascam digital multitrack and the software power of a computer. No exporting at all. The song you are working on is open in whatever software they integrate. I assume some Cakewalk type of thing.

Now I will put that in one hand and poo in the other.
Guess which hand will fill up faster.
Maybe when I win the lottery I'll buy Gibson and make this happen.
No problem. Next week.
 

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