watch out Abes...Cakewalk Project5 new pricing = $99!

[3dot...]

...and cakewalk should just let their users switch programs if they wanna...that way their covered... any cakewalk user could choose his 'flavor'... I'm gonna stick with live......for now........

[rasputin]

For my purposes, what mbenigni wrote is spot on. I never use Live live, so the gapless audio engine was not an attraction. Frankly, since I upgraded to P5v2 (which was a major improvement over v1) all I've used it for was access to a DirectX plugins I didn't have VSTs for. I did take away a love for Dimension Pro which I do use a fair amount.

My loyalty to Live is sort of eroding though, with its high prices and quirky approach to new features and bugfixes. It's still pretty much my 100% go to DAW/composing tool.

Also the new LiveAPI is interesting and may enable me to do things that Live may never be able to...but maybe I've already said too much...

r.

I own both P5v2 and Live 6, and well... I haven't bothered to reinstall P5 since my last rebuild. I think that says it all. Or another way of saying the same thing: I bought P5 first and was compelled to buy Live after the fact because P5 has so many blind spots. v2.5 makes me curious, but not curious enough to invest the time, now that Live is paid for. If they'd come up to speed sooner, I might have stayed on.

I was always a big Cakewalk loyalist, but P5 just had (has?) some ridiculous shortcomings. That it took them years to expose all of the inputs exposed by your sound card's driver, for instance, is crazy. And I don't see anything in that list about improving the gimpy routing features. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. It's really awesome that this upgrade is free, but frankly it's too little too late for me. Some of these are borderline bug fixes.

Now, on the other hand... Live is a spendy proposition for the hobbyist, and for anyone who hasn't already taken the plunge, $99 for P5 is an excellent value. Frankly, $99 is a reasonable just to get your hands on Dimension LE, and then maybe upgrade to the VST later. I spent much more for P5 and that's really all I took away from it.

[forge]

seriously though - in all honesty my personal experience on the pricing issue

you need only look at my post count to see what a Live fanboy I am

but I have to be honest - when Live was on v3 I was convincing people to buy Live left right and center - now those people are "on the ladder" and they can upgrade easily enough

but new users never get recommended by me any more - well they do, but I start talking about Live and how they'd love this, this and this...then they ask how much it is and I look at them and see they are a poor musician and say "yeah it's a bit expensive you might be better with something like FLStudio..."

Just the sad reality - when it was v3 I could persuade people, now it is just too out of reach for alot of them

[kb420]

Let me say something for everyone on this thread.

I only paid $99 for P5 V2 about 2 or 3 years ago. As a matter of fact, I didn't pay anything for P5 V2. When Cake first announced P5 V2, I was very interested. P5 V1 never impressed me, and I never really researched or looked in to Live, so P5 V2 looked like the best thing going for sequencing my soft synths. Cakewalk had a deal going then: Buy P5 V1 and register it, and get P5 V2 for free. So I went to Guitar Center and got P5 V1 for $99. It was a clearence item. I had to fill out an form and send the recieipt to them. A few weeks later, I'm a P5 V2 owner.

I loved it at first, but the marriage didn't last long at all.

The first problem was the audio engine. It was supposed to be based on Sonar 4's engine, but it sounded cloudy and muddy to say the least. When I rewired P5 into Sonar, the project sounded clearer, but if I took the time to recreate the entire song in Sonar, it sounded even better. I emailed Cake about the problem, and this is the reply that I got.

Kevin,
SONAR 5 will sound better than Project5 so it is best to use SONAR for
all of the sequencing and use the Project5 for creating the groove
patterns.



-- Please reply online here: http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Email/
Andy Maddock
Cakewalk Technical Support

They knew there was a problem with the engine, but they really didn't want to address it at all. They sure didn't address it with the 2.5 update.

Then there is the metering. There was an entire thread about how P5 would clip audio without registering it. It's impossible to mix with P5, and most of the users know this. As a matter of fact, a lot of users download free channel strip plug ins to help them mix.

Cakewalk also chose to ignore that in the new update.

Then there's routing. P5's routing is terrible. Live's is far superior. Live's routing is actually better than Sonar's. Live may not have an included compressor with side chaining, but it does support VST side chain compressors. Live will see the side chain input. Both P5 and Sonar do not. I use the GAG1 for ducking. This product is made by Kjaerhus which actually powers the new channel strip plug in for Sonar (VC-64), but Sonar can't use the GAG1 side chain inputs. What's up with that????

Cakewalk has neglected this program soo much that I could never really recommend it to anyone. When it comes to sequencers, the main focus is Sonar. P5 gets treated like a red-headed step child. It's always on the back burner.

It's getting close to Sonar 7 time. Let's see how much time Cake dedicates to P5 over the next few months.

I purchased Live 5 as soon as Live 6 was announced. Because of that, I got the Live 6 download for free. I did receive a discount because I owned and registered Live Lite, so that saved me some money. There are ways around paying full price for Live without using cracked versions. Since I got Live, I haven't looked back. I did install the 2.5 update, but I wasn't impressed at all. I can get the job done in Live with ease.

P5 has always been offered to registered Cakewalk users at crazy discounts over the years because it never caught on and sold well. I'm actually surprised that this latest sale price gained this much attention.

Take it from me, a registered P5 V1 and V2 user, P5 cannot compete with Live. It's glitchy and severly under supported. Live is extremely more powerful.

It is a bargain @ $99, but as someone else already stated,


YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Just my $.02!!!!!

[woodie]

you need only look at my post count to see what a Live fanboy I am

hehe....at least you're honest!

but I have to be honest - when Live was on v3 I was convincing people to buy Live left right and center - now those people are "on the ladder" and they can upgrade easily enough

that's most of us here, but....always keeping an eye out on the competition.

Even Reaper.....to have SoundOnSound dedicate 6 pages for a review last month and then to virtually give it a seal of approval - that some excellent coverage that's only gonna help them, so the big boys better heed the warning....even Cakewalk with Sonar!

but new users never get recommended by me any more - well they do, but I start talking about Live and how they'd love this, this and this...then they ask how much it is and I look at them and see they are a poor musician and say "yeah it's a bit expensive you might be better with something like FLStudio..."

Just the sad reality - when it was v3 I could persuade people, now it is just too out of reach for alot of them

right.....so let's all pull for the Cake folks to bring P5 up to a level where it makes us Live folks take a hard look at them as an alternative as that'll ultimately freak out the Abes to put the pedal to the metal and stop playing games....and ultimately benefit all of us, the people....the musicians........or DJ's.

[popslut]

It's glitchy and severly under supported. [...]

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In other words;

The price has crashed because nobody is buying it.

Nobody is buying it because it's shit.

[tylenol]

there is only SO FAR that they can ever take P5 without shooting themselves/SONAR in the foot

I think this is probably the best reason to prefer live in the long run, even if you don't like some of ableton's marketing decisions, or ableton isn't fixing your pet bug fast enough. Cakewalk is always going to prefer someone who can afford it to buy sonar instead of p5. (for that matter, maybe they would prefer everyone to shell out for both; cf. kb420's email from their customer support...) Ableton has no competing product, and it is in their best interests to improve live in any way they feel is valuable. Cakewalk won't want to add features to p5 that will make someone say "why would I need sonar if p5 can do this?" These factors are going to drastically influence the development of each program (in fact, given the descriptions of p5's shortcomings, they probably already have).

[Mesmer]

Yes I've read all posts in this thread, as I find this topic exiting. For you guys I just, pseudo wasted the past 15 minutes trying to find the following link. I thought It might make for some less subjective framework from which to continue the discussion:

http://www.digitalmusicdoctor.com/shoot ... ummary.htm

I had read that, some time ago and what I took from then, was that as for value for the money, it's pretty tough to beat some of sonar's offering. As for P5, it seems that their target demographic (IS rookie, WANTSTOBE awsome-pro-dj-thing) might already have their plate full with Fruity Loops and/or ACID.

It's really an uneven match to compare it to Live, since they cannot meet eye-to-eye. I think the only sibling Live might have is Reason. All of the more reason for Live to be priced at around a $300 sweetspot.

Oh, looking for the above link I found these, which might interest some.
http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/daw/w ... for_me.php
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3bn4h/id16.html

the sweetwater is funny(in a bad way): here's the first QandA:
"Q: Am I big into loop-based composition?
A: Then a program that deals with Acid and REX files well, has loop creation....." Is there a *throws-up* emoticon?!



my 2 cents.
-h

[TITBAG]

project shite more like

[popslut]

project shite more like

I'll bet £50 you're a Glaswegian.

[pulsoc]

project shite more like

I'll bet £50 you're a Glaswegian.

Trollelian?

[stale bread]

i've got a copy of project 5 v2 unopened in the box, my question is is what's up with the midi, the arps, and all that shit, is it a hot workflow or what, i'm trying to figure out whether to sell it or use it and if I used it it would only be for the midi tricks. I hear people talking about how the arps fantastic and shit and I vaguely remember trying it and thinking it was cool but alas those memories have faded, on another note i did find a video of a guy doing a demo of it and it was the worst demo i'd ever seen and this was a cakewalk dude, i don't have the link now but i posted it up on kvr a few days ago for a good laugh.

[TITBAG]

project shite more like

I'll bet £50 you're a Glaswegian.

I accept PayPal

[iain.morland]

Hello!

Well, I said in the "MIDI delay recording" thread that I wouldn't be back on this forum, but I wound up here by following a link from the Project5 forum...and felt I should reply because I was being discussed in some of the posts! (fame at last!!)

I use Live 5.2.2. This version of Live, like all versions of Live 6 so far, delays the recording of MIDI by the latency of the soundcard. (Unless you turn monitoring off and so can't hear what you're playing) This is unlike any other DAW, as far as I can tell. You won't notice this if record quantise is switched on. (See for example this post and this post.)

If I remember rightly in the first release of Live 5, the MIDI was delayed even more, but that was corrected. However in my view it shouldn't be delayed at all.

Initially the MIDI bug deterred me from upgrading to Live 6. More recently I snapped and bought Project5. I have no more patience waiting for a bug fix - especially one that would probably require me to pay for a Live 6 upgrade.

I had been testing several other DAWs (including Reaper following that amazing SOS review), so the Project5 discount arrived at just the right time for me. Certainly, it doesn't do as much as Live, and the interface isn't as nice, but it suits me and my workflow (for instance, I don't play live shows).

As for Project5's engine, I have Audition for precise audio mixing. I'm aware of the discussions on the Project5 forums about the difference between Project5 and Sonar's 64 bit engine. After some further discussion at KVR, I decided that wasn't a deal-breaker for me. I'm not going to start speculating about the mysteries of summing (since that's been thrashed out both here and at KVR with no real resolution), but respect that for some people the 64 bit engine would be critical. 24 bit is fine for me.

Finally, what was the most important factor in my decision to switch to Project5? The user forum. There were few bug threads, and certainly none about MIDI delay. There were no compatibility problems with the vsts I use - at least as far as I could see. Now to be sure, some problems may emerge later. But the forum was a heartening sight after the pages of bugs reported here on the Live forums.

[mbenigni]

I use Live 5.2.2. This version of Live, like all versions of Live 6 so far, delays the recording of MIDI by the latency of the soundcard. (Unless you turn monitoring off and so can't hear what you're playing) This is unlike any other DAW, as far as I can tell. You won't notice this if record quantise is switched on. (See for example this post and this post.)

Not to hijack this thread, but... is there an easy work-around for this problem, such as a MIDI-plugin to adjust the start time of the events in a given clip/track? Or a quick way to edit all said events destructively to compensate for the delay?

I had my first taste of this problem last night, and input quantize is not an option as it always makes a mess of drum fills etc.

Thanks,
Marc