Cakewalk DAW is now free

Gear
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Mostly a FYI for PC owners; Apple users won’t be interested in this as we are already covered with the (excellent) GarageBand.

BandLab just made the old-school Cakewalk Sonar DAW free earlier this year. It’s the full DAW, not a lite version like Pro Tools First or Cubase LE. It looks to me like it is easily of similar capability to GarageBand; probably sits somewhere between GarageBand and Logic, actually. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for a GarageBand-like free program on Windows:

I discovered this yesterday as I wanted to record something and do some quick editing on my PC while my wife was using my Mac.

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Great news!
Thanks for the heads up.

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That’s great! Having a free easy-to-use DAW is so handy for anyone wanting to explore recording themselves, or trying out effects modeling, or just playing along with loops! Good stuff.

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Thanks for the heads up Howard!

I’m downloading now and reviving the topic so new users can take a look!

Cheers!!

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Cool!

It’s a fully capable DAW for free. It also comes with an excellent free drum VSTi that is worth the download on its own.

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Is it worth focusing on learning CakeWalk vs Reaper since I’m just starting out in the DAW world? I mean, saving $60 is nice, but are they equivalent in terms of functionality/usability?

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Roughly similar. If you don’t mind spending the money on Reaper (and I wholly recommend it, it’s great) I would just do that.

But downloading Cakewalk it a good idea to just get the drum VSTi as well, even if you don’t use it.

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I graduated to Cakewalk from Audacity and I’m really happy with it.

It’s got everything I need and a whole load of stuff to discover. I’m only doing basic recordings at the moment, so can’t see where it’s possibly lacking.

I tried Reaper, but couldn’t get used to the interface, as I was so used to Cakewalk.

Ive just been doing my own stuff (bass) but hopefully be using it to do some of my brother s guitars soon.

Has anyone used the Bandlab online version ?

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edit: oops read it wrong, for some reason I thought you went from CW to Audacity :slight_smile:

Cakewalk seems like a really solid DAW, especially for free.

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