I recently bought a Sonicake smartbox and want to use it with my pc, I know it's not the best but it's all I can afford. I have cakewalk sonar right now because it is free but I can't figure out how to use the Sonicake smartbox through there to actually hear what I'm playing through my pc monitors, is there any easier daws or methods I can try? I am new to these things

Hey fellow Sonar folks 👋

Quick one for those of you with a Stream Deck on your desk (and I know a few of you have one sitting there doing… OBS stuff, mostly 😄).

I’m a French dev and longtime musician, and I always wanted my Stream Deck to actually talk to Sonar, not just fire off blind shortcuts. So I built it: Cakewalk Sonar Control.

The trick is that it goes through Sonar’s built-in Mackie Control surface over MIDI, so it’s two-way. Your keys light up with Sonar’s real state, not a guess.

🆓 The Lite version is free and already covers the stuff you’ll use every session:

• Transport: play/stop, record, loop, rewind/FF, go to start/end, metronome, all synced with Sonar
• Track keys: arm, mute, solo, select, each showing the actual track name from your project
• Stream Deck + dials (my favorite part): each dial becomes a track fader with the name, a live level meter and r/S/M state on the touch strip. Push and turn for fine adjustments. The jog dial moves through the project with Sonar’s counter
• Essential shortcuts: undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, select all, save
• Ready-made profiles for the Stream Deck + and the classic 15-key, with icons using Sonar’s own colour codes

👉 Lite: https://marketplace.elgato.com/product/cakewalk-sonar-control-lite-a25e34a5-0617-4926-b6f8-c9a1e47e15a8

🎛️ The Pro version is for when you want to go all in:

• All 99 Mackie Control functions: banks, markers, automation, zoom, scrub, V-Pot assignment, F1–F8…
• 195 Sonar shortcuts in 21 categories, plus your own custom ones
• 151 Sonar-style icons, no text, readable whatever language you use
• It installs alongside Lite, so no need to uninstall anything to try it

👉 Pro: https://marketplace.elgato.com/product/cakewalk-sonar-control-7c46a1d9-e565-4078-887a-e9c1519d603f

Requirements: Windows 10+, Stream Deck 7.1+, and loopMIDI (free). Interface in English, French and Spanish.

Full transparency: it’s my plugin, so yes, this is a bit of self-promo. But I’m genuinely after feedback from people who use Sonar every day. Grab the free one, play with it, and tell me what’s missing, what you’d map first, or what workflow I haven’t thought of. Happy to answer questions in the comments 🎛️

Cheers!

I have no idea on how to produce music or beats. I went ahead to download Cakewalk sonar. I am trying to start producing music but jeez, it's a hell of a job, I don't understand anything about the app. Can I get someone to help me use it app or suggest how I can learn to use the app or you gimme a better way to produce music. Moreover I haven't made an attempt to go to music school since I'm still in university. I just wanna do it as a hobby.

I think others have reported a similar issue as well.

Basically, when I export my projects, I hear crackles/pops/clicks/booms during playback, at the exact same timestamps every time.

I don’t encounter this issue in my projects themselves, only when I export them.

This seems to be becoming more frequent. Could it be a problem with my device? Or is it a bug within the software itself?

I’ve tried converting from MP3 to WAV and experimented with other audio settings as well, but the problem still persists.

What recommendations do you have to potentially help fix this issue?

I use Cakewalk Next.

BRO, WHAT'S GOING ON WITH CAKEWALK ?? AM I THE ONLY ONE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH ACTIVATION TODAY?? AND NOT TO MENTION, FOR SOME REASON, IT NOW LOOKS LIKE THE VERY FIRST VERSION OF CAKEWALK EVER MADE LOL ANYBODY ELSE HAVING THESE ISSUES?

Hi guys, just wondering if anyone's used cakewalk sonar for live backing tracks with IEMs as well. I want to get into the world of playback engineers and i was just wondering what i could do with what i have at the moment. Thanks in advance!

All input welcome!

I currently use next. It is quite simple, but the choice leaves a little to be desired.

Can anyone recommend sonar, what are it's perks, how long did it take you to learn?

Thank you!

So I’ve been using Cakewalk Sonar for almost a year and it’s been a fine DAW for what I’m doing but just over the weekend I started getting cracks and pops randomly in my recordings. I’ve worked through the help section online and updated drivers and buffering speeds etc…still getting pops and cracks. I’m using an older Presonus itwo interface and a Shure SM57 mic for my recordings.

Wondering if anyone else has resolved this issue or if it’s a sound card problem on my laptop? I’m leaning sound card but before I start looking at a new laptop etc I just wanna be sure.

When i change my buffer speed and sample rate the pops change locations on the playback. They even appear in my exported files.

I’ve doomed in on the wave forms and there’s no indication that it’s the recording itself.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Edit: thanks everyone for the help and suggestions. Unfortunately I could not get the issue sorted out after days of trying to solve it. Luckily it only ruined one song that I was currently working on and everything else was previously backed up on my Google Drive.

I went ahead and bought a new computer (iMac M3, 16gb ram, 1tb ssd) and interface (focusrite gen4 2i2) and will be switching to Logic Pro since that’s what my producer and sound engineer uses anyway.

In the meantime I’m going to wipe my windows laptop and start fresh on that. If cakewalk works after a full reset then that will be my travel device for my music.

Again, thanks for the help.

Apologies if this is a dumb question or not possible, I'm still fairly new to using DAWs including Cakewalk Sonar. I am on 2026.10 Build 021, X64 on the free version if that matters here.

I haven't found anything relating to my issue online yet, but essentially I want to change what currently happens when I double click the top ribbon of a MIDI clip in track view.

I could have sworn before I updated that double clicking the top of the clip would move the Now Time bar to the beginning of that clip and also open Piano Roll and everything would be lined up, ready to go at the beginning of said clip.

Now, when I double click the top banner of a MIDI clip, it does open Piano Roll, but the Now Time stays exactly where it's at and I have to zoom in on my project and exactly line up my click so it moves to the beginning, which if you're doing this a thousand times, it gets incredibly repetitive and disrupting. I again am on the free version so I can't rollback an update.

Is there a way to change any settings to bring this behavior back if possible? I'd really appreciate any insight or help here. Thank you!

Newbie here, just switched from BandLab to Cakewalk Next, and i cant seem to find the option to change the scale on an instrument? Like, on BandLab it was right there on the piano roll

I can't find anything on the User Manual, and Google just keeps saying to use the "Track Inspector on the View menu" but theres no such option on the menu? Or to use the 'Virtual MIDI Controller' but the scale just changes back to C Major when i close it.

Something to note is that since i'm on the free plan, theres some updates i couldn't download. Is it possible that changing the scale is locked behind a paywall?

I'd really appreciate the help here, im very confused

OK, So cakewalk just got a new update, and as far as I can tell it added a bunch of bandlab instruments to cakewalk. I have NO idea what's going on or how to explain it, so watch the beautifully put together reenactment of figuring this out that's attached. To give my best try at explaining, the bandlab midi controller that comes with the bandlab update seems to also control the other bandlab controlled instruments, but its conditional, idk what the connection is, but the midi from other instruments bleeds onto whatever trach you have selected. mind the god awful sounds you will hear, i was experimenting lol. Love and thank yous yo whoever comments with advise or explanation <3

Hi- I've never composed music or used Cakewalk before, so this is probably super basic, but I can't figure this out. I've got one drum from one drum kit I want to use, and another couple drums from a different kit- I want them to play at the same time, but right now they switch to entirely one drum kit or the other depending on which I've got selected. How do I get them to use the seperate drums? I've attached a video since I'm aware I have no idea how to properly explain this

So I was working on a new project for almost two hours straight.

Then, the message “An unexpected error caused Next to close” was suddenly displayed.

I had not manually saved my project beforehand. This may be a lesson learned for future projects… but I feel like the situation isn’t exactly justified. Even if I had forgotten to save my work, the software crashing was unexpected and wasn’t supposed to occur.

I’ve already contacted technical support to see if they can somehow help me with the issue. They already replied saying that project recovery is unlikely because I had not enabled autosave nor backups, but that they will verify the dump file to see if they can do anything about it.

This project meant a lot to me so it’s why I’m so insisting with it. I had nearly an entire song crafted. The thought that I have lost everything is, well, terrible.

Do you guys have any recommendations or suggestions about the likelihood of project recovery? If it’s possible at all? Where I can find it? I’ve been hours looking through my files and nothing shows up. I’ve even resorted to file recovery apps/websites, but I either have to pay or the actual file isn’t fully available.

Thank you in advance.

Will this make a difference in my final sound, or is it just a matter of preference? I've been wondering the same thing when deciding between using track FX vs the ProChannel when it comes to compression and EQ. I am a few weeks into using Sonar and I am still kinda confused about when to use which, or what the ProChannel actually even is.

im trying to find some saw synths

If anyone has advice on getting Sonar to play nice with Behringer ADAT, help a home studio amateur out 🙏🏻

I've been working with Cakewalk Sonar (Free Tier) for a while and I've noticed today a pop-up that says "The saving option is disabled until Sonar is reactivated", so I decided to do all the updating and signing up process on the Product Center, but I just keep getting this pop-up after countless times of reopening! Is there anything I can do or do I have to pay money I don't have yet?

Please note that Sonar Premium and Sonar Free Tier have been updated to 2026.10 Build 03

Update via Cakewalk Product Centre.

Please note:

Driver Mode is now under Preferences > Audio > Devices

Previously, this was under Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording

Pan Law and Dim Solo are now exclusively reside in the new project Inspector view.

For more information about this and the many other enhancement, please read the release notes.

https://discuss.cakewalk.com/topic/97690-current-release-sonar-202610/

PARTIALLY RESOLVED!!

Turns out i just needed to press CTRL + CTRL to reset the CTRL bug but i could not tell you what is causing it.

Hey so Ive been using cakewalk for a while now but I got a new laptop and well whenever I use cakewalk not only do the keyboard shortcuts not work properly (for example now instead of R being for record it selects/deselects all of the tracks i have open for recording, and it selectively chooses when to record upon pressing R. Or in general it just chooses which keybinds it wants to let me use. I tried any available shortcuts recommended to me in the keybind area of the preferences section but it actually doesn’t change anything.

One persistent problem I’ve been having though is that after using Cakewalk, if i may want to save my file and name it, or even if i close Cakewalk and wanna use a browser for example it doesn’t let me type, it presumes that I have CTRL held down with everything I think, as every key I press just acts as a shortcut, like I type Z and it’ll delete a tab in my browser, whatnot).

The only way I’ve been able to resolve this is through resetting the laptop every time.

I only use Cakewalk to sing btw and my CTRL button is 100% not broken.
Hopefully someone knows wtf is happening it feels like such an obvious issue with an obvious solution yet I’ve been searching for answers for a while now and found no one else with the same issue, or at least not the same solution.

repost, if that helps

i added some custom effects on my track in bandlab, and i wanna do the mastering in cakewalk sonar. if i imported my work from bandlab, are the effects still there? or maybe i should export it to .wav first?

(edit: im a vocalist guys i really dont know how to use instruments)

cause i finallly bought a proper microphone so that i wont have to rely on using my phone anymore, was thinking of getting FL because i wouldnt really need to record on my phone. now i see that the parent company of bandlab has a pc daw that can be installed so, i've been thinking of switching to cakewalk.

How similar is it compared to bandlab, and is the switch worth it?

im coming from soundtrap to cakewalk, and i only use the piano roll. (which was hell in itself to find with the horrid tutorials out there) and i have been searching on how to highlight notes that are in a specific scale (as shown in first image on soundtrap). i have found out that aparently this is impossible and i have to use snap to scale insteast. which all the tutorials i have found are not for the piano roll. is this also impossible? are there free addons that can do this for me? am i out of luck? any and all help is appreciated.