Sonar Klonge

My first post here in many years.

I recently noted the death of Sonar. Which… after 17 years on Cubase gave me what Paul Westerberg called a “Klonge” (sic?) “A sudden rush of fear so powerful it causes the poop to instantly back up the pipes allllll the ways up to the roof of yer mouth.” Now -that’s- an image.

And because I basically have my musical “life’s work” in Cubase, it dawned on me… OK, what would -I- do if the Hamburgers suddenly hung out a 'Geschlossen" sign on the door some day without warning. Are -they- any more stable than Sonar? Probably. But it bears consideration.

I guess Pro Tools has the best chance of staying power. But perhaps I should simply back up everything to audio channels and give up -any- hope of ever working in a DAW that lasts and loading MIDI/VSTi projects from old versions. Backward compatibility has certainly been no day at the beach in Cubase.

And moving up one level of the food chain, I’m also struck by the fact that DVD-Rs I’ve burned less than 5 years ago have shown to have glitches. I currently can’t afford those newfangled tape drives, but that’s basically where I’ll have to go. But I do wonder if -they- will be readable in even 10 years.

Every few years, I think a small bit of Klonge is good if you care about preserving yer materials.

Of course I’m -also- struck by how few guys now even -care- about preserving their work in -any- medium for a long period of time.

What I find very interesting is that a LOT of people (perhaps the majority) don’t really -worry- about whether or not their ‘pictures’ will be around 100 years from now. But that frightens -me- to death.

One thing to remember is that even if a DAW company topples over, it’s last working version will remain working (provided you’re not in some stupid subscription model), so even if Cubase development would stop today, you wouldn’t lose anything. Your recordings and mixes are all there, they all work, it just means you won’t get a new version of Cubase anymore.

For backup media: you’re right, I’m not really aware of a consumer solution that actually has a reliable chance of surviving more than 20 years. I’m guessing the cloud might actually be the safest option, considering the huge fallback recovery systems they must use.

I am not optimistic that -any- cloud system will be available in an unchanged format 20 years from now.

With a reel of tape you still have to trust that somebody still manufactures compatible tape machines or at least provide spare parts for your old machine. I bet it would be hard (or at least expensive) to read 1950’s 3-track tapes nowadays.

Your recordings and mixes are all there, they all work

Under Windows 10, your operating system is suddenly updated after 6-8 months.

Steinberg has to check every 6 months if Cubase is still running well. If no support is provided, there is no guarantee that the software will continue to run.
Windows 7 -8.1 Support End is soon…

Point well taken.

Audio is different from a book or a photo where the storage medium and the retrieval medium are one and the same. Darn.

Which according to your own logic is all the better, because they actually work with the current version of Cubase :wink:
I’m running Windows 7 on an offline computer, I really don’t care if they end support, I’ve not had updates for more than a year on that computer anyway and it runs like a dream.

Render projects down to stems, backup on more than one device and refresh those backups ( copy to a new drive) from time to time (every x years)
That is called archiving strategy, every one should have one, and there are a lot of them.
The real die hard approach would be doubling up on all hardware too.
As technology advances it would probably be wise to save to new digital formats when they become available.
Maybe no one is using PCM in 10 years ?

Not saying I’m doing all that, but it is important to think about and come up with a strategy that is affordable and does not take too much effort, or they will be put off to “later” or never implemented.
My personal approach is, Render mix and stems to project folder when done. My project folders get automatically backup every day to a NAS that every night does a backup to another NAS. My first NAS is set up to dump/copy it’s content if a big enough drive is connected to its USB port. When I remember I store one of these usb drives at a friends place, well we swap drives.