NAB 2009: SONAR & V-Mixing System Wow Crowds

For more than 80 years, The NAB Show, produced annually by the National Association of Broadcasters, has served as the premiere event for broadcast technology professionals. But there’s more to the show than just tv and radio broadcasting, it’s the ultimate educational experience! Technology professionals and solutions providers from every corner of the world, come to the show each year to explore every stage of the audio / visual content lifecycle, from creation to consumption.

Cakewalk is one of this year’s exhibitors showing off their state-of-the-art creations at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada from April 20 through April 23. Follow along with Robin Kelly live from the show, here on The Cakewalk Blog.

Here’s his first post:

At the Roland Systems Group booth, Zac Kenney and I were presenting the SONAR V-Studio 700 as the mixing and editing solution to the V-Mixing system. At the heart of the system, is the M-400 Digital Mixing Console from RSS by Roland. Add to that the personal monitoring system, allowing each live performer to have up to 40 individual monitor mixes and the digital snake whick allows up to 40 channels of audio over a single CAT-5 cable, and you have an extremely impressive live mixing setup.

So how does Cakewalk’s SONAR integrate into this system? You can split the signal coming down the CAT-5 cable and connect it to the network card on your PC. Using the REAC driver, you then have 40 discreet inputs going into SONAR to record each channel individually to their own track.

After the live show the VS-700 becomes the platform for mixing and editing the 40-track live performance. From live venues and houses of workship to broadcast customers, the feedback was extremely good. They were all impressed with the flexibility and depth the SONAR V-Studio System provides. Add to that the ability to harness and control all the power of SONAR via a hardware inferface, and you have a ‘perfect solution’. The Fantom VS is an added bonus as this provides the added ability to add extra synth tracks after recording. The ARX slot was also wowing the customers when the ARX-01 Drum card was added.

In Las Vegas, people seem just about willing to bet on anything, but one thing no one I spoke to today was willing to gamble on was their audio. All through the day, customers were coming up to me explaining bow they prefer to mix in SONAR because it ‘just sounds better’ than other programs. Of course, it is always nice to hear such positive compliments about our flagship DAW but in a way it is extra special to hear this coming from folks who have very high (if not limitless) budgets, allowing them to choose any audio platform they wish. Even with that they are still using SONAR because of it’s quality.

It makes sense if you think about it. SONAR has a 64-bit double precision audio engine, multiple gain stages, and 64-bit/convolution plugins to sweeten the mix.

So YES. In Vegas, people will gamble on just about anything, anything but their audio quality!

That’s it for now. Day 2 starts tomorrow!

Robin Kelly
Cakewalk’s Director of Worldwide MI Sales

Cakewalk Hosts Masterclass at ASCAP EXPO 2009

ASCAP’s Annual “I Create Music” EXPO is a three day event taking place next Thursday April 23 through Saturday April 25 at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles, CA. It is the one place where serious songwriters, composers and producers alike can connect face to face at panels, workshops, performances, exhibitor demos, one-on-one sessions and networking events.

This year, Cakewalk is hosting live demonstrations on the new SONAR V-Studio 700 given by Product Specialist Seth Perlstein and an exciting new masterclass in a fully-functional on-location studio!

Cakewalk Modern Music Creation & Demo Room

 Expert producers and music creators will be using the award winning SONAR V-Studio 700 to exemplify different techniques, tips and tricks for the modern recording musician. Cutting edge technology is allowing creative people to take control of their music and turn demos into finished masters; this is the place to ask questions and learn.

The Home Studio Master ClassIn sessions taught throughout the day, pieces of music will be recorded by a producer and engineer and developed in a fully-functional on-location studio. Featured studio tools and products to include Auralex Acoustics, Behringer, Blue Microphones, Cakewalk, Gibson, iZotope, NightBird Studios, Roland, Solid State Logic and West LA Music. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to get a close-up view of the Home Recording process.

Thursday: Constructing & Recording a Unique Track that Cuts Through the Pack with Producer/Composer Gionvanni Loria

Friday: Composing & Producing for Film & TV with Producer/Composer Shawn Clement and Producer/Musician Justin Lassen

Saturday: Writing, Producing, & Recording a Contemporary Pop-Rock Song with Producers Jimmy Landry, Brandon Ryan and Jorg Kohring (from the band, Orbit Monkey) as well as Guest Artist Cori Yarckin

ASCAP EXPO 2009: Schedule of Events

Musikmesse Day 2: O Fortuna

Ok… I can’t contain myself so we’re going to have blog dessert first and jump right to the end of the day. SONAR V-Studio 700 won the MIPA award for Best Recording Hardware!

If you’re not aware of what the MIPA is or what it means to Cakewalk, just imagine that you won a Grammy award. Over 100 music products magazines worldwide come together each year to vote on what they feel are the best and most innovative products of the last year. So it is such a incredible honor that SONAR V-Studio 700 was selected for this!

Greg Hendershott, Cakewalk’s Founder and CEO and Mr. Kimitaka Kondo Managing Director of Roland Corporation were hand to accept the award.

I’ve uploaded a video clip from the event of our winning the award and Greg and Mr. Kondo’s speech:


SONAR V-Studio 700 Wins MIPA 2009
Uploaded by CakewalkInc

And here are some more pictures from the night:

Greg and Mr. Kondo accept the award.

The stage was filled with many happy people, as they called up the winners of all categories.

Charly Steinberg won a Lifetime Achievement award tonight for his work over the years to move music technology forward. It was a moment of sheer transcendence for me to see Greg and Charly together. Cakewalk won a MIPA tonight in a category that beat out Steinberg’s latest offering, and Charly the founder of that same competitor was honored for his life’s work.

Despite how fiercely we have competed over the years, the two of them greeted each other like old friends and had a genuine, warm moment congratulating each other. It really reminded me that we’re all in it for the same reason… to make music and to help people make music. And maybe we shouldn’t forget that are competitors are just like us in that regard. In alot of ways, they help us make better products for you, because we have to continue to innovate to stay competitive with each other.

Anyway enough of the philosophical ramblings. Here’s another photo from the evening, it features some of my favorite people, members of the Cakewalk and Roland team.

From left to right: Masahiro Minowa, Michael Hoover, Robin Kelly, Koichi Mizumoto, Greg Hendershott, Alex Westner, Carl Jacobson (me), Steve Thomas and Brandon Ryan.

Those are genuine smiles you’re seeing in this picture. This team and many other people back in the offices of Cakewalk and Roland, put in a tremendous effort over the last couple years to make SONAR V-Studio 700. To be recognized with a MIPA for that work, really made it all worthwhile.

Well, I need to run to a meeting. Part 2 of Day 2 will be coming soon.

Signing off,

Carl Jacobson

Create Digital Music Uncovers SONAR V-Studio 100

Create Digital Music is one of the industry’s top blogs featuring the latest news, tips, product reviews, forums and articles on digital music making. Yesterday, CDM was among the first outlets to introduce SONAR V-Studio 100!

“The V-Studio 100 is set up in a way that appears to come close to what I think a whole lot of us need as laptop musicians. And despite the Cakewalk name, it’s actually aimed at users of a variety of Mac and Windows tools…”

See what else they had to say about Cakewalk’s newest product, the portable music production studio for Mac and PC.

Visit Create Digital Music Now.

Musikmesse Day 1: Ich Bin Ein Frankfurter

Well, it was such a good first day of the show, i’m not really sure where to begin. I guess starting at the beginning of the day is a good place.

Things started to look good first thing in the morning when I received the Messe Show Daily, and saw that the editors had decided that SONAR V-Studio 100 was one of the hottest announcements at the show and it deserved front cover placement on day 1.

Alex Westner, Cakewalk’s Director of Product Management is pictured here with the Show Daily…

The show floor was humming with excitement. Our European Distributors Edirol Europe did a great job with the booth. And they take a more rock & roll approach to our produce demos than we usually do in the states.

They hired an amazing group to do SONAR V-Studio 100 product demonstrations that showed how a band would usually use the product. I thought their demos were a lot of fun. Chris is here explaining to the audience the benefits of having an audio interface, daw controller, digital mixer, and SD Wave recorder all in one compact device.

I imagine it looked something like this.

But the audience clearly enjoyed themselves.

Craig Anderton, came by and shot a very entertaining product video with Alex, Brandon Ryan, Steve Thomas, and myself about the SONAR V-Studio 100, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but keep an eye out on Harmony Central for the video.

MusicRadar.tv also came by to get the scoop on the V-Studio 100. They interviewed Alex and the video is already online. You can check it out below.

Not sure if you saw the announcement yesterday, but we have extended our distribution into a bunch of new markets. I got to meet some of the new distributors today and talk to them about our products and our marketing. They were really a great group of people and I think we’re mutually very enthusiastic about working together.

Greg, Brandon, and Robin are pictured here with our new friends Subhash Khandelwal of Rivera Digitec (Mumbai, India), Roy Viljoen of Paul Bothner Music (South Africa), Magdey El Bouhy of ADawliah (Saudi Arabia), George Triantafillou and Nikos Stamoulis of Venediktos Stollas (Greece), and Ron Nevo and Ilan Murad of Halilit (Israel).

Steve, Alex, and I then attended the Lesser Awards Ceremony put on by PPVMEDIEN, one of the biggest publishers of music magazines in Europe. Two years ago, Kinetic won the Lesser Award for Das Bestes Groove Tool and SONAR 8 was nominated for an award this year. We didn’t win but it is always an honor to be nominated and we had a good time at the event.

One change for the Award Ceremony was that the Surf Rock band was replaced this year by the Justin Nova Band. I liked what I heard and expect good things from this group.

Well, quite a bit for day wouldn’t you say? I’m looking forward to see what tomorrow brings…

Signing off,

Carl Jacobson & Alex Westner (pictured and filmed above)

Cakewalk Prepares for Musikmesse 2009

Cakewalk is preparing for Musikmesse 2009 – Live for the Music! starting Wednesday April 1, 2009 in Frankfurt, Germany. As suspected, we have some huge announcements that are once again going to shake up the music industry. In addition, we are pleased to announce that SONAR 8 has been nominated for a MIPA (Musikmesse International Press Award) in the Recording Software category and SONAR V-Studio 700 has been nominated in the Recording Hardware category!

Cakewalk will be exhibiting at:
Edirol Booth, Hall: 5.1 Walkway: B Stand: 65
Ludwig-Erhard_Anlage 1, 60327 Frankfurt
April 1 – 4, 2009
More info on this year’s show!

Best of YouTube: SONAR User Tutorials

Here’s a few of our favorite SONAR tutorials created by three talented SONAR users on Youtube. Watch the videos to learn more about SONAR’s new features and tools. Just hit play on one of the clips below:

Using Beatscape and Step Sequencer:

Editing MIDI Notation:

TS-64 Transient Shaper & 3rd Party Plug-Ins:

The Fine Print III: Sidechaining in SONAR

The term ‘sidechaining’ refers to the manipulation of one signal by another where signal B (typically referred to a key input) effects signal A (primary input). Sidechaining is most often found in compressors, limiters and gates. Examples of sidechaining include ducking, voiceover, de-essing and pumping. For more information, check out this article on the Basics of Sidechaining.

Cakewalk’s CTO Noel Borthwick discusses the implementation of Sidechaining in SONAR is his latest Fine Print article. Since version 7, SONAR has supported side-chaining for both VST and DX plug-ins in all of its applications. This article describes how SONAR communicates with side-chain capable VST and DX plug-ins as well as how SONAR can be used as a guide to write a side-chain capable plug-in of your own.

Idol Finalist Scott MacIntyre Vies for Next Seat

As we get closer to this week’s American Idol episodes, we can’t help but note the viewing audience’s fascination with Scott MacIntyre, the young, blind contestant from Scottsdale, Arizona. Each week, Scott plows his way through the competition, doing a stellar job both singing and performing. As one of AI‘s Top 10 finalists this season, Scott will tour cross-country with the other 9 finalists this summer.

While Cakewalk doesn’t root for any one performer, we have a soft spot in our hearts for Scott. In fact, we have worked with a number of visually-impaired musicians, from Ray Charles to ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover’s Patrick Henry Hughes, through SONAR’s assistive technology. We wish Scott the best of luck as he continues with the show.

Follow Scott MacIntyre’s Journey here.

Britain's Pub Landlord Composes Music for U.K. Tour

British Comedian Al Murray ends every show with a song and dance. On this year’s tour, he’s featuring a self-composed track, “Broken Britain Boogie” as the finale.

The track was recorded and produced using SONAR with V-Drums and legendary guitarist Brian May (Queen) makes a guest appearance. The track was recently the center of a remix contest as Murray allowed music students enrolled at Brooklands College in Surrey to concoct their own twists of the tune using SONAR LE.

Although Murray states that his composition, “sounds like a sloppy bar room band playing a sub-Oasis style,” ‘Broken Britain Boogie’ is no joke and will surely be on ITunes in the near future. We wish Al Murray the best of luck on tour in the UK.

Visit Al Murray’s website to check tour dates.