More Sounds, Features, & Better Performance in SONAR 8 & V-Studio 700 Updates

Cakewalk today announces free updates for SONAR 8 Producer, SONAR 8 Studio, and SONAR V-Studio 7.

The updates, for Windows XP and native Vista (32bit and 64bit), are available as FREE downloads to registered SONAR 8 and SONAR V-Studio 700 customers.

The SONAR 8.3 update adds classic Roland sample content for Dimension Pro and Dimension LE, drum kits for Session Drummer 2 and new usability enhancements and engine optimizations. The SONAR 8.3 update also addresses performance issues reported by customers after the initial release of SONAR 8.

Sound On Sound highlights a few of the latest improvements to SONAR 8 including Snap Presets, an External Insert facility and new content for Dimension Pro and Session Drummer 2.

Additionally, since the initial Winter NAMM update announcement, numerous enhancements are now included in a version 1.1 software update for SONAR V-Studio 700 and a firmware update for its onboard Fantom VS hardware synthesizer.

Click on the following links to download the SONAR 8.3 Update and SONAR V-Studio 700 1.1 updates.

Cakewalk Featured on Internet Radio Show

On Thursday, January 22, Cakewalk Product Manager Samara Krugman and Consumer PR Manager Dave Lubell joined ‘Digital Chef” Ralph Bond on Host John Iasiuolo’s Computer Outlook Radio Talk Show.

The live talk show airs on affiliate stations across the US and can be heard on the internet worldwide. Samara and David spoke about SONAR Home Studio 7, the new cable products and the recent NAMM tradeshow for the entire hour-long show. If you’re new to music production, this show will loosen all the tension!

The show is archived on the web. Listen to Computer Outlook here.

Take Control with V-Studio 700

Cakewalk announces the release of SONAR V-Studio 700: The Ultimate Solution for Music Production.

SONAR V-Studio 700 provides the “ultimate solution for creative music production” through a complete offering of finelyy-tuned and tightly-integrated hardware and software.

– Sonar 8 Producer
– VS-700C Control Console
– Vs-700R 1/0 Module
– Onboard Roland Fantom VS Hardware Synthesizer
– V-Link Support for editing and control of EDIROL video hardware

It will be today at the Cakewalk demonstration booth at the 125th AES Conference in San Francisco, CA.

For more information, check out our SONAR V-Studio 700 Website, available in 6 different languages.

SONAR 8: The Fine Print

Cakewalk’s CTO Noel Borthwick sheds some light on the features “under the hood” in SONAR 8.

*Note that this list is not a substitute for the official feature list & other features already documented in the SONAR 8 manual. Rather it is a list culled from Cakewalk’s Engineering Department*

Enjoy!

Performance optimizations:

Although every version of SONAR we shipped in the past had some degree of optimization work, SONAR 8 is the first version of SONAR to which we applied the same engineering process to performance optimizations as we do with other more user visible features. i.e. we established goals, built a specification for the optimizations, split up the work into milestones and tracked the progress of these tasks just as we do for other features. To make testing more deterministic, we devised various internal profiling tools in order to track and measure changes in performance across a variety of hardware platforms on XP as well as Vista.

Systems tested included brand new cutting edge platforms from Intel and AMD as well as earlier generation machines.

We split up this work into the following classes of performance enhancements for SONAR 8:

1. CPU and kernel level optimizations – use less of your CPU to do the same amount of work

2. User Interface optimizations – faster drawing, scrolling, zooming

3. Driver level optimizations – more efficient access to drivers, minimizing driver state transitions

4. Vista OS specific optimizations – Better use of MMCSS thread priorities, support for custom MMCSS task profiles, new WASAPI support

5. Audio engine optimizations – optimize “hotspots” in our bussing, streaming and mixing code

As a result of all these changes, SONAR 8 has the following benefits:

– greatly minimized kernel usage. This helps provide more “kernel bandwidth” to drivers who need it the most. More kernel bandwidth translates into less potential for audio glitches.

– Lower CPU usage – translates to better performance at low latency

– More efficient use of audio drivers – esp with ASIO drivers

– Better performance on Windows Vista esp X64. Many of the complaints of Vista performance as compared to XP have been solved with SONAR 8. X64 low latency performance should now be on par with X86.

– Faster application launch

– Less flicker in GUI. Track view splitters no longer flicker when resizing.

– More responsive zoom and scroll with large projects. Zooming with wave files now uses 1/2 the RAM with 24-bit or less stereo or mono files used.

– Better meter performance.

– Improved thread scheduling by insuring threads are properly distributed on processors.

This link shows the overall benefits of SONAR 8 as compared to SONAR 7: http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/English/benchmark.asp

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