Each year, more than 100 magazines from all over the world – including Mix, Electronic Musician and EQ – come together to vote on the world’s best audio and musical instrument products for the Musikmesse International Press Awards.
This year, Cakewalk has earned 4 nominations for the development of the A-PRO Series Keyboards, V-Studio 700, V-Studio 100 and SONAR 8.5. We are extremely honored to earn such recognition and look forward to Awards Night at Musikmesse 2010 in Frankfurt, Germany.
Jet-lagged and exhausted, the Cakewalk crew is slowly recovering from a monumental Thursday through Saturday at the NAMM Show. The weather was beautiful, the show floor was packed and the Cakewalk booth was the place to be.
Each year, the National Association of Music Merchants hosts an industry-wide tradeshow at the colossal Anaheim Convention Center. If you’ve never been to the NAMM Show, it’s a musician’s paradise, with thousands of exhibitors, live product demos, impromptu jam sessions, and celebrity sightings galore.
The theme for our booth was ‘Creative Tools for Independent Minds.’ As our product line continues to grow from recording software to complete studio solutions, we encourage musicians on every level to take production into their own hands and have fun making music.
Cakewalk Artist Relations Manager, Jimmy Landry put together an all-star roster of artists who appeared and performed in our booth while demonstrating how they use our products on the road and in the studio.
One of Rolling Stone’s Top 5 Up & Coming Female Artists, Cori Yarckin, acoustically performed her hit single, Everything You Said, and recorded a vocal track in SONAR with the V-Studio 100. Cakewalk’s Brandon Ryan showed the audience how to use the VX-64 Vocal Strip to process her vocals as well as the Matrix view to creatively remix her track.
Continue reading “NAMM 2010: Creative Tools for Independent Minds”
AudioMIDI.com’s Dee Davis gave the V-Studio 100 a workout recently and came away very pleased with the results.
Dee hooked up the VS-100 to a PC running Windows XP Professional, with 4 GB RAM and two 1 TB Hard drives, all powered by an AMD Phenom X4 Quad processor. After installing SONAR 8.5, Dee pulled up some recent SONAR-produced projects and found them to sound terrific , “perfect” in fact.
After checking out projects in higher sample rates and getting positive results, Dee recorded some vocals using the mic pres and was also “pleasantly surprised with the sound quality.” But the true test came when s/he recorded his/her Musicman StingRay Bass with the VS-100. Initially skeptical — “I am very hard of audio interfaces, as I feel they never truly get the real tone” — Dee was delighted when the resulting sound turned out to be “the best I have ever heard on any recording system!” S/he also went on to highlight the VS-100’s Windows 7 compatibility, solid control surface functions and use in Mackie Control Function Mode.
“Ultimately, I found the V-Studio 100 an excellent device to work with,” she concluded. “The sound quality was great! The mixer and effects were solid and very easy to use.” Finally, she noted that “This compact unit will serve many of your needs with just one purchase. With the included software, you have everything you need to start recording right away.”
You can read the full review on AudioMIDI.com
This holiday season, Cakewalk has a gift (or a few) for you! Need help finding the perfect gift for the music lover in your life?
Click on over to Cakewalk’s Holiday Gift Guide for great ideas and special offers. Save big on popular products from Cakewalk, Native Instruments, IK Multimedia and Notion to name a few. After all that hard work shopping for others, reward yourself with free plug-ins, awesome discounts on PCAudioLabs computers and much more.
Plus, when you make a purchase at the Cakewalk store before December 24, 2009, you may be eligible for FREE Shipping! Don’t forget to place your order by Monday, December 21 to ensure a Christmas delivery.
Happy Holidays!
During this Holiday season, we would like to take some time to personally assist you with any questions you might have about our products.
During the coming week, our technical sales representatives will be at select music retailers across the country with the sole purpose of helping you learn more about SONAR 8.5, V-Studio 100, V-Studio 700, our audio and MIDI interfaces, desktop monitors and more.
Find a location near you on Cakewalk’s Tour page.
We look forward to meeting you!
If you saw our ads for Guitar Tracks Pro 4, then you already know that 3 out of 4 Cakewalk employees are guitar players. In fact, many Cakewalk employees are also full-time musicians, using Cakewalk products to record, mix and master their own projects.
When it came time to design the new features in SONAR 8.5, we focused on what we felt would be the absolute best enhancements to help us all be more creative and produce better sounding music. We added new beat creation and arrangement tools, a new drum instrument loaded with stellar sounding kits, enhanced audio quantizing, new multi-stage effects plug-ins, and much more.
To honor the new and improved version of SONAR, we’ve added the Created by Musicians page to Cakewalk.com to share with you our own musical talents and favorite features in SONAR 8.5.
Whether recording in your home studio or performing on the road, Cakewalk’s V-Studio 100 can get the job done. With multiple I/O options, easy to use transport controls and a built-in digital audio workstation, you can hook up the V-Studio to your computer via USB and start recording. Away from the computer? Capture your performances with the V-Studio 100’s SD Recorder.
In a recent review, Computer Music gave the V-Studio 100 5.5 out 6 stars. Impressed with the units flexbility, the reviewer exclaims:
“It’s hard to deny the value of the VS-100. The audio interface alone is a winner for its great preamps and rock-solid Mac and Windows drivers, especially when combined with the utility of a flying fader and transport buttons. Throw in a basic mixer with real hardware controls and a fine software bundle, combined with the ability to mix and record even without the computer and the VS-100 is a near-perfect, do-everything box.”
Get a better look at the V-Studio 100, take our brand new V-Studio Interactive Tour
Read the full review at Music Radar.com
A few weeks ago, Cakewalk traveled to Akihabara, Japan (a district of Tokyo) to take part in the Fourth Annual SONAR Premium Day. To locals, Akihabara is known as ‘Electric Town,’ as it’s where all the technology stores (carrying everything from LED TVs to music production software) are located. Cakewalk’s CEO Greg Hendershott and Product Evangelists Brandon Ryan & Robin Kelly introduced the new version of SONAR to 870 guests at the event, giving live demos on how to record, mix, edit and more with SONAR 8.5.
The event kicked off with a video featuring SONAR Product Manager Alex Westner discussing the latest features in SONAR 8.5. Greg then gave a great speech on new technologies in the industry, such as the release of Windows 7. Brandon and Robin rounded out the day with a number of demos. Brandon used a Intel Core i7 machine running Windows 7 to demonstrate a few tasks on the V-Studio 700, while Robin ran a Quadcore Vista (32-bit) computer to show off the many features of the V-Studio 100. Throughout the day, attendees gathered around one of three stages to share tips and techniques on Cakewalk’s latest products.
Although we couldn’t see these events live in action, Robin added some video highlights of the trip to his unofficial Cakewalk blog. Click on over to see footage from the show floor.
Winksound.com is a brand new social video networking site, offering audio enthusiasts free video tips and tutorials on music production. Got a question? Feel free to send it in video form to the Winksound team. Not only will they answer it, you could be featured in one of their segments!
Last month at the 2009 AES Show, Winksound team member, Justin, caught up with Cakewalk Product Specialist Rich Curtis to get a closer look at the portable music production studio, V-Studio 100.
Cakewalk Chief Technical Officer Noel Borthwick, a noted expert on Windows platforms, covers crucial topics around the introduction of Windows 7, such as compatibility with Cakewalk products, issues in upgrading from Windows XP and related points of interest for PC users.
For an in-depth look at Windows 7 and how it might affect your use of Cakewalk products, check out Noel’s Q & A below. Also, see Peter Kirn’s article at Create Digital Music for more insightful tips on Windows 7.
Continue reading “How Windows 7 Will Effect Your Music Production?”
