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Artist Impression: Shayna Zaid and the Catch on V-Studio 100

A few weeks before the launch we got to sit down in the studio with Shayna Zaid and the Catch. Their live shows have been packing crowds in NYC and colleges up and down the east coast. They’ve shared the stage with Norah Jones, Harry Connick Jr, Raul Midon and The Roots.

Their music has gone on to see much success with 8 songs licensed to “Young & the Restless”, 4 #1 singles in Shayna’s Native Malaysia, a 1/4 million Myspace plays, and Finalist in the 2008 International Songwriting Competition, among many other honors. As you can see, they know what it’s like to be a touring and recording act so we asked them for their impression of the SONAR V-Studio 100. Watch the video to see what they thought.

“Brilliant!  Finally something that encompasses everything we need to professionally go mobile.  With killer mic pre’s, an onboard SD recorder/player, an audio/midi interface and a DAW controller, the V- Studio 100 lets us create on the road – and at home.”

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The :90 Music Show Explores V-Studio 700 and Cable Interfaces

In a recent episode of The :90 Music Show, presented by Music Connection magazine, host Scott Austin gets an exclusive look at SONAR V-Studio 700 and UA-1G cable interface recorded live at The NAMM Show 2009. Regularly airing on Youtube, The :90 Music Show captures exclusive interviews with top industry players and emerging artists.

Scott Austin is a regular contributor to Music Connection magazine. He writes ‘Insider Commentary’ for aspiring musicians exploring the music business. As one of the industry’s youngest CEOs, Austin manages Authentik Artists, an artist development company in Los Angeles, California. Austin is also credited with discovering musicians such Michelle Branch, All-American Rejects and music/tv/film heavy-hitter Tyler Hilton (Austin’s first signing to Madonna’s Maverick Records in 2002).

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Cakewalk In the News: SONAR 8 Producer & Cable Products

Sound On Sound (UK) has followed the SONAR product family since the beginning. Featured in this month’s edition, is an extensive review of SONAR 8 Producer. SOS debunks the myths about the upgrade and sheds some light on the new enhancements; including Beatscape and TS64 Transient Shaper, the 64-bit / VISTA compatibility, and the overall value of the digital audio workstation. Thought I’d share a few quotes from the article:

“The Producer Edition… has an amazing collection of free virtual instruments, signal processing, and MIDI processing plug-ins that give real meaning to the term ‘added-value’.

‘The TS64 is creating a lot of excitement, and rightly so. Though primarily designed for drums and precussion processing, this plug-in offers such precise control over the dynamics of an audio track or mixed audio that it will certainly be used on anything.”

See the SOS website for an article excerpt and more information.

The Video Theater at Harmony-Central is chock full of clips and highlights of this year’s NAMM show. The playlist features Cakewalk Product Specialist Samara Krugman giving a close-up look at Cakewalk’s new line of USB MIDI and Audio Interfaces: UA-1G, UM-1G, UM-2G, UM-3G. Also hosted on the playlist is an overview video of Craig Anderton’s Electronic Guitars Expansion Pack for Rapture, Rapture LE, SONAR HS 7, and SONAR 8.

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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

Continue reading “SONAR 8: The Fine Print”

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Artist Spotlight: Carmen Rizzo

The Virtual Ornaments of An Innovator

Producer, mixer, remixer, writer & artist Carmen Rizzo

By Randy Alberts

Carmen Rizzo

Typically there’s room for doubt when someone claims that a new product has changed their life. Yeah, right. But when that someone is one of today’s best, busiest producer-musician-remixers around who helped forge an entirely new Grammy category, and their product rave is about a musical instrument—their favorite synthesizer—who’s to doubt it?

“Oh yes, Rapture has absolutely changed my life in how I make records,” says Carmen Rizzo, who four years ago led the way in creating NARAS’ new Grammy Award category for Best Electronic Album. “My life is all about making records and, really, I just can’t work without Rapture anymore. Every time I use it to come up with a sound I think, ‘Wow, I would’ve never come up with that sound without Rapture!’ Rapture opens up your mind to new things you just would’ve never thought of without it.”

Carrying the torch for electronic music with the help of BT, Crystal Method’s Ken Jordan and others was but one gem in Rizzo’s prodigious creative vein of music, concert, radio, t.v. and film sound achievements. Himself a two-time Grammy nominee, the short version of Carmen’s credits list reads like a who’s who of diverse talents and idioms: Coldplay, Alanis Morissette, Cirque du Soleil, Seal, Ryuichi Sakamoto, k.d. Lang, Pete Townshend and acclaimed British director Michael Apted (Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas In The Mist). Rizzo scored his first film soundtrack, The Power of the Game, for Apted’s documentary about the German soccer team’s 2006 World Cup win; released two critically-adored solo albums of his own (The Lost Art of the Idle Moment and the new Ornament of An Impostor); co-founded, produces and frequently tours with the world beat/electronic fusion band Niyaz and, currently, is among many pursuits DJ-ing a radio set heard by 14 million listeners each month on the highly influential KEXP.org/Seattle.

“I’d like to think that people come to me for something different, for something unique,” says Carmen. “The Cakewalk synths definitely make that easier for me to accomplish.”

Within Sight of the Hollywood Sign

A husband and father who donates 10% of his new album’s sales to a different charity each month, Rizzo owns and produces, writes, mixes and remixes in his Studio 775. There’s a close-up view of the intersecting street signs of Hollywood & Vine right outside his workspace window.

Carmen Rizzo on the Streets

“Be it audio plug-ins for EQ, compression and effects or virtual instruments, every producer and musician has their favorite go-to tools they use on everything they do,” he says. “Rapture is one of those tools for me. It’s there no matter where I’m creating music. On the road with my portable laptop rig or at the audio workstation here at Studio 775, honestly, Rapture is in pretty much everything I do.”

Continue reading “Artist Spotlight: Carmen Rizzo”

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Artist Spotlight: Trev Wilkins

Trev Wilkins and Scadge Productions:

Rely on the sound of Cakewalk’s SONAR:

“It’s the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of our studio!”

The best recording studios are those that get results, and to do that the engineers need to understand exactly what the client wants. And what better way to understand what’s required than to have had a career that spans almost every possible stage of the music creation process?

For Trev Wilkins, owner and engineer of Telford-based Scadge Productions, the last 25 years have seen him take on all manner of roles in the industry – from running recording studios, touring as both a musician and engineer, authoring books and producing videos to order.

It’s this wealth of real-world experience that’s made Scadge Productions the first choice of production venue for clients who need guaranteed results. “We have to be very flexible in our approach here at Scadge,” Trev says. “We’re recording a choir one day, then we’ll have a video interview the next, perhaps a rock band in the day after that. Consequently we can’t afford to spend time fiddling around with anything in the studio, especially the software. We need to guarantee that we can get the job done and cover any eventuality quickly and with total confidence – and that’s where SONAR shines through – we rely on it as the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of our studio!”

Continue reading “Artist Spotlight: Trev Wilkins”