Live from SIGGRAPH 09: Intel Interviews Carl Jacobson & Noel Borthwick on Processor Optimizations for Music Production

At this year’s SIGGRAPH Conference in New Orleans, Carl Jacobson met with the host of Intel’s Visualize This! TV Show, Arti Gupta, to discuss Cakewalk’s advancements in it’s software performance. Some of Arti’s questions were so technical that we thought it only fair to ask Cakewalk’s CTO Noel Borthwick to add his thoughts. Watch the video and check out Noel’s comments below:

AG: Cakewalk is a member of the Intel Software Partner Program.  What challenges were you trying to solve?

NB: The bandwidth available to the typical modern DAW user using a modern CPU such as the Core I7 is astounding compared to what was available just a couple of years ago. Users expect our software to use every ounce of available CPU cycles and horsepower it can to process their audio and mix. Cakewalk has been on the bleeding edge of technology for the last 15 years, taking advantage of cutting edge capabilities of the operating system as well as available hardware resources. With multiprocessing and 64-bit computing rapidly becoming mainstream, it has become even more critical for our software to make efficient use of hardware resources.

For example, for efficient multiprocessing we try and optimize all the code paths that are used in asynchronously mixing audio. The goal is to present a multi core machine with even and distributed workloads allowing the cores to work as hard as possible. To do this, we streamline the relevant code and minimize all high latency instructions.

Some typical areas that we try and improve our performance in are:

• Multi-processor load scaling: How well does a controlled test project load across multiple CPU cores?

• 64 bit performance: How well does the 64 bit version of the application perform with multiple workloads?

• CPU use: How efficiently does SONAR play back a CPU intensive project?

• High bandwidth tests: How well does the application perform while streaming audio at high sample rates (192K, 384K, etc) and bit depths (64 bit audio, etc)?

• Low latency performance: How well does the application perform streaming audio with very small audio buffer sizes (such as 1 msec buffers)?

Continue reading “Live from SIGGRAPH 09: Intel Interviews Carl Jacobson & Noel Borthwick on Processor Optimizations for Music Production”

Cakewalk Announces New Line of Studio Hardware Products

Cakewalk announces the newest additions to the growing line of affordable, high-quality hardware products, designed in conjunction with Roland. These three new USB audio interfaces, the UA-4FX, UA-25EX and UA-101, provide a simple solution for the mobile musician and/or recording studio to connect and capture audio to Mac & PC. 

ALSO Cakewalk announces a new line of powered stereo monitor speakers. The Cakewalk MA-7A Stereo Micro Monitors and MA-15D Digital Stereo Micro Monitors deliver superior audio in a myriad of settings; the home recording studio, classroom or media lab, college dorm room, even in your living room entertainment system without stressing your budget.

Click on the links above for more information on these products
Check out Cakewalk’s Youtube page to watch the new videos

V-Studio 700 Earns Future Music Magazine's Platinum Award

Future Music Magazine honors SONAR V-Studio 700 with a Platinum Award and a lengthy review in their latest edition.

Grab the August 2009 issue to read what happened when Future Music’s Greg Scarth tested the SONAR V-Studio 700 system in a variety of ways- by recording a few tracks with an acoustic guitar and vocals, calling up the included Fantom VS Synth, controlling SONAR 8 with it’s touch-sensitive knobs and ACT capabilities and even hooking up the system to a MAC run rig. In short, Scarth calls SONAR V-Studio 700 ‘a virtual studio for the 21st century’ and ‘a control surface that offers a level of DAW control that puts others to shame.’

Visit Future Music Magazine on the web for the latest news in technique and technology for making music.

Choosing The Right Audio Hardware For Your Computer

Cakewalk makes setting up your computer for audio production easier as our software products are designed to work with any audio hardware that supports standard Windows drivers; providing you with the widest range of hardware choices available. These day’s its common for the audio device to be built into your PC’s motherboard, which is commonly referred to as an integrated audio device, such as a MME or WDM.

Whether your PC came with an integrated device or has an actual audio card installed by the factory, the results are about the same. These devices are usually designed for very basic media playback, such as playing an audio CD or listening to MP3 files. We’ve created the What Audio Hardware Do I Need? guide to help you find the audio hardware best-suited for your Cakewalk-based recording system.

V-Studio 100 Hits Store Shelves Worldwide

The portable music production studio, SONAR V-Studio 100, is now shipping worldwide!

The second product in the SONAR V-Studio line of integrated hardware and software by Cakewalk and Roland is a compact, feature rich, music production studio that enables musicians to create, record, produce, and perform music with or without a computer. SONAR V-Studio 100 is ideal for the musician, singer-songwriter, MC, producer, or engineer on-the-go, regardless of whether they use a Mac or PC.

How will SONAR V-Studio 100 fit your production needs? Read on to found out:

Continue reading “V-Studio 100 Hits Store Shelves Worldwide”

Cast Your Vote for One Stop Shop's V-Studio 100 Rap Battle

As you probably have already heard, the new SONAR V-Studio 100 by Cakewalk is taking portable music production to another level. When used with your Mac or PC you get a 24/96k audio interface with high-quality mic preamps and a DAW controller. Away from you computer you get an 8×6 digital mixer an SD recorder to play back beats at your gig or to record those inspiring moments on the road or at home when you don’t feel like firing up your computer. Plus it comes with the VS Production Pack of effects and instruments for Mac and Windows.

To prove our point, we took the V-Studio 100 to Sha Money’s One Stop Shop Conference in Phoenix, AZ and put it to work. With all the up and coming MCs and producers in attendance, we figured One Stop Shop was the best place to test this product out with the Hip Hop community. To paraphrase one of the original gangstas “If we can make it there, we’ll make it anywhere.”

Cakewalk’s resident producer Lil Shamrock recorded a beat on the spot and then threw down the gauntlet, challenging the MCs in attendance to come up and record their rhymes on the fly while the beat was playing back from the V-Studio 100’s SD card.

Watch the video below to check out the finalists, then cast your vote and let us know who’s got it.   The winner is going to receive a copy of SONAR Producer or Rapture. It’s up to you!

This contest will run through Monday July 6, 2009.

Pick your favorite MC

Big Will

monev360

Normous Child

Anthony Dollar

A-Dymondz

Just Before Dawn

Suave

Leno the beast (intro track, no video footage)

sheepskin boots

Just imagine that if we could do this quickly in a tradeshow environment, what you could do in your creative space.

Learn how the SONAR V-Studio 100 will help you make your music anytime, anywhere

Read more about Cakewalk’s activities at One Stop Shop 2009

Optimized for VISTA x64: Rapture 1.2

Cakewalk’s award-winning Rapture is the ultimate wavetable synthesizer for igniting the sounds of today’s pop, dance, and electronic music scenes. Sounding like no other synth, Rapture offers brilliant sound design capabilities with patches that blend up to six different elements. Available for PC and Mac.

Out of the box you get a stunning collection of over 500 programs including Basses, Leads, Pads, Arpeggios, Textures, Electronic Percussion and Sequences. At the heart of Rapture’s six-part sound engine are powerful, multi-mode wavetable oscillators. These pristinely produced wavetables provide a virtually endless array of sonic possibilities, plus you can multiply each oscillator up to 9 times across the stereo field with controlled detuning, creating some of the fattest sounds ever heard.

New Features in Rapture 1.2:

-Envelope Generators can now be retriggerd from the Step Generator
-Internal Tempo with Tap – Rapture can now sync to its own internal t tempo
-You can now save and load presets in the Envelope Generator and Step Generator sections
-Envelope Generator now autoscrolls when entering nodes
-Knob Focus Indicator – the currently selected knob will now have edging around it
-Built-in DC Offset blocker to remove unwanted DC Offset distortion
-Up/Down selectors now have direct text entry by double-clicking on them
-New alternate ‘Zoom On View’ mode in the Envelope Generator
-Vista x64 improvements – the installer now allows you to choose to install either the 32 or 64-bit versions of Rapture on Windows Vista x64

All registered Rapture customers are eligible for the free update.

Create & Share Your Music Fast with Music Creator 5

Cakewalk introduces Music Creator 5, the newest version of our leading home music-making software. With its brand new look and feel, Music Creator 5 is everything you need to start making music fast – offering a host of new features and a streamlined user interface.  Simple recording, editing, mixing, great-sounding instruments, and tons of effects – it’s all here in one package… all for less than the price of four CDs!

New Features Include:

•A simplified user interface that puts the controls at your fingertips. All you have to do is focus on making music

•Active Controller Technology (ACT)™ – connect a MIDI keyboard to your PC and automatically control your mix, effects or virtual instruments with its knobs and sliders

•Cakewalk Sound Center™ – an exclusive, easy-to-use tool that combines 150 different instrument sounds from our award-winning professional instruments, Rapture & Dimension Pro

•IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube X-GEAR™ – a built-in virtual guitar amp, plug directly into your computer for great sounding guitar parts

•Add your own soundtrack to your home movies and other digital video files – including .MOV, .WMV, .MPEG – before you upload it to YouTube, MySpace and Facebook

•Burn CDs with Music Creator’s integrated CD Burner and share your music online with Cakewalk Publisher

•And much more…

For More Information:

See the Music Creator 5 press release

ALSO please visit the Music Creator 5 web pages

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

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.