plug-in – Page 3

August 4, 2009

SONAR Pro-User Justin Lassen Featured in Intel's Visual Adrenaline Magazine

A master at his craft, Justin Lassen dominates a new realm of creativity, composing music to computer-generated graphic art. A one-of-a-kind producer, composer and re-mixer, Justin translates the inspiring yet hauntingly beautiful art he sees into his own musical masterpieces. With the help of his PCAudioLabs digital audio workstation with an Intel Core i7 processor, SONAR 8 and various media editing tools, Justin gives life to the one dimensional art forms.

Recently featured in Intel’s Visual Adrenaline Magazine for his work with computer technology, Justin states:

“Cakewalk’s SONAR 8 was one of the applications that were optimized and ready to take full advantage of the four cores and eight threads available with the Intel Core i7 processor.”

Among the many new features in SONAR 8 that Lassen appreciates are“the new compression, gating, and limiting as well as the tried-and-true Sonitus FX, which always find their way into all of my projects, since they don’t overload my CPU.”

Synaesthesia, a series of his latest works, has gained high acclaim throughout the fine art and technology industries. The series pairs his music with still images created by well-known graphic designers including Alex Ruiz (The Simpsons) and Nykolai Aleksander.

To view scenes from Synaesthesia and other works, visit Intel’s website and scroll through the August edition of Visual Adrenaline Magazine

Follow Justin through life in the digital world on his Live Journal

July 15, 2009

Configuring the ACT MIDI Controller Plug-in

Setting up Active Controller Technology (ACT) with your software through the ACT MIDI Controller plug-in requires 6 basic steps. This tip will take you through 6 essential steps:

– Enabling the correct MIDI input driver for your controller/surface.

– Enabling the ACT MIDI Controller plug-in in the Controllers/Surfaces dialog.

– Loading the correct preset in the control panel of your hardware controller/surface.

– Opening the ACT MIDI Controller property page, selecting the name of your controller/surface in the Presets window, and enabling the Active Controller Technology Enable button.

– This step is optional if your controller/surface has a preset in the ACT MIDI Controller property page (not optional if your controller/ surface doesn’t have a preset): Mapping knobs and sliders on your controller/surface to cells in the ACT MIDI Controller property page.

– Optional: Mapping the cells in the ACT MIDI Controller property page to various parameters in your effect and synth plug-ins.

Watch the More Reasons to Love SONAR- ACT Part 1 & 2 tutorials

Use our Step by Step Guide to Configure ACT with your MIDI controller

July 13, 2009

Special Offer: Summer of Synth 2009

Through Thursday July 23, registered Cakewalk customers can save BIG on our most popular virtual instruments. Whether you’re looking to increase your sonic arsenal, freshen up some tired sounds, or simply up your soft-synth game, the Summer of Synth promotion is a great way to do just that and save big at the same time.

Visit our online store to see how much you could save on sounds this summer with Cakewalk!

April 23, 2009

NAB 2009: Robin Answers The Most Common SONAR & V-Studio 700 Questions

As the NAB Show wraps up, it’s a good time to reflect:

I have to say that for a product that has only been on the market for 2 years, I was amazed at just how many people I met, who have adopted the SONAR REAC Recording option for the V-Mixing system (Digital Snake and/or M-400).

As mentioned before, the REAC sends 40 channels of digital audio down a CAT-5 cable. Connect the cable to your PC’s network card and the Cakewalk REAC driver will pump the audio into SONAR. Many live venues, houses of worship and rental companies are taking advantage of the recording option. Using this option, the tracks record directly into SONAR. Once in SONAR the ‘live’ tracks can now be mixed, edited and mastered for either DVD, CD, web, or other formats. Obviously, this opens up a whole range of possibilities as you essentially have a 40 track recording studio at every live event whether it is a sermon or an outdoor rock festival.

Aside from the REAC recording customers, I spoke with many people who were in disbelief of the power and functionality SONAR has. I never like to say ‘no’ to customers, so NAB has been a great show and here’s a few examples why:

Customer: Can I use SONAR’s 64-bit internal audio engine on a 32-bit operating system?
Me- Yes , you can!

Customer: Do you have 64-bit audio plugins for mastering?
Me- Yes, we do and they’re included in SONAR.

Customer: What if my other plugins are 32-bit, I can’t use them right?
Me: Actually, SONAR has something called Bit Bridge which allows you to run 32-bit plugins on a 64-bit system.

Customer: Does Cakewalk support SONAR and/or the VS-700 running under Bootcamp?
Me: Yes, we do.

Customer: If I have a multitrack project that is in stereo, is it possible to convert it to surround?
Me: Yes! Just add a surround bus and route your tracks to it.

Customer: What about a surround mix to stereo?
Me: Of course, just reverse the steps and assign the tracks to a stereo bus.

Continue reading “NAB 2009: Robin Answers The Most Common SONAR & V-Studio 700 Questions”

April 21, 2009

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

March 27, 2009

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:

March 27, 2009

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.

November 7, 2008

Artist Spotlight: Justin Lassen

Sometimes A Road Sings In the Mind of the Darkly Inclined
Composer, producer, remixer & musician Justin Lassen

By Randy Alberts

“For me it all started with Cakewalk, a keyboard, and a lot of free time,” laughs the globetrotting Justin Lassen, a one-of-a-kind visionary 27-year-old film, game and music soundtrack composer based in Southern California.

A designer, multi-instrumentalist and self-described “heavy Sonar guy,” to boot, Lassen is also one of the most creative composers, remixers and producers in the film, game and music industries today. He’s a talented film soundtrack remixer who recently reworked the score of Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train, a dark film take on the producer’s 1984 short story of a photographer tracking a serial killer, into a full length companion album to the movie. Lassen has also produced music remixes for Nine Inch Nails, Madonna, Garbage, Linkin Park, Lenny Kravitz and Blue Man Group and he’s consulted on numerous game and technology projects for companies like Interplay, Novus Delta, Intel and, of course, Cakewalk.

Interviewed by Playboy, Mix, EQ, GearWire, PC Gamer and other arts and trade mags and sites, Lassen’s a darling of the computer-generated graphics art world, as well. A rare musical subject for numerous CGI trade magazines such as Post, It’s Art, The Escapist and CG Society Magazine, he literally can translate the inspiring, hauntingly beautiful visual art he sees into his own musical performances, arrangements and remixes. It’s a phenomenon of the senses called ‘synaesthesia’ he’s personally well acquainted with: Seeing sound, hearing scents, touching words, smelling colors. If the set and setting are just right, what Justin views through his irises can literally become real-time music from his fingertips.

“I’m a visual artist, designer and programmer,” he adds, “who just finds music much more fulfilling.”

Smells Like A Symphony, Tastes Like Sonar 7

Lassen, who happened to be Cakewalk’s Featured Artist of The Week for August 25, 2008, released his own CD, And Now We See But Through A Glass Darkly, in 2003 to acclaim from leading international CG artists, film, game and music professionals. This disc of his own uniquely composed and produced dark chamber symphonic suites has already reached 5.5 million copies in circulation. His debut CG release in 2006 of Synaesthesia then melded Justin’s two worlds of “beautiful dark symphonic” music and CG artwork again to critical peer praise, and earlier this year while in Europe he wrapped up the final release: Synaesthesia Encore, a new collection of pieces that musically addresses Justin’s own personal experiences with the phenomenon.

“Synaesthesia is something that has taken quite a hold of me over pretty much my entire musical career and life,” explains Lassen. “I have had some of my best compositional and performance moments in these types of situations, where I can actually feel an image playing the song right before my ears, completely and naturally. When I see visual work like this that really inspires me in this way, my fingers begin to play music very magically.“

Remarkable. Much to his liking, Justin’s successful role in creating the remixed soundtrack CD for Barker’s wide-released Midnight Meat Train is now attracting interest from other film, music and game audio producers, as well. An always-on, busy musician, remixer and symphonic arranger who travels for his music extensively and just returned from an exhaustive trip across the EU and back to his home studio in California, nothing would please the affable Lassen more than to score more symphonies and movie soundtracks for a living.

“I use Sonar 7’s notation features to clean up my arrangement ideas for orchestra, choir or other performers I might bring into a given session,” says Lassen about his go-to laptop DAW.

“I recall this one time in Paris when I was asked by Intel to do the soundtrack for a new high-tech game for a new platform. There was a pretty tight schedule of just three weeks, and I didn’t have a lot of gear to experiment with. So, I just used FL Studio on a laptop to jot down some ideas that later I would evolve and finish up back in L.A. and Phoenix. I then took those sketches and beats and brought them into Sonar and added many of the orchestral and electronic elements, as well as tracking all the guitars and vocals and doing the final mixing and mastering. I then cleaned it all up and converted the files over to OGG format, for the Unreal Engine 3 the game uses, all quite easily and well before my deadline.”

Continue reading “Artist Spotlight: Justin Lassen”

September 23, 2008

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”

September 11, 2008

Studio Spotlight: Sun Studio

SONAR at Sun Studio: The Birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll
Chief Engineer James Lott and Assistant Engineer Matt Ross-Spang

By Randy Alberts

“Our clients love what we do for them here with SONAR,” says James Lott, chief engineer for over 20 years at the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. “It sounds great and we’ve been using it for a long, long time. But most of all they trust us and how we’re using SONAR to record them. When we tell a band ‘OK, you can move on to the next song now,’ they trust us completely.”

Spoken on behalf of Sun Studio—the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll and the country’s only National Historic Landmark with a digital audio workstation in the tour—Lott’s professional trust in Cakewalk’s SONAR shouts volumes.

“Like a good horse,” he adds with a laugh, “when something in a studio runs as fast as SONAR and does everything you tell it to, then you’re gonna ride that horse a long, long way.”

Tracking History Then & Now

The sheer history of music behind Sun Studio, since Sam Phillips first built it in 1950, deserves far more space than this story allows- to give it proper justice.

Those who visit Memphis, especially musicians and engineers, would not want to miss taking one of the studio’s daily tours to learn more about the studio’s historic past.

Elvis recorded his first two songs at Sun Studio in 1953 for $3.25, when it was still called Memphis Recording Service. Before Elvis, there was Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats who recorded the world’s first rock ‘n’ roll single, Rocket 88, at Sun, originally composed by Ike Turner.

With all the history within the studio’s walls—the same cozy 25×20 live room, tight vocal booth, tiny control room, and tiled front office where the original studio manager, Marion Keisker, sat in for the absent Phillips’ to record Elvis’ first songs—Sun is one of the top, most vibrant studios in the world today.

Recently, Lott used SONAR to track, edit, and mix projects for Liz Phair, Matchbox Twenty, Maroon 5 and Bowling for Soup. Tom Petty, a tape devotee, also recorded some new tunes at Sun with the studio’s prized MCI 24-track machine. Another recent SONAR session at Sun involved Amy LaVere, an Americana music composer and vocalist who expertly plays an upright acoustic bass far taller than she. Billy Bob Thornton’s band too, was due in for another Sun session shortly after our interview with Lott.

“The vibe of this place, this sort of ‘welcome homey’ kind of feel, is really what brings people back here all the time,” says Lott.

“Billy Bob is a longtime friend of Sun, in here for the fourth or fifth time now, and it’s his birthday, too. He told us that he wanted to come celebrate and to make some music up in here. It’s very old school here: not much has changed from the old days. There’s the same floor tiles, control room, front office, and even old lamps from the ’50s hanging from the ceiling. Even Marion’s front desk is still here, the same one she was sitting at when Elvis first walked in the door. Besides our staff and the gear we use, it’s the original vintage vibe of this place that keeps ‘em comin’ back.”

Continue reading “Studio Spotlight: Sun Studio”