Live from the Cakewalk booth in the Roland arena, take a look inside the perfect computer for SONAR X1 as HP’s Dan Bennett opens up and tears down the powerhouse HP Z800 workstation.
Featuring a BMW designed, tool-less chassis, an incredibly unique power supply, a plethora of powerful under the hood options, and so much more, the Z800 truly is a dream machine for making music with SONAR X1.
Upgrade to SONAR X1 or or find a dealer to become a new user today.
Cakewalk is coming to a city near you, starting Tuesday October 14, 2008! Join us to explore the latest in digital audio workstation technology- with SONAR 8 (and complimentary products) plus a sneak preview of the new SONAR V-Studio 700 Production System.
Cakewalk’s Product Specialists will be on hand to demo many of the new features in SONAR 8 including:
Newly-added instruments– including Beatscape, Dimension Pro, and TruePianos Amber VSTi
New features– such as Loop Explorer 2.0, higher track counts with lower latency, single instrument tracks, Anytime Recording, and more
New plug-ins– including the TS-64 transient shaper, TL-64 Tube Leveler, Channel Tools, and more
New creative content– Maximize your creative potential with SONAR’s massive collection of loops, samples, and presets
Also, get a first glimpse of the new SONAR V-Studio 700, the groundbreaking new hardware/software solution from Cakewalk by Roland. Visit www.sonarvstudio.com to watch exclusive videos and get in-depth product information.
These events are FREE and open to EVERYONE, from new users to long-time Cakewalk customers.
For a complete listing of Tour locations and information, check out the Music Production 08′ Tour Page!
For dates, times, and locations of all Cakewalk Events please visit the Cakewalk Events Page Or call 888-CAKEWALK and choose Option #2 to speak with a customer service representative.
With the help of Cakewalk’s Engineering Department, Create Digital Music’s Peter Kirn delves inside the mechanics of SONAR 8. Visit Create Digital Music to learn how SONAR 8 will hold its own in Windows Vista.
Cakewalk’s Noel Borthwick explains, “SONAR 8 introduces several, crucial enhancements for communications with audio devices in Windows Vista, including support for WASAPI (a new audio standard in Windows Vista and future OS), MMCSS task profile support, and WaveRT streaming.”
To view the complete list of enhancements made to the latest version of SONAR, take a look at the posting below.
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
Product Manager Alex Westner reveals all about SONAR 8! Learn about all the new features and control assistance added to make this digital audio workstation the hottest on the market.
Product Manager Samara Krugman reveals ALL about the newest product in the SONAR Home Studio line. Learn about the new features and the improved user-friendly interface found in SONAR Home Studio 7.
The Virtual Ornaments of An Innovator
Producer, mixer, remixer, writer & artist Carmen Rizzo
By Randy Alberts
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.
“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.”
