Friday, September 29, 2006
EastWest On Sale!
Looking to add some great sounding libraries to your home studio? Now is the perfect time to expand your options, as the most popular EastWest products are on sale at great prices! Known for their popular line of soft synths such as the Symphonic Orchestra series and Symphonic Choirs, you can find the complete list of EastWest products on our site, along with a listing of our specials.
- Kelly
Posted at 11:31 AM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Friday, September 22, 2006
Cubase 4 Announced...
Steinberg has released Cubase 4 and Cubase Studio 4, replacing Cubase SX 3 and Cubase SL 3. There are some exciting new features, along with some architecture changes and new VST instruments and effects.
Cubase 4 extends the mixer with a new section called the "Control Room" This is actually a very useful feature, as you can no connect multiple sets of control room monitors and external sources (CD, DVD, Tape etc.) directly to your audio hardware and switch between them using the "Control Room" panel. Although this feature can sometimes be found in the software mixer for your soundcard - RME, for example, has their TotalMix software - it will definitely be more effective integrating this directly into the Cubase environment. The Control Room section even offers a talkback channel along with a headphone bus, and the ability to create up to four studio mixes (monitor mixes), so each mixer channel now offers a separate studio send section for controlling those mixes.
Steinberg has upgraded the VST architecture to VST 3 and integrated it into Cubase 4. VST3 plug-ins are more intelligent - for example, they can adjust the number of audio busses to the channel they're inserted to (mono, stereo, 5.1, etc.). They are also more efficient as a silence detection function makes sure that a plug-in only processes audio when there's actually a signal present. To show off the cool features found in VST3, Steinberg includes 30 all-new audio and MIDI plug-ins in Cubase 4 (in addition to updating 20 previous plug-for a total of 50 audio effects plug-ins.)
In addition to the audio plug-ins, Cubase 4 adds four new virtual instrument plug-ins: HALion One, Prologue, Spector and Mystic. HALion One will be especially popular as it is based on the same Yamaha samples found in the Motif series of synths. It is great to see some synergies from Yamaha's ownership of Steinberg.
Taking a cue from NI's popular Kore, Cubase 4 includes a new feature set called SoundFrame - what Steinberg describes as a "Universal Sound Manager". It allows you to mange any sound, from any software or hardware synth in one user interface. You can also find and organize your sounds and manage your VST effects as well.
Track Presets and Instrument Tracks will go along way to streamlining the workflow since you can easily add an "Instrument Track" which automatically creates a MIDI input and stereo output within a single track for a VST instrument. The Track Presets will store every aspect of your track/channel settings - saving you time in setting up your project.
Although I still wouldn't recommend it for scoring over a "real" notation program like Sibelius or Finale, Cubase 4 does have some notation enhancements, including a new jazz font.
The mixer and channel strip windows are now even more customizable and Steinberg has spent some time trying to making things more readable, which is always welcome!
- Kelly.
Posted at 5:22 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Monday, September 18, 2006
Sonar 6 Announced
Cakewalk recently announced the release of Sonar 6 Producer Edition and Sonar 6 Studio Edition, with some very cool new features. For example, AudioSnap is a suite of tools that features non-destructive audio quantize allowing you to lock multiple tracks into the same groove. You can even convert audio beats to MIDI and it also includes some new high-quality time stretching algorithms including iZotope Radius and Percussion Mode.
There have also been some cosmetic changes to enhance workflow, such as the new Synth Rack for managing, controlling, and automating your instruments. The console view has been redesigned for ergonomic mixing and the modular transport provides easy playback control along with visual feedback. There is now a spectrum analyzer and the most commonly asked for feature - you can work seamlessly with VST plug-ins-without the need for an external VST to DX adapter! Another cool new feature is the "Crash Recovery" which safeguards your projects against faulty plug-ins and other sources of crashes (since of course, Sonar itself would never crash.)
- Kelly
Posted at 11:36 AM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::
Friday, September 15, 2006
Firepod Price Drop!
The popular Firepod from Presonus has always been a great value, connecting 8 high-end mic pre's via firewire to your Mac or PC. With Cubase LE included, it provides you with everything you need to get started.
Presonus recently dropped the price, making the Firepod an exceptional value and a great way for anyone to get into professional recording for under $500 US! Be sure to use the comparison feature on our web site if you want to compare the Firepod to other soundcards we carry.
- Kelly.
Posted at 2:21 PM by Kelly's Music :: Archived :: TrackBack (0) ::