Cakewalk has new software for beginners and experts
By CHRISTOPHER AVE
Published January 12, 2004
Cakewalk, the world's largest maker of music production software, has released new versions of software on both ends of its market: casual digital media newcomers and experienced musicmakers. Both products should extend Cakewalk's core market, in very different ways.
First up is MediaWorks, a one-stop-shop for managing not only digital music, but also photographs and videos.
At a list price of $79, MediaWorks contains all the features of Cakewalk's $49 Pyro, the CD burning product. But MediaWorks goes far beyond music. Users can easily navigate its intuitive interface to create video slide shows, burn DVDs and video CDs and virtual photo albums ready for the Web.
It took me no time to figure out how to build a family photo album. And creating a video slide show - which can contain photographs, videos and music - was easy.
The CD burning functions, as you might expect, worked flawlessly. The ability to edit the sound wave of any song, while customizing it with effects such as equalization and volume maximizer, makes this a very powerful CD burner.
Minimum requirements are Windows 98 SE or higher, 128 megabytes of random access memory and at least a 500 megahertz processor. Users with a 1.5-gigahertz processor and plenty of hard drive space will be able to use all of MediaWorks' features most effectively.
It's important to note that MediaWorks isn't a replacement for a good digital photo editor, video editor or music production software product. Rather, it's meant to help those of us who have started to acquire photos, videos and music on our hard drives figure out what to do with them. At that, it excels. And it gives Cakewalk its first real foray into photography and video, two fast-growing areas of the digital world.
But Cakewalk hasn't neglected its base - people who record music. The company's latest version of its flagship music production software, Sonar 3.0 ($479-$719, widely available for about $300), provides a product every bit as powerful as the longtime industry leader, Pro Tools, at a significantly lower price.
Sonar 3 allows users to record multiple tracks of audio, arrange and edit them and produce anything from a pop song to an opera. It's also a very effective MIDI editor (that's Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a way of telling instruments what notes to play). And this version gives users a dizzying array of options in terms of playing software synthesizers, or soft synths, which transform your computer into an instrument (a few soft synths are included with Sonar).
All of this is wrapped inside a sleek new user interface that offers more options for routing and organizing sounds than any previous version.
Hardware requirements are pretty steep: an 800-MHz processor at a minimum, but 1.2-GHz or higher one is recommended. Plus, the more memory, the better - 512 MB isn't overkill - and plenty of hard drive space to boot.
Obviously this isn't a program for beginners, nor is it a smart buy for people who aren't serious about making music. But for individuals or studios looking for the most bang for the buck in a top-level music production software product, Sonar 3 aces the audition.
- Christopher Ave, the Times' city editor in Clearwater, can be reached at (727) 445-4152 or cave@sptimes.com
