What happens when you mix technical chatter on the Cakewalk forum, Samuel Beckett, and The Matrix? I’d wager you get something like the surreal video above. Prompted by the posting of technical details for a new update to Cakewalk’s SONAR production software for Windows, and empowered by a strange, new tool that generates eerie virtual reality from typed text, we get banter like this:

The arpeggiator is now on every track, so you are supposed to use it. It is one of the new rules of recording.

Yes, I came from the days of one-finger piano playing. This is a total blessing to me.

I’m going to take that as a challenge and base my review of SONAR 8.5 on using an arpeggiator and step sequencer on every track. And I’ll have to pronounce all those hard g’s in the voice over, clearly.

And no, this is not some twisted viral campaign on the part of the folks of Cakewalk; I’ve been assured that this came from a user.

Okay, what was this post originally about? Oh, yeah – the actual technical details of the SONAR 8.5 release. Noel Borthwick talks about all the details of the new SONAR release on the Cakewalk forums. Apparently, some people care deeply about whether this is SONAR 9 or 8.5 or some conspiracy theory there, but what interests me is the technical details of the software itself.

SONAR 8.5 Fine Print

Noel goes down to a code level. Interesting tidbits: working with Intel, Cakewalk was able to do a demo of SONAR running an absurd number of tracks, instruments, effects, and live video without pegging the CPU, with a tiny 2 ms of latency. The Cakewalk engineering effort also has put together what may be the most highly-optimized VST support and richest 32-to-64-bit bridging on any platform, anywhere.

Whatever the opposite of “marketing speak” may be, I think that’s what Noel has achieved, getting into a sort of developer-to-developer level discussion. It is still readable, and worth digging through.

See also: Intel Developer Forum details and video on the Cakewalk blog

I could talk more about that, but let’s just leave it at step sequencers and arpeggiators on every track, okay?

Alongside our Renoise + Indamixx netbook-optimized production competition, I’m kicking off this week a series of CDM and guest tutorials on working with Linux audio tools, Renoise, and more. First up, here’s a basic look at how to route the free-as-in-beer linuxDSP effects toolkit into the powerful, modern, open-source DAW Ardour. Correction: I implied that linuxDSP had an open source license, which is not correct. It should be considered “freeware” but not free software. Ardour, of course, is fully open source, and this is as much a tutorial on how to use JACK to route effects as it is linuxDSP per se.

http://www.linuxdsp.co.uk/

Record is now shipping, and the beta closed – and now is a perfect time to talk about learning.

Okay, let me explain something. Propellerhead doesn’t want Record to be called a “DAW,” for Digital Audio Workstation. I personally overcame my own distaste for the strange acronym today because, well, there’s not another good name for a related set of tools.

But I do think Record is different. Workstations are usually defined by being all-in-one environments, for hosting other third-party instruments and effects, and adding in additional features like notation and video scoring. Record is none of those things. You can even treat it like a virtual mixer or rack of processing tools and load it into your existing “DAW” of choice, or take something like Ableton Live and load it into Record for mastering.

But then, Record is the exception that proves the rule, isn’t it? Aggressively geared to be the anti-DAW, to avoid trying to be all things to all people, Record illustrates the variety of ways you can get your music making done.

We’ve had a good, healthy debate on this topic, so no reason to resurrect that. Instead, I have two pieces of news: one, Record is now actually shipping. Two, if you’re interested to learn how to use it, or just to see what they’ve done, the Props have assembled a terrific set of learning resources. For beginners, “Record U” promises to cover the basics of recording tasks as well as the software. (So far, the first episode, “Recording Guitar,” is available.) You can add that to lovely ReWire tutorials from the folks who developed the technology, and mini-tips on how to use the tools. Whatever you think of the software, it’s an exemplary learning site, just the kind of thing you’d hope developers would do.

Basics video
Record U
Tutorials Page
Micro Tutorials and iTunes podcast link

I’ve chosen my favorite so far. Love it or hate it, I think this illustrates some of the vision of Record. It makes moving tracks and devices as easy as racking up instruments and effects in Reason, and makes mixing and matching audio uncommonly easy. That could make Record a nice tool to have around for trying to take your pile of recordings and productions and turn them into finished tracks and albums. (A lot of this “love it or hate it” phenomenon seems to depend on your feelings about Reason, so Reason fans will also want to take a look at the Reason – Record integration video.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note another significant DAW release: DP7 is shipping this week. The Mac-only Digital Performer still has a loyal following, especially among the scoring crowd, some of whom have stuck with DP since the Performer days – one of the Mac’s first sequencers. I have to say, this particular update seems to focus more on bundled effects than core functionality – and, in fairness, because it’s tough to change core features without upsetting the stuff that keeps your users loyal, this isn’t uncommon. But DP has uncommonly rich support for being a Pro Tools HD front end, it’s Mac-savvy and Snow Leopard compatible, and given its popularity in scoring, a little touch like the Marker Counter could be huge news for its major following.

Full disclosure: I haven’t found much reason to touch DP lately, with plenty of other tools to keep my attention, so if there is a loyal DP user who would like to send in their dispatch, I’d love to run it on CDM.

In the meantime, I’ll keep this compact to give you a birds-eye view. First, the effects stuff:

SONAR 8.5, I’m sure at some point, was to be SONAR 9. There’s an enormous amount of functionality in this release. But I think the surprise is some of the stuff that won’t necessarily appeal to the widest audio production audience. Here’s a DAW that’s adding unusual new features for arranging tracks, putting an integrated arpeggiator on every track, beefing up its step sequencer (really), and dumping a bunch of class LinnDrum samples into the package. Those are the kind of treats we like in these parts.

SONAR is really a “DAW” in the traditional sense. It does everything. It doesn’t hide features. Given a choice between taking something out and putting something in, it puts the thing in. It has a lot of knobs and buttons. There are positives and negatives to the approach – it’s the reason some readers of this site return to software on game machines that has more in common with early Amiga software. But if you like the feeling of a packed studio, a tool like SONAR can be terrific. As much as I love Ableton Live for sound design and live performance, I find myself returning to something like SONAR for arrangement.

Even with its competitors packing in features, SONAR 8.5 is a tool that really loves MIDI, just as other software focuses on audio. And it’s one of the best-performing tools around. Because it’s so well-tuned for Windows, that means you can drop it onto a wide variety of PC hardware without spending a lot of cash. Most importantly, it could be the first software on any platform that convinces you to try a 64-bit OS – just at about the time you may be doing a fresh install of Windows 7.

Here’s a first run-down of what’s new in 8.5 that I’m personally most interested in: