CakeTalking for SONAR 8.5 Information
The CakeTalking for SONAR product has empowered blind audio producers from all over the world to get the most out of SONAR since the year 2000. Cakewalk SONAR converts your PC into a multi-track, digital audio recording studio! You can record synthetic instrument sounds from your electronic, MIDI keyboard attached to your PC.
Set SONAR's track source to audio and blend in acoustic sounds using your microphone connected to your sound card! Mix it all down to two-track stereo in various popular audio formats such as mp3, .wav or Windows Media. Burn to CD, E-mail to a friend or upload to your website.
The latest version of this popular product contains even more exciting and innovative features to make creating music even easier:
CakeTalking HELP
The 400 page CakeTalking Tutorial has been thoroughly updated and greatly expanded. There are new lessons on setting up your workstation, working with soft synths, and using the many new features of SONAR. There are also easy to follow supporting documents that describe how to configure your computer for optimum performance with JAWS, and how to download and install SONAR updates.
V-Vocal
V-Vocal is now completely accessible. V-Vocal is an editor that is perfect for correcting pitch and vibrato in vocal tracks, creating backup vocals from a lead vocal track, and for shifting the rhythmic placement of words and syllables within a melodic phrase. It also works just as well with any monophonic instrument, like a sax or trumpet. V-Vocal can also change the dynamics and formant of the audio. Formant is the overtone series of audio that makes it possible to distinguish, for instance, a man singing a note, and a woman singing the same note. So by adjusting the formant, you can transpose audio while still retaining the sound signature of the vocalist.
This makes it possible to create harmonizing backup vocals from a lead vocal track.
SOFT SYNTHS' AND AAA TEMPLATES.
CakeTalking now installs SONAR templates that are designed to get new users up and going as quickly as possible. The 9 Soft Synth templates allow you to use your MIDI keyboard to trigger Soft ware synthesizers that reside in your computer, rather than external MIDI synthesizers. By using software synthesizers, instead of external synthesizers, the process of configuring SONAR is simplified. Instead of having to first tinker with external MIDI keyboard synths and their connections, with these new templates, the user can immediately begin recording MIDI tracks in SONAR.
Tracks that are devoted to soft synths are now fully supported and recognized. And you can easily open a soft synth's window by pressing CONTROL Y while on any column of a track that's assigned to a soft synth.
Loop Construction
CakeTalking now fully supports the Loop Construction View. In this view, rhythmic audio clips can be converted to groove clips that contain tempo, beat and pitch information. This allows SONAR to stretch the groove clip so that it conforms to the tempo and key of any project you import the groove clip into.
REORDERING MULTIPLE TRACKS.
Ever wanted to put your tracks in a different order. Well, you not only can move one track at a time to a different position, you can also re order multiple tracks in one fell swoop. Just type the new numerical order you wish your tracks to be in, wait a second or 2, and you've got a totally new track order.
Enhanced Clips Editing
CakeTalking now fully supports SONAR'S new set of features called Enhanced Clip Editing. Enhanced Clip Editing allows the user to use simple keystrokes to manipulate audio clips quickly and efficiently. You can do 3 basic things with Enhanced Clips editing. You can select, fade, and crop any audio clip.
Cropping means to trim or expand a selected clip. Cropping is useful when you want to eliminate some of the audio at the start or end of the clip, or when you want to expand a clip and restore some of the audio that has been previously truncated from the clip. You can crop an audio clip instantaneously with a simple hotkey, and then immediately audition the results.
Fading means to gradually increase the start of a clip, or decrease the volume of the end of a clip.
Nudge Mode.
SONAR'S Nudge mode is now fully supported. With simple hotkeys, you can now nudge audio clips a little later or earlier in time, thus correcting timing mistakes. You can also move clips from one track to another, thus making it easy to assemble a composite track from several other tracks.
Accessible Audio EFFECTS
In addition to almost the entire suite of Sonitus and lexicon Effects, the following new effects are fully supported.
Vintage Channel 64.
VC64 is a multi-function audio processor that includes a noise gate, de-esser, two compressors and two equalizers. The noise gate allows you to gate out noise, and tighten up percussive sounds. The de-esser can remove prominent s's from vocals, tame over-prominent hi-hats in dance music drum loops, as well as reduce the 'buzziness' of distorted signals with lots of highs.
TL 64 Tube leveller. Digital audio recordings can sometimes sound sterile and lifeless. The TL-64 Tube Leveller plug-in is a preamp/processor that uses vacuum-tube modelling, so you can add just the right amount of warm tube saturation to individual tracks or full mixes.
LP 64 EQ.
Cakewalk's LP 64 E Q provides highly accurate control of tonal balance while maintaining a linear-phase shift at all frequencies, regardless of the gain settings. With LP 64 E Q EQ linear-phase processing, the integrity of your audio is maintained for all frequencies, at all times--no unintended coloration, cancellations, comb filtering, or muddy transients. LP 64 EQ is well suited for critical mastering projects
Cakewalk's LP-64 Multiband Compressor.
This is a transparent linear phase multiband compressor plug-in for mixing and mastering purposes. The LP-64 provides five bands of smooth, highly accurate, linear-phase compression and equalization of audio, with each of the four compressors operating on a single adjustable frequency band.
TS 64 Transient Shaper.
The TS 64 Transient Shaper plug-in provides powerful control over the dynamics of audio tracks and mixes. TS 64 Transient Shaper is primarily designed for drums and percussion, but can also be useful on other percussive sounds, such as guitar and electric piano. Transient refers to a sudden increase in sound output that occurs for a short period of time.
For example, the attack portion of a drum hit is a transient. Unlike a typical compressor, TS 64 Transient Shaper lets you shape the audio signals
attack phase independently of the decay/sustain phase.
Boost 11
The Boost 11 Peak Limiter is a transparent peak limiting and volume maximizing plug-in for mixing and mastering purposes; it is designed to reduce peak levels without colouring the sound.
Note that in effects and soft synth dialogs that require you to lock the mouse on a control before you can change its value, CakeTalking will now report the current setting of the control, as soon as you lock the mouse.
This is better than the way CT previously acted, where you had to change the initial value before you could hear a value. So you could never could hear the initial value.
All reported bugs in the previous version for SONAR 8 have been fixed.
New Features in CakeTalking 8.5 for SONAR 8.5.
In addition to all of the above, you will have access to the following new features when you install CakeTalking to run with SONAR 8.5. Remember, certain CakeTalking features are still under construction. You will be eligible for maintenance releases as they become available. Some new features may not be documented thoroughly yet in the accompanying tutorial documents although CT's online help has been enhanced to support you as you learn.
Session Drummer 3
Session Drummer has been a mainstay in SONAR for easy and fast creation of realistic sounding drum tracks. Now, Session Drummer 3 hits the stage with an all new look, sporting a sleek photorealistic 3D drum kit, along with routing improvements, plus 12 new kits and over 700 new patterns for additional high quality drums sounds and grooves.
Arpeggiator
Each MIDI and Instrument track in SONAR now has a built-in Arpeggiator which allows you to turn even the simplest chord progression into exciting new sound textures. The SONAR Arpeggiator is a perfect tool for adding variety to any Instrument or MIDI track that repeats a number of times in a song, or for creating complimentary parts using other instrument sounds that follow your chord progression. The SONAR Arpeggiator includes hundreds of presets, patterns, and classic algorithms.
AudioSnap 2.0
The new AudioSnap palette allows you to fix timing problems in audio and align audio with the project tempo. Compared to its previous incarnation, it is simpler and more reliable.
MOVE to Next or Prior Transient. You can use the TAB and SHIFT+TAB keys to jump to audio transients, and MIDI Note events. In SONAR 8.5, TAB to transients is always available when the transport is idle, and is no longer dependent on AudioSnap. TAB to transients is now selection-based, which means tabbing will go to the next/previous transient amongst all selected clips. If there is no selection, tabbing operates on the current track.
9 NEW EFFECTS Supported. Alias Factor, Classic Phaser, HF Exciter, Mod Filter, Multi-voice Chorus/Flanger, Para-Q, Stereo Compressor/Gate, Stereo Delay, StudioBerb2
Step Sequencer 2.0
SONAR's Step Sequencer view is known for being the most advanced and comprehensive available in any DAW today. Step Sequencer 2.0 takes this power to a new level with increased depth of control over your sequences.
Step Sequencer 2.0 was built with 3 goals in mind: to simplify the interface for an elegant and musical workflow, to design a set of useful and powerful per-lane controls, and to provide finer control over per-step adjustments.
N.B. The new Matrix feature in SONAR 8.5 is not accessible. We will continue to consult with the developers of SONAR on ways they might be able to make it a feature that JAWS can access. In its present form, access is not possible.