Cakewalk Home Studio 8

Cakewalk Home Studio 8 For Windows 95/98/NT 4.0		What's new in Version 8 Features System requirements Trial version Version 8 feature comparison chart Press release Cakewalk awards Cakewalk user profiles Upgrade



The easiest way to create music and sound on a PC

Cakewalk Home Studio 8 is the newest edition of the world's #1-selling music and sound software for the home. It's the fastest, easiest and most affordable way to create music and sound on a PC.

You can get started fast with online tutorials. Play along with over 30 song files. Easily record new music with any instrument or vocals. Or use the Virtual Piano^TM to play and record music with a mouse or PC keyboard.

Then cut, copy, paste, and mix your tracks, and play it all back. Modify notes with the click of the mouse. And when you're finished, print beautiful sheet music. Even open and view a video file while you create a soundtrack or add sound effects¾ perfect for enhancing your home movies.

There's no easier way to turn your PC into a home recording studio. Whether you're in a band or choral group, or playing for personal enjoyment, Home Studio 8 is for you.

New in Home Studio 8

Import digital video to create your own soundtracks.

Mix MIDI tracks with real-time MIDI FX plug-ins. Includes quantize, delay/echo, and MIDI event filter.

Draw volume and pans directly on top of audio waveforms.

New toolbars, shortcut keys, command menus, and other enhancements make Home Studio easier to use than ever before!

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Figure 1: Cakewalk Home Studio 8

Feature Highlights

Audio

Multitrack digital audio
Record and play back up to four audio tracks along with MIDI. Record audio at variable sampling rates (11.025, 22.050, 44.1 and 48 kHz). Quickly perform multitrack audio edits: cut, copy, paste, split, combine¾with simple mouse clicks. Edit any section of audio with sample accuracy.

32-bit, real-time audio effects processing
Give your music that "pro" sound with 32-bit real-time effects like reverb and chorus. Even change the pitch of vocals or other audio tracks while they play back.

Use 32-bit, floating-point processing for faster, higher-resolution, real-time processing.

Apply real-time effects to audio as off-line edits, if desired.

Use the included audio effects in real-time

Chorus

Reverb

Pitch shifting

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Figure 2: Real-time Chorus

Support for real-time, DirectX audio plug-ins
When you're ready to expand your suite of audio processing effects, just add any DirectX- compatible audio plug-in. Home Studio 8 runs DirectX plug-ins in real-time as stereo effects, or as off-line edits. With support for DirectX, the industry-standard for audio plug-ins, Home Studio 8 provides a way for you to increase your audio effects capabilities as needed. There is a wide range of available DirectX plug-ins from which to choose, including the Cakewalk Audio FX 1 Dynamics Processor, Cakewalk Audio FX 2 Analog Tape/Amp Simulator, and Cakewalk Audio FX 3 SoundStage Designer.

Graphical audio mixing
Draw lines and curves on top of your audio to accurately change volume and pan information. Creating a mix has never been more intuitive.

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Figure 3: Graphical audio mixing

MIDI

MIDI recording and editing
Record up to 256 tracks of MIDI using a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI instrument. Then edit MIDI tracks with the tools and views that best suit you. Home Studio 8 features the following editing views for MIDI:

Piano Roll
Can't read music? With the Piano Roll view you can edit notes, velocity levels, and controllers graphically in a grid format. Percussion tracks are displayed with instrument names. Use your mouse to draw volume changes, RPNs, NRPNs, pitch bends, modulation, or any other MIDI Controller. Velocity and Controller data are displayed adjacent to note events for most efficient editing.

Lyrics for vocalists
A dedicated Lyrics view with selectable font sizes displays scrolling text during record or playback. Great for learning original or cover songs. Lyrics are automatically synchronized to notes on a track. Just transpose the song into the key you want.

Tempo
Draw tempo changes and view tempo maps that affect audio and MIDI in real-time. Also view tempo in an easy-to-read list format.

Markers
Label and navigate through sections of your music easily. Markers are displayed globally in most views and can be inserted in real-time. Quickly select, edit and arrange entire sections simply by clicking between markers.

Event List
When you need to get down to details, view and edit a list of all selected events occurring in all selected tracks. Step-play MIDI events for discrete auditioning. Insert MCI commands to trigger multimedia applications (animation, video, CD-ROM) during playback.

Cakewalk MIDI FX
Apply real-time effects to your MIDI tracks, just like audio effects. Use effects in real-time on input and during playback, or apply them as off-line edits. MIDI FX include quantize, delay/echo, and MIDI event filter.

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Figure 4: MIDI FX Delay/Echo

Create stunning sheet music
Watch as your notes appear instantly on screen while you record! View and edit your composition in standard notation, and then print sheet music of your complete arrangements or individual parts, in sizable fonts. Notation features:

Edit and print multiple MIDI tracks as high-quality notation

Notes appear on-screen as you record from a MIDI instrument

Zoom-in or out the Staff view to display notation at any size

Assign any number of tracks to individual staves

Standard and single-line percussion clef notation, guitar chord grids, expression text, dynamic markings, pedal markings, composer name and title

Variable fonts for expression text and lyrics

Print up to 24 staves per page

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Figure 5: Cakewalk Staff View

Video

Create soundtracks for digital video movies
With the advent of affordable digital video hardware and software, the time has never been better for you to make the leap to desktop video production. Cakewalk Home Studio is the perfect audio complement to the video editing software that came bundled with your video capture board.

While many audio editing programs only allow you to open digital video files and "freewheel" them to your audio tracks, Cakewalk Home Studio 8 lets you import AVI, MPEG, and QuickTime video files and then sync them with frame-accuracy to audio and MIDI tracks. You can edit the existing audio or create your own soundtracks and sound effects. Then export your finished project to AVI ¾perfect for enhancing home movies and multimedia presentations.

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Figure 6: Video playback window

True integration of audio & MIDI
Cakewalk Home Studio 8 is a truly integrated music and sound workstation. Most editing commands and features enable you to alter audio data in the same familiar way as you would MIDI events. Features:

Audio and MIDI tracks record and play back in rock-solid synchronization.

Flexible audio and MIDI recording with real-time, loop, replace, sound-on-sound, and auto- punch record modes.

Punch in/punch out, record audio and MIDI on the fly.

Discontiguous selection and editing of both audio and MIDI.

Audio and MIDI cut/copy/paste, drag/drop, and split/combine commands.

Transpose edits can pitch-shift audio and MIDI events.

Lengthen or shorten audio and MIDI events by a specified percentage.

Quantize will change the start time, duration and velocity of audio and MIDI events.

Swing quantize, and quantize by percentage your audio events and MIDI tracks.

Tempo View has a "Stretch Audio" option. Using this option, all audio in the sequence will be stretched immediately after any gesture with the Line Draw, Free Draw, and Erase tools. In addition, changing the tempo during playback from the control panel will stretch all audio in the sequence to conform to the tempo change.

The Console view¾ a great way to create music and sound
You're in control of a studio mixing board. Designed to simulate a professional mixing console, the new Console view is a single, convenient window from which you can control all your sound projects. It enables you to arm and record tracks, apply processing effects, create sub-mixes, automate volume and panning levels, and more. All in real-time. You can:

View/hide MIDI tracks, audio tracks, auxiliary busses, master section, audio input meters.

Add four simultaneous real-time audio effects to tracks with included 32-bit audio effects or any other DirectX-compatible audio plug-ins. Effects can be added on individual tracks, auxiliary sends, or master output.

Patch MIDI FX to individual tracks just like audio effects.

Mute, solo, and arm tracks for recording with individual buttons for each track.

Multitrack solo.

Automate volume and pan levels.

Submix audio tracks with reconfigurable auxiliary busses.

View audio record-level meters per track, with clipping indicator and peak hold.

View color-coded fader groupings.

Select MIDI port, channel, bank and patch, and audio source and output ports with convenient display buttons for individual tracks.

Global track editing
Home Studio 8 gives you the freedom to be more creative. You can easily record multiple takes on separate tracks, plus copy and paste different sections to create the ideal performance. Use the "bird's eye" Track view to quickly arrange and preview MIDI and audio tracks. Arrange and edit multitrack sections of music using flexible clips Arranging your music is as easy as cutting and pasting, or dragging and dropping your clips to when and where you want to hear them

Integrate and automate your studio hardware with Cakewalk® StudioWare^TM
Cakewalk StudioWare lets you control MIDI-compatible hardware from within Cakewalk Home Studio 8 using a virtual control panel that emulates the hardware. Cakewalk provides StudioWare panels for popular studio gear including:

Roland GS sound modules and synthesizers.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE 32.

More!

Compose for the Internet
The World Wide Web has made distributing your music fast and easy. Particularly when you can save music and sound from Home Studio 8 directly to RealNetworks' RealMedia file format, the industry standard for streaming audio and MIDI over the Internet. Adding music to your own web site, or making it available on sites like the Internet Underground Music Archive (www.iuma.com), has never been more convenient.

Enhanced user interface
Home Studio 8 includes numerous user interface enhancements to help you increase your productivity. User interface enhancements include lasso zooming and othe zoom enhancements, loop and auto-punch markers, event list display filter, and more.

Open and edit multiple files simultaneously
Home Studio 8 enables you to open and access multiple files simultaneously, so it's easy to copy and paste sections of MIDI and audio from one project to another. It's a simple "drag-and-drop."

Custom screen layouts
Configure Home Studio 8 to the way you want to work, then save your custom screen layouts. Or create different layouts for different editing sessions. Home Studio 8 automatically saves your layout for works in progress, allowing you to reload the file later exactly where you left off.

Custom presets
Create your own customized editing presets. Many commands enable you save parameters as presets for later use, including all DirectX and MIDI FX plug-ins loaded by Home Studio 8; quantize; fade; crossfade; and more.

On-screen tutorials
New Cakewalk TECHniques on-screen tutorials give you a head start on all of the new features and functionality. There's no faster way to learn about Home Studio 8. Whether you consider yourself a novice or a veteran, you'll appreciate getting a jump-start on the new Console view, recording audio, and more. Home Studio 8 includes the following tutorials:

Basic audio editing.

Cakewalk 8 overview.

Importing and exporting audio.

Recording audio.

Setup tips.

Track settings and selectionmethods.

Instrument definitions.

Using the Console view

Extensive MIDI and audio song files
Home Studio 8 features over 30 high-quality Cakewalk song files by Yes keyboardist Igor Khoroshev. Styles include Orchestral, Ska, Acid Jazz, Techno, Alternative, and more. Also included is Theme from Dark Matter, a MIDI and audio file from LA film scoring team Shawn Clement & Sean Murray; and two MIDI and audio files by Boston rocker Charlie Farren.

System Requirements

Windows 95/98

Pentium 120 or higher; 16 MB RAM

CD-ROM drive

Windows NT 4.0

Pentium 120 or higher; 32 MB RAM

CD-ROM drive

Windows compatible sound card and/or MIDI interface required. (Sound card required for digital audio record/playback). Printer and MIDI instrument optional