Cakewalk Sonar 6 Producer Edition Retail Version

Cakewalk SONAR 6 Producer Edition is the definitive choice for music creation and audio production, designed to take you from inspiration to masterpiece faster than ever before.At every step of your production from composing with virtual instruments, to recording, mixing, and beyond Cakewalk SONAR gives you the professional tools and inspiring canvas that adapt to your unique style of music creation.

Cakewalk SONAR 6 Producer Edition at a Glance:

• True 64-bit enhanced sound quality and double precision mix engine
  
• Vintage channel with two equalizers, two compressors, a gate and a de-esser.
  
• Non-destructive manipulation of audio with a wide array of beat- and tempo-related features - studio and live
  
• Automatic mapping of plug-ins and soft synths to any hardware controller.

64-bit, Double Precision Mix Engine
As many a mastering engineer will tell you, quality digital audio is about retaining as much of the original source detail as possible. 32-bit, 48-bit, and 64-bit engines provide you with a certain amount of "space" to work within, with greater bit depth providing greater resolution or higher overall quality. Pushing the boundaries of this space by gain scaling, summing buses, panning, effects, and automation can introduce degradation, often noticeable as graininess to the sound, or loss of integrity in stereo imaging of the track or mix. SONAR's Double Precision (DP) provides greater word length coupled with a clean signal path throughout the mix engine. Cakewalk SONAR does not require truncation or dithering within the mix engine. Believe us, with the DP mix engine engaged; you'll hear a marked improvement in audio quality. Audio time stretching also experiences a marked sonic improvement. Also, SONAR's longer word length means no dithering in and out of plug-ins. While some say that the noise introduced by dithering a plug-in is inaudible, wait until you have 50 running simultaneously.

The 64-bit Vintage Advantage
Speaking of enhanced sound quality and manipulation of therein; Cakewalk SONAR 6 offers more major improvements. First, there's the new VC-64 Vintage Channel. It features two equalizers, two compressors, a gate and a de-esser. The internal effects are interconnected with ten selectable routings, including normal instrument setups, dual band setups, and special setups like mid-side processing and compression based on side chain filtering. With the double equalizer and compressor architecture, the VC-64 offers outstanding sonic possibilities that are not possible with single processing. There's also no latency, which makes this the ideal tool for real time performance in the studio or on stage.

The VC-64's plug-ins are the creations of Kjaerhus Audio, an up and coming Danish software company that's been garnering rave reviews for their plug-in's audio quality. Their proprietary analog modeling technology creates a separate algorithm for each analog component and then connects them all together just like analog components. The staggering level of realism this technique provides combined with 64-bit processing offers a sound that truly must be heard to be fully appreciated.

Making Audio a Snap
Audio Snap is actually a group of features that lets you manipulate audio clips in a number of ways. AudioSnap can align audio clip(s) to the project's tempo, change the tempo for any single clip--or beat(s) within a clip--regardless of the project tempo, extract tempo from any audio clip(s) and apply to project tempo, snap both audio and MIDI edits to audio beats, and much more! The new Audio Snap engine and tempo analysis features give you unprecedented rhythmic and tempo control over your audio. Employing sophisticated transient detection technology, the Audio Snap engine automatically analyzes all recorded and imported audio files for rhythmic content to determine where the beats are in the music. Audio Snap can be enabled/disabled on a per-clip basis.

Audio Snap is completely non-destructive so you can experiment to your heart's content without destroying any data. At the press of a button you can get back to the original, unedited, audio.

When Audio Snap is enabled, audio can easily conform to the tempo of the project, and you can then begin applying a wide array of beat- and tempo- related features, such as:

- Grabbing a beat and moving it manually

- Aligning any audio clip(s) to the project's tempo

- Quantizing beats within a clip--entire audio clips can be quantized, with no need to split them up into individual beats beforehand

- Extracting tempo from any audio clip(s) and applying to project tempo

- Applying grooves to audio, and extracting grooves from audio

- Having audio clips follow tempo changes

- Automatically splitting audio clips into individual beats, if desired

- Non-destructively slip-stretching audio clips

- Snapping both audio and MIDI edits to audio beats

The Audio Snap engine makes sessions with live musicians more flexible: you have more control over the final result--both creative and corrective. You are free to concentrate on feel and performance, and let Audio Snap handle minor (or major!) rhythmic issues and last-minute changes.

SONAR's Getting Into the ACT
Active Controller Technology (ACT) allows you to control automatable plug-ins and soft synths. Since ACT is software-based, you're not limited to a specific hardware controller; you can use any keyboard or control surface. Once a control surface is mapped for a particular plug-in, it works the same way on each instance, but only when active, to avoid unwanted changes.

Features

Record and edit unlimited tracks of audio and MIDI.

Get the perfect take with the best comping, editing, and take management tools available.

Record live through professional effects: VC-64 Vintage Channel, Perfect Space Convolution Reverb, Lexicon Pantheon Reverb, Sonitus:fx Suite, and more-31 audio and MIDI effects.

Use AudioSnap to non-destructively fix audio timing, make instant tempo changes to an entire project, lock multiple tracks into the same groove-even quantize multiple tracks in relation to each other. All with unmatched audio fidelity.

Clean up vocals with Roland V-Vocal Editor, providing pitch correction, phrasing, dynamics, and vibrato.

Make music with 9 amazing instruments: Session Drummer 2; two synths with genuine Roland sounds; analog and subtractive synths; REX, SFZ, and groove samplers.

Get total control of virtual instruments, effects, and mixing from your MIDI controllers and control surfaces with Active Controller Technology (ACT).

Control and automate your virtual instruments with the new Synth Rack.

Freeze tracks, instruments, and effects to conserve processing power.

Create backing tracks fast with MIDI groove clips, ACID-format loops, and RXP REX player.

Expand your sound with integrated support for VST, DirectX, and ReWire instruments and effects.

Score to video with a thumbnail track and output to 1394 FireWire devices.

Mix with superior sonic clarity using Cakewalk SONAR 's industry-first, end-to-end, 64-bit double precision floating point mix engine (accessible on 32-bit computers).

Mix projects with complete flexibility using SONAR's new console view, Universal Bus Architecture, automatic plug-in delay compensation, bus waveform preview, configurable metering, true surround busses, and unlimited tracks, buses, sends and inserts.

Automate your mix with freehand and pattern-based envelopes, and individual read and write control of all tracks, instruments and effects.

Deliver pristine productions with 64-bit audio files, POW-r dithering, Windowed Sinc sample rate conversion, and support for virtually any audio format, bit-depth and sample rate.

Connect any Windows-compatible WDM or ASIO audio interface (including Pro Tools | HD™ or M-Box™), MIDI devices, and control surfaces.

Deliver audio and video in virtually any format including WAV, QuickTime, MP3, WMA. Export to OMFI and Broadcast WAV for collaboration with Pro Tools and other DAWs.

Customize SONAR's look and feel with new interface enhancements. Put your favorite features right at your fingertips.

Superior support for multi-processor and multi-core computers.

CakewalkSONAR 6 includes both a 32-bit version for Windows XP and a 64-bit version for use with Windows XP x64 Edition. Experience 20-30% processing performance gains and access up to 128 GB of RAM on x64.

AudioSnap Multitrack Audio Quantize

VC-64 Vintage Channel - warm sound, dual EQ and compressor stages, analog component modeling, presets by professionals

Session Drummer 2 instrument with professional multi-sampled drum kits, hundreds of vital, usable patterns

Roland V-Vocal VariPhrase Processor

Surround-mixing in over 30 formats, SurroundBridge technology, and Sonitus Surround Compressor

POW-r dithering

PSYN II Subtractive Synthesizer

Pentagon I Analog Modeling Synth

RXP Groove Box with REX file support

Perfect Space Convolution Reverb

Lexicon Pantheon Reverb

Active Controller Technology (ACT): dynamically re-maps effect, mix and instrument parameters to hardware controllers

New Synth Rack makes managing, controlling, and automating your instruments simple

AudioSnap suite of tools includes:

- Non-destructive audio quantize

- Lock multiple tracks into the same groove

- Apply seamless tempo changes to audio

- Convert audio beats to MIDI

- Slip-stretch clips to a new time or length

High-quality time stretching algorithms including iZotope Radius, Percussion Mode, more

Console view redesigned for ergonomic mixing

Transport provides easy playback control and vital visual feedback

Automation enhancements: read/write controls for tracks and plug-ins, enable automation during playback and record, visual automation cues, and more.

Analyst spectrum analyzer

Clip editing enhancements including lock to time

Fast Zoom enables fast, precise edits without losing your place

Mouse wheel support for parameter control and zoom

Import 64-bit floating point audio files

Crash Recovery safeguards your projects against faulty plug-ins and other sources of crashes

Automatic file versioning: back up projects with time/date stamps for easy access to old versions

Customizable user interface: put favorite features right at your fingertips

User-customizable plug-in menus for easy organization and grouping

User-customizable audio hardware port naming

Custom color schemes with saturation, hue, and brightness controls

Specifications

System Requirements

Minimum:
Intel Pentium IV 1.3GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+
Windows XP
256MB RAM
100MB hard disk space for full program installation
DVD-ROM for installation
Windows compatible sound card
Windows compatible MIDI interface
1024 x 768 monitor resolution with 16-bit color

Recommended:
Intel Pentium IV 2.8GHz+ or AMD Athlon 64 2800+
Windows XP/x64
1GB RAM or more
Multiple GB hard disk space for full program installation
DVD-ROM for installation
WDM or ASIO compatible sound card
Windows compatible MIDI interface
1028 x 960 monitor resolution with 24-bit color