NAB 2009: SONAR & V-Mixing System Wow Crowds

For more than 80 years, The NAB Show, produced annually by the National Association of Broadcasters, has served as the premiere event for broadcast technology professionals. But there’s more to the show than just tv and radio broadcasting, it’s the ultimate educational experience! Technology professionals and solutions providers from every corner of the world, come to the show each year to explore every stage of the audio / visual content lifecycle, from creation to consumption.

Cakewalk is one of this year’s exhibitors showing off their state-of-the-art creations at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada from April 20 through April 23. Follow along with Robin Kelly live from the show, here on The Cakewalk Blog.

Here’s his first post:

At the Roland Systems Group booth, Zac Kenney and I were presenting the SONAR V-Studio 700 as the mixing and editing solution to the V-Mixing system. At the heart of the system, is the M-400 Digital Mixing Console from RSS by Roland. Add to that the personal monitoring system, allowing each live performer to have up to 40 individual monitor mixes and the digital snake whick allows up to 40 channels of audio over a single CAT-5 cable, and you have an extremely impressive live mixing setup.

So how does Cakewalk’s SONAR integrate into this system? You can split the signal coming down the CAT-5 cable and connect it to the network card on your PC. Using the REAC driver, you then have 40 discreet inputs going into SONAR to record each channel individually to their own track.

After the live show the VS-700 becomes the platform for mixing and editing the 40-track live performance. From live venues and houses of workship to broadcast customers, the feedback was extremely good. They were all impressed with the flexibility and depth the SONAR V-Studio System provides. Add to that the ability to harness and control all the power of SONAR via a hardware inferface, and you have a ‘perfect solution’. The Fantom VS is an added bonus as this provides the added ability to add extra synth tracks after recording. The ARX slot was also wowing the customers when the ARX-01 Drum card was added.

In Las Vegas, people seem just about willing to bet on anything, but one thing no one I spoke to today was willing to gamble on was their audio. All through the day, customers were coming up to me explaining bow they prefer to mix in SONAR because it ‘just sounds better’ than other programs. Of course, it is always nice to hear such positive compliments about our flagship DAW but in a way it is extra special to hear this coming from folks who have very high (if not limitless) budgets, allowing them to choose any audio platform they wish. Even with that they are still using SONAR because of it’s quality.

It makes sense if you think about it. SONAR has a 64-bit double precision audio engine, multiple gain stages, and 64-bit/convolution plugins to sweeten the mix.

So YES. In Vegas, people will gamble on just about anything, anything but their audio quality!

That’s it for now. Day 2 starts tomorrow!

Robin Kelly
Cakewalk’s Director of Worldwide MI Sales

Cakewalk Sponsored Showcases At SXSW 2009

Although, we’re a little late in getting this up, we thought we’d share pictures and give you the skinny on our travels to this year’s SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas.

This year, was the first year Cakewalk made the trek to Austin to join in on the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music and Media Conference. We sponsored a series of live performances hosted by Music Gorilla and submitted our SONAR 8 Producer into a drawing. Here’s a few pictures from the event:

A little history on SXSW:

Established in 1987, SXSW’s original goal was to create an event that would act as a tool for creative people and the companies they work with, to develop their careers, to bring together people from a wide area to meet and share ideas. In 22 years, this music event has grown from 700 registrants to nearly 12,000 registrants.

Austin’s eclectic music scene goes back to the city’s early history (from Mexican, German and colonial origins) and encompasses a wide variety of music including country, folk, jazz, blues and rock. Central Austin boasts more original music nightclubs in a concentrated area than any other city in the world. SXSW was a way to reach out to the rest of the world, and bring them to Austin to do business. SXSW now has offices in Ireland, Germany, Australia and Japan who help bring SXSW registrants to Austin every March.

If you missed SXSW this year, you can catch up on the panels via podcast now until May 29 at http://sxsw.com/interactive.

Cakewalk Prepares for Musikmesse 2009

Cakewalk is preparing for Musikmesse 2009 – Live for the Music! starting Wednesday April 1, 2009 in Frankfurt, Germany. As suspected, we have some huge announcements that are once again going to shake up the music industry. In addition, we are pleased to announce that SONAR 8 has been nominated for a MIPA (Musikmesse International Press Award) in the Recording Software category and SONAR V-Studio 700 has been nominated in the Recording Hardware category!

Cakewalk will be exhibiting at:
Edirol Booth, Hall: 5.1 Walkway: B Stand: 65
Ludwig-Erhard_Anlage 1, 60327 Frankfurt
April 1 – 4, 2009
More info on this year’s show!

The :90 Music Show Interviews Platinum Producer Mark Needham

In this episode of The :90 Music Show, host Scott Austin chats with Multi-Platinum Producer Mark Needham in the Cakewalk Booth at NAMM 2009.

The pair discuss Needham’s favorite technologies on display at the show as well as his history developing artists. This year, he brought new acts, Iglu & Hartley and Divide the Day, to share in the nation’s biggest music industry tradeshow.

Mark Needham has produced and mixed award-winning albums for a wide variety of recording artists including Michelle Branch, Cake, Fleetwood Mac, Chris Isaak, and The Killers.

Click here for more episodes of The :90 Music Show.

Britain's Pub Landlord Composes Music for U.K. Tour

British Comedian Al Murray ends every show with a song and dance. On this year’s tour, he’s featuring a self-composed track, “Broken Britain Boogie” as the finale.

The track was recorded and produced using SONAR with V-Drums and legendary guitarist Brian May (Queen) makes a guest appearance. The track was recently the center of a remix contest as Murray allowed music students enrolled at Brooklands College in Surrey to concoct their own twists of the tune using SONAR LE.

Although Murray states that his composition, “sounds like a sloppy bar room band playing a sub-Oasis style,” ‘Broken Britain Boogie’ is no joke and will surely be on ITunes in the near future. We wish Al Murray the best of luck on tour in the UK.

Visit Al Murray’s website to check tour dates.

NAMM Show 2009: Blogged by Cakewalk

Day 5: Well that’s it. The NAMM show is a wrap. Today is Sunday and while it is the last day of the show, there is definitely an air about the place that says the show is finally over and foot traffic is much lighter than it has been the whole rest of the show.

At 5pm when they finally turned the lights down, you could hear a wave of exhibitors clapping and cheering. If I were to tell you it was a quick show, I would be lying. But it was definitely a good show and we were able to reach out to a lot of people with all of our products including our new USB hardware devices and of course, our baby: The SONAR V-Studio 700.

Everyone here did a wonderful, professional job this week and I know we’re all proud of what we’ve accomplished.

As I wrap this up, I look forward to touching down at home in Boston and sleeping in my own bed. Though as much as I don’t mind the 80 degree weather in January, I think it’s the nasty winters at home that really make you appreciate the nice weather when you get it. Although, we could be another 4-5 months off from weather like this at home.

C’est la vie, thanks for reading, oh and scroll down the page to see our videos from NAMM:

Enjoy!

Ian: Out

Continue reading “NAMM Show 2009: Blogged by Cakewalk”

A Weekend at NAMM: In Pictures

As the Cakewalk team slowly settles back to earth after an epic weekend, we’ll be posting more and more footage from our weekend in Anaheim, California. Here are a few images from the conference that say it all:’Come together’ to educate and create great music!

More photos will be posted to our FlickR account in the coming days.

NAMM 2009 Wrap-Up: Videos & More

Many thanks to all for making our weekend in Anaheim, California at the 2009 NAMM Show a HUGE success. Thanks to those who stopped by our booth and to those who’ve been following along on the blog.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out of NAMM 2009 blog page. Ian has worked very hard to post about his experience from the convention floor with live video footage and booth photos. Check back this week for more NAMM coverage. Here’s a new video, showcasing one of our new cable products(UA1G) and SONAR Home Studio 7.

* Please see our post below to learn more about our cable products! *

The NAMM Show 09': Coverage by Cakewalk

For those of you off to Anaheim Convention Center, stop by Booth #6800 to see Cakewalk live in action. If you’ve chosen to stay at home this year, get everything you need to now right here on the Cakewalk Blog. We’ve made a dedicated NAMM Page featuring posts from the exhibition floor, new product information, and media to keep you informed! Check back throughout the weekend to see it all.

To learn about our new products, view the official press releases here.

Here’s a quick overview of the artists stopping by to say hello at NAMM 2009:

Top TV and Video Game music producer, Shawn Clement, best known for scoring Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman: Vengeance, hosts a live demo on Video scoring.

World-renowned composer, engineer, & producer Craig Anderton will demo his brand new Electronic Guitars  Expansion Pack for Rapture and Rapture LE. Watch preview here.

Legendary turntablists, DJs Faust & Shortee, will be mixing it up at the booth.

Cakewalk’s Brandon Ryan hosts a live panel discussion on “Music For Video Games” featuring these four industry professionals:

Chuck Carr is the music supervisor for SONY Computer Entertainment (PAIN, Gran Turismo 4, and Twisted Metal: Head On)

Doyle W. Donehoo, the video game extraordinaire, is best known for his work in (America’s Army, Savage, Savage II, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II)

Timothy Michael Wynn is an award-winning television, film, and video game music producer and his company, Sonic Fuel, has provided cutting edge music for clients including BMW, Energizer, Gatorade, Mazda, Nike, and others.

Rob King has won numerous awards for his work as sound designer, music composer, and dialogue director (Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam, Reservoir Dogs, Heroes of Might & Magic V, Scarface: The World is Yours, Jade Empire).