More on DAW's...

     This is a continuation, or update, to the post I made over a year ago, regarding various DAW's I use as a composer/sound designer.
     I ended my previous post with a brief mention of Cakewalk SONAR X2 Producer as one of the tools I use. At that time Cakewalk was primarily owned by Roland Corp, who was very good about updating Sonar based on feedback from it's user base. Just prior to my post, and unknown to me, Greg Hendershott, the CEO and founding developer of Cakewalk had announced he was resigning. More recently, Gibson Brands had acquired Cakewalk from Roland. I'm saddened on several levels because of this acquisition, first because Gibson Brands seemed to abandon certain products they acquired, namely Opcode Vision software, the Oberheim Synthesizer product line, and Music Quest software products, to name a few. They have also taken over much of Tascam products and plan to market SONAR as part of the Tascam Professional product line. Tascam, as many may recall, had already abandoned the GigaSampler/GigaStudio line and sold it off to Garritan, who likewise seems to have abandoned what was once considered by many to be the de facto standard in Software Sampler libraries(I see no mention of the Giga product on their web site). To add to my frustration, I recently received an email from Cakewalk asking that qualified people send in applications for the position of Lead Software Developer (what happened to the previous one?). I had just upgraded from Sonar X2 Producer to Sonar X3 Producer, which I now believe might be the last upgrade from the original software team. I hope I'm wrong on this because it seemed Cakewalk was headed in a good direction with their development of Sonar.
     Enough ranting, I truly hope the Cakewalk product line continues to grow, and that whoever owns it will treat it as a beloved member of their family. Now onto more pleasant things.
     As I had mentioned in my previous post, the DAW I use the most is Reaper, primarily because it is very intuitive for me, very stable, very powerful, very frequently updated, by the development team, and has a very knowledgeable user base. I know, that's a lot of very's. In addition to it’s very high sound quality, the included plugins are among the best I’ve used on any platform.
     Another well developed DAW platform I'm using is Samplitude from Magix. I'm using version 11.5 of Samplitude Producer, which is not their flagship product, but extremely powerful and has a visually elegant interface that I find appealing and is nearly as intuitive to me as Reaper. Samplitude feels uncluttered and visually accessible.

Samplitude Producer 11,5

     A couple of popular products I have not mentioned are Ableton and Reason, which are very powerful and have a well established user base. Virtually all of my work is based on linear tracking rather than clips or loops. The aforementioned products tend to excel at pattern based recording and sequencing rather than tape recorder style tracking. Included in that category is Acid Pro from Sony, which I do own but rarely use.
     Well that’s a glimpse at some of the products I use, my next post will probably deal with a particular project, the tools I’m using, and the process that’s involved. Thanks for reading, see you soon.  BC