MI Pro

In May, the Association of Professional Recording Services (APRS) chaired a seminar entitled New Revenue Streams for Studios at the AES Show in Amsterdam. The seminar addressed the problem faced by a burgeoning number of recording engineers for whom earning potential has been diminished as industry change has brought about a dwindling demand for their skills.

“Recording technology is no longer the sole preserve of prestigious facilities,” explained Wes Maebe of the APRS board. “The rise of the home and project studio, brought about by the ever-increasing accessibility of equipment, has persuaded many artists to do it for themselves.”

No longer are the big analog desk and two-inch tape machines essential tools of the recording trade. Today, the centrepiece of almost every studio is a computer running a piece of software known as a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). The practical advantages of such pieces of software are so profound that many professional recording engineers have abandoned their consoles in favour of ‘mixing inside the box’.

A DAW loaded with a handful of plugins (software-based instruments, effects and signal processors) can effectively replace an entire studio control room of equipment comprehensively enough to enable artists to record, mix and engineer songs at home and with little further outlay in terms of equipment. Combined with the tumbling prices of home computers and associated home studio hardware, such as audio interfaces and MIDI controllers, the rise of the DAW is responsible for a sizeable chunk of what the APRS calls ‘industry change’. Throw in factors such as myspace, the website where artists can upload and promote music, and you have a strong case for assuming that software will become a prominent tool in the musician’s armoury.

Steinberg Cubase

Probably the best known of all DAWs, Steinberg's Cubase started life as Cubit on the Atari ST in 1989. When the Atari market waned in the early ‘90s, Cubase was re-developed for Windows and Mac with the ability to record audio. Then in 1999, Steinberg introduced the VST platform, which allowed third-party developers to design virtual instrument and effect ‘plugins’ to be used within its software. VST became a standard for other sequencers such as Cakewalk’s Sonar and Ableton’s Live.

The latest incarnation of the program – Cubase 4 – is an advanced music production system representing the cutting edge in DAWs. It features state-of-the-art audio and MIDI recording, editing and mixing functions, a complete set of VST virtual instruments and effects, multi-channel 5.1 surround sound, seamless integration of external audio and MIDI hardware and professional music notation and score printing.
The full professional version of the software retails for £649.99, though consumer-level versions Cubase Studio 4 and Cubase Essential 4 retail for £299.99 and £119.99 respectively, either of which is perfectly adequate for home recording.

Apple Logic Pro

The roots of Apple’s Logic Pro can be traced back to a program called Notator by C-Lab in the mid-’80s. When C-Lab’s chief programmers left they formed Emagic, releasing Notator Logic in 2003. Logic became increasingly sophisticated until in 2002, Apple acquired Emagic.

In 2004 the company released Logic Pro 7, which consolidated over 20 different Emagic programs including all of its instrument and effect plugins, along with three new instruments and nine new effect plugins including Guitar Amp Pro. This took the software’s plugin total to 70 effects and 34 instruments.

The latest version of the software, Logic Pro 8, comes as part of Logic Studio 8 – a professional suite of recording tools. It features a single-window design, simplified setup, multitake recording, new audio editing tools, surround-sound mixing and dongle-free operation. The full version retails at around £280 and a lighter version, Logic Express 8, is available at a retail price of around £130.

Ableton Live

Ableton’s Live is a DAW that has been designed as much around live performance, as it has recording and producing music – a characteristic clearly reflected the interface, which is intended for use on a single screen.

Live is unique in the way it handles audio samples and its standout feature is its ability to time-stretch or ‘warp’ sound files in real time, while being read from the hard disk. Even long recordings with unstable tempos play in perfect sync with the current session tempo or an external clock source. Users can record, loop, effect, resample, and launch sounds without ever stopping the music

Some of the more surprising examples of Live users include The Who’s Pete Townshend, who in a recent interview with EQ magazine commented: “As a composer, I think Ableton Live has to be the software that has given me the most immediate way to write new things on a computer, rather than tape. It allows several additional levels of creativity, including this notion of mine that finding great sounds and loops can inspire new tracks."

The full version of Ableton Live 7 retails for around £280 and comes with a host of effects, plus a basic sampler and drum sequencing instrument. A stripped-down version aimed at the non-professional market – Ableton Live LE – is available at a retail price of around £100.

Sonalksis

Sonalksis was established in 2002, in Liverpool. The four founding members brought with them a great deal of experience from their former roles as R&D engineers for AMS-Neve. The company’s current technical team also includes employees with experience at Focusrite and Sony.

The company was officially launched in July 2003 with the release of the SV-517 EQ, after many months spent developing its state-space modelling technology, around which the SV range of plugins is designed. This technology allows Sonalksis to physically model, rather than just emulate, the way analogue audio is processed.

Sonalksis state-space technology superimposes the internal characteristics of a processor onto the external model, meaning the state-space model provides a detailed physical description of the processor, rather than a standard input-output emulation. All Sonalksis processors utilising state-space technology are fundamentally designed as analogue prototypes, and transformed into digital equivalents with this technology – thus the resulting processor retains the true original analogue character.

The company’s product range includes essentials, such as the SV-315 Mk2 Compressor – awarded 10/10 for both sound and stability by Future Music magazine; Multi-Band Dynamics, such as the DQ1 Dynamic Equaliser; and Creative Elements, including the TBK3 Über Compressor (winner of 2008 Remix magazine Technology Award).

A Sonalksis mastering suite, for mastering engineers, producers and other industry professionals, is set for release later in the summer. All plugins are available as VST, AU, DirectX and RTAS. TDM versions will start to be released later in the year. Retail prices start at around £65 for the Creative Elements.

Propellerhead Reason

Having developed one of the earliest and most successful virtual instruments –
ReBirth – which accurately emulated some of Roland’s most iconic synthesisers, including the TB-303 and TR-909, Propellerhead, founded in 1994, began work on what was to become its flagship program, Reason – a virtual and fully-functional representation of a complete hardware studio.

Reason is designed as an all-encompassing music production solution. Synthesizers, samplers, a drum machine, a REX file loop player, professional mastering tools, mixer, vocoder, effects and a pattern sequencer are all integrated into the program so as to negate the requirement for additional software.

The program’s interface is presented as a vitual studio rack, which can be flipped around with the touch of a button to reveal the connections at the rear. Components are generally patched in by Reason in the most logical way automatically when created, though connections can easily be altered by dragging and dropping the virtual cables.

ReFills are component packages for Reason that can contain patches, samples, REX files and song files. Storing audio samples in a ReFill significantly reduces the size of the files, with no loss of audio quality. This simplifies the exchange of samples and enables third-party manufacturers to produce downloadable sample collections for Reason.
Reason can be used in conjunction with other sequencers, such as Cubase and Live via the ReWire protocol developed by Propellerhead and Steinberg, and retails for around £279.99.

Cakewalk Sonar

When it was developed for Microsoft DOS in 1987, the program now known as Sonar was then called Cakewalk, and the company that created it was Twelve Tone Systems. TTS changed its name to Cakewalk on account of the success of the software and subsequently renamed its flagship product Sonar. In January this year, Roland acquired a majority share in Cakewalk.

Sonar 7 Producer Edition is the latest version of Roland’s DAW. It features powerful creative tools, an open and customizable environment, high-quality instruments and effects and flexible mixing and delivery options. It boasts a powerful Step Sequencer, true linear phase mastering plugins, internal sidechaining, delay compensation for external hardware through an external insert plug-in, pitch to MIDI functionality with Roland V-Vocal 1.5, integrated CD burning, and numerous workflow and delivery enhancements throughout the application.

In its review of Sonar 7 Producer Edition, Musicradar.com concludes: “Trust us when we tell you that it's improvements all round. This new version represents a logical evolution from version six, and the company has done a good job of making a deep program easy to get around. We did encounter a minor graphics anomaly here and there, but had no stability issues at all. Sonar remains – at least in its Producer Edition guise – perhaps the single most comprehensive Windows production suite money can buy.”

A consumer-level version of the software, Sonar 7 Studio Edition, is built upon the same core feature set as Sonar 7 Producer Edition, from recording audio and MIDI, composing with virtual instruments, remixing with loops, mixing with professional effects, to delivery of a polished final track. UK pricing is £349 RRP for Sonar 7 Producer Edition and £219 RRP for Studio Edition.

Sony Acid Pro

Originally published by Sonic Foundry in 1998, Acid Pro was the first software of its kind that could automatically adjust the tempo of sound files dropped onto a track in its sequencer without significant deterioration in sound quality.

Acid Pro’s tempo-matching technology has since been adopted by the majority of its contemporary programs, though many people still consider Sony’s system to be the optimum in this respect. The latest version, Acid Pro 6, has been enhanced with multitrack recording and full MIDI sequencing to transform it from a simple loop-based sequencer into a fully featured professional music workstation.

In his review of the software for Remix magazine, Jason Scott Alexander notes: “Acid Pro 6 provides a variety of methods for laying down audio, including punch in/out and continuous loop record. The new punch function works on the fly across multiple tracks simultaneously and offers fantastic possibilities live and in the studio. For example, I used it to capture random momentary snippets from several synchronized outboard beatboxes as I tweaked them for a live, cut-up feel in the studio. A band’s laptop-toting mixologist could do something similar during a gig by punch-recording the drummer or turntable outputs and constructing a cool new break in real time.”

Acid Pro 6 includes over 1,000 Sony Sound Series loops so users can create music right out of the box, along with a custom edition of Native Instruments’ Kompakt sampler complete with over 120 instruments, full ReWire host and device support, and control surface automation for devices such as the Mackie Control. The software retails for around £199.99.

Spectrasonics

Spectrasonics was founded in 1994 by Los Angeles-based composer and the chief sound designer for Roland, Eric Persing, and his wife Lorey. The company has since been involved in deals with companies such as Roland to create distinctive sounds for synthesisers, expansion boards, and the award-winning V-Drums system.

In 2002, Spectrasonics unveiled three pioneering virtual instruments. The company’s ability to combine powerful software with premium sounds augmented its potential and facilitated a broader market reach for its products. Spectrasonics emerged as a major player in the virtual instrument software business with the Stylus groove module, which rapidly became the best-selling virtual instrument plugin on the market. The company followed this up with the Trilogy bass module, the first virtual bass instrument on the market dedicated to acoustic, electric and synth basses, and then the Atmosphere dream synth module with its multi-textured, ethereal sounds.

As well as scores of hit records, Spectrasonics’ instruments can be heard in several top-selling games, television shows and major motion pictures such as The Bourne Ultimatum, Heroes, Gladiator and Lost. Each instrument has been given top industry awards and rave reviews. The list of high profile users is extensive and includes such luminaries as Peter Gabriel, Herbie Hancock, Gary Numan and Howard Shore.

In 2004, Spectrasonics began to develop its core technology with its own in-house software development team. The first result was the Spectrasonics Advanced Groove Engine. SAGE allows extensive real-time control, creation and manipulation of grooves while retaining optimum sound quality. The award-winning Stylus RMX groove module was the first Spectrasonics program to benefit from this.

The latest version of Stylus RMX – Stylus RMX Xpanded – retails for £240 and features five SAGE Xpander sound libraries, offering the user over 13GB of grooves. The original version, Trilogy and Atmosphere all retail for £169.99 each. Spectrasonics is currently working on its most ambitious project to date, Omnisphere, which it promises will break new ground with innovative features. Omnisphere will ship on September 15th.

Arturia Jupiter 8V

Based on Arturia’s award winning proprietary technology for analog emulation, the Jupiter 8V is modelled on Roland’s legendary polysynth, Jupiter 8, which was manufactured between 1981 and 1984 and used by Prince, Howard Jones, Depeche Mode, Elvis Costello and many others, featuring prominently on Duran Duran’s classic, Rio.

Software emulations often boast a number of advantages over their hardware counterparts and the Jupiter 8V is no exception, adding MIDI functionality
lacking in the original, while resolving the tuning issues prevalent in many of the
early models.

The Jupiter 8V features a unique audio structure with two oscillators per voice (16 in total), two LFOs, two filters and two envelopes. It is loaded with more than 400 high-quality presets, has up to 32 voices of polyphony plus unison mode, keyboard split and layer and can be easily synced to a MIDI controller. It is compatible with all major formats and retails for £169.99. Additional vintage synth emulations by Arturia, such as the Minimoog V are also available.

Native Instruments

Native Instruments (NI) is credited with inventing the concept of the modular software synthesiser.

In 1995, feeling limited by available hardware synthesisers, mixing desk developer and live musician Stephan Schmitt, together with programmer Volker Hinz, developed a virtual instrument known as Generator. Upon Generator’s release in 1997, it turned Native Instruments into a full-scale commercial operation.

But it is for its 2004 innovation – Guitar Rig – for which NI is most recognised. Guitar Rig was a new musical direction for the company, and the software received extensive press coverage and changed expectations of guitar recording.

Now on its third version, Guitar Rig offers four additional emulations of highly sought-after original guitar amplifiers, all based on Native Instruments’ dynamic tube response technology. New amps include the Ultraschall, the Tweed Delight, the Citrus and the Hi-White. A new Matched Cabinet module now also provides a carefully matched combination of cabinet and microphones for every amplifier in the program.

The effects arsenal of Guitar Rig 3 has also been expanded with six new units, including a sublime analog-modeled emulation of a legendary vintage tape delay. This outfits the software with a powerful arsenal of 12 true-to-life amps as well as 44 stomp boxes and effects, providing an immeasurable sonic variety to guitarists and producers.  

Both a Kontrol Edition with foot pedal and a software-only edition of Guitar Rig 3 are available. They retail at £349.00 and £199.99 respectively.

Steinberg......................020 8207 7860
Apple............................0845 500 2500
Abelton.........................01494 462246
Propellerhead................01462 480000
Sony.............................01279 822822
Spectrasonics................01837 55200
Arturia..........................020 8207 7860
Native Instruments........020 8207 7860
Cakewalk......................0870 350 1515
Sonalksis......................0870 766 0303