Cakewalk today unveiled official details of the latest iteration of their popular music creation and recording suite: SONAR version 6. According to the company, SONAR 6 debuts an innovative feature called Active Controller Technology (ACT) and other features to “tighten up your entire band with the revolutionary new AudioSnap.” Also, the new VC-64 Vintage Channel and SONAR's industry-leading 64-bit double precision mix engine can help your mix sound better than ever.

New Features of SONAR 6 include:
Active Controller Technology (ACT): dynamically re-maps effect, mix and instrument parameters to hardware controllers, and:

AudioSnapâ„¢ Multitrack Audio Quantize

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 Radiusâ„¢, Percussion Mode, more

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

Session Drummerâ„¢ 2 instrument with professional multi-sampled drum kits, hundreds of live-recorded, vital patterns

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

Console view redesigned for ergonomic mixing

Modular 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, more

Mouse wheel support for parameter control and zoom

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

Friendly driver naming (user-customizable audio hardware port names)

SONAR 6 Producer Edition Exclusives
SONAR 6 comes in two versions, Producer Edition and Studio Edition. SONAR 6 Producer Edition contains the following exclusive features.

AudioSnapâ„¢ Multitrack Audio Quantize

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

Session Drummerâ„¢ 2 instrument with professional multi-sampled drum kits, hundreds of usable drum patterns

Roland® V-Vocal™ VariPhrase Processor

Surround mixing in over 30 formats

SurroundBridgeâ„¢ technology for using stereo VST effects in SONAR's surround environment

Sonitus Surround Compressor

POW-r dithering

PSYN IIâ„¢ Subtractive Synthesizer

Pentagonâ„¢ I Analog Modeling Synth

RXPâ„¢ groove instrument with REX file support

Perfect Spaceâ„¢ Convolution Reverb

Lexicon® Pantheon™ Reverb

More information: www.cakewalk.com

iZotope Radius™
One of the more notable additions to the suite is iZotope’s Radius, which is a “natural time and pitch control” application. According to iZotope, “Radius is designed for completely transparent operation on a wide variety of source material with nearly automatic operation. It is well suited for both industrial studio applications and home studio use.”

Using an advanced hybrid method, iZotope Radius is able to preserve transients and sustained material at the same time. For example, when stretching a recording with sustained brass and pizzicato strings, iZotope Radius preserves continuity of the brass notes as well as the timing and attack characteristics of the strings.

New Cakewalk Website
As part of the official announcement of Sonar 6 online, Cakewalk also redesigned their website to be more clean, modern, easy to use.

About Cakewalk
Founded in 1987 and based in Boston, Massachusetts, Cakewalk calls themselved “the industry-leading provider of software for creating music and sound on the desktop. Our award-winning products are used by more than 1,000,000 professional and home users around the world, for applications including music CD creation, post-production editing, film and video soundtracks, and the integration of sound with computer games, multimedia applications, and the Internet.” Cakewalk is a unit of Twelve Tone Systems, Inc.

HANDS ON REVIEW: Look for an exclusive MuseWire™ hands-on review of SONAR 6 once the product is released and shipping and we have it in hand (the author of this article has been using Sonar since version 2).

[tags]Sonar 6, Cakewalk Sonar, music software, music DAW, iZotope Radius[/tags