Monthly Archives: October 2008

Sonar 8 PE Review

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Sonar 8 was released a few weeks ago.  Being in the middle of a project at the time, I’ve had a good week or so to check out some of the new features.

Here are some things I like:

SONAR Performance Optimizations
How can you not like this?  I haven’t had a huge problem with projects in the past, but do notice a significant decrease in resource usage in this new version, all the same.

Dedicated Instrument Track
This is more of an organizational preference than anything else- but I do find it a bit cleaner than the old way of grouping a midi and synth track within a track folder.  Another good thing is that you can switch back and forth whenever you want and apply the feature to only those instruments you want.  Very flexible!

Dimension Pro
Very similar to Dimension LE that shipped along with Sonar 7 PE- the most noticible thing for me so far is that we get over 7 gigs of material with the pro version.  Wow.

Z3TA+ / Integrated Step Sequencer
Two tools from the previous version I feel compelled to mention here since they are just so great.  Z3TA+ is a waveshaping synthesizer with a wide array of options for generating some really, really incredible sounds.  The step sequencer provides an alternate midi pattern generation environment from the traditional piano roll.

TL-64 Tube Leveler / TS 64 Transient Shaper
Any tools that give me more control over the sound are always welcome.

TL-64 provides intuitive controls to determine the level and character of analog tube saturation, from subtle “warming” to hard-driving saturation. The TL-64 plug-in features a unique selectable Dynamic Response Filter control that when engaged employs a dynamic (versus static) tube model algorithm.

Here are things I could care less about:

Beatscape loop performance instrument / Loop Explorer 2.0
I don’t work with loops… so this is pretty useless as advertised.  However, as with many other tools, it may be useful when applied in some other way?

Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 LE
Similar to above… I wonder what running some vox through this would do…

I’ve been using this software since version 3 and normally upgrade every other version.  I obviously have broken that tradition with the purchase of Sonar 8- the overall improvements on an already solid piece of software were too good to pass up for another year.  There are lots and lots of other things to mention, but these are some initial observations after a week of use.

More nformation can be found at http://cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/.

Speaking on AIR at the MAX FITC Unconference

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The topic of my presentation will be on the DUVAGA Projection System [VPS] and will cover why AIR was chosen as the platform for this application, the development period, and usage.  I hope to include slides, code overview, and demos.  It’ll be a fast and furious 30 minutes!

Anyone interested in an overview of Flex-based AIR interacting with hardware systems in an intelligent way should attend.  Other topics touched on with include Flash Media Server and media distribution systems.

FITC Unconference Website

Using AIR to Deliver Media Through Multi-Screen Projection Systems

Flash is a great platform for building multimedia-rich applications and the AIR runtime lends a great deal of extra power to make such media presentation systems truly intelligent. We’ll have a look at how developers at the University of Denver have developed AIR applications that push image/audio/video streams via FMS to classroom projection systems. Platform (and hardware) independent media streaming goodness!

Adobe Not to Blame for Amazon Exploit

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I had heard about a security concern over Amazon’s video streaming service a few days ago with a lot of people (including some at Amazon) blaming Adobe for the security hole.  Apparently, there is an exploit in their (Amazons) player that allows stream-ripping a full video.

I’ve read the documentation on FMS3 security features and have used quite a few myself.  Knowing these features, I could not understand how the Flash Player security model could be at fault- it seemed much more likely that the developers simply didn’t cover all their bases.

Whenever I read something like this, I am naturally concerned as I’ve thrown quite a bit of support behind FMS over the years.

Well, it seems that my hunch was correct and Adobe is not to blame.  People are far too quick to pass judgement on things like this, whether it’s Adobe, Microsoft, Apple or some other giant corporation, everyone jumps on the bandwagon when a story like this breaks.  Give it a rest…