CAKEWALK Home Studio 2004 XL ( Windows PC )

Rating:
Summary: Can't blame the software for nothing!
Review: After reading this review, I thought I would like to ask that person: Does this software tend to give him a hard time when he record music? Or does he tends to toy around for nothing and yet complaining that the software didn't do well like that? Or is the computer hardware setup other than the Sound Blaster card are responsible for the problems that Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 XL is having? Before you ever complain, consider the main factors in which Cakewalk is dealing with: what type of computer you have (could be Popular name-brand or custom-built)? Are the chipset on the mothrboard stable enough to handle the audio and MIDI data flowing in and out of the computer via soundcard? What type of drivers you're using for your computer hardware? If that seemed to be the case, then I would suggest that you should make some minor upgrades for your computer that should be stable or make a new computer that is strictly for audio/MIDI recording! This means no installing unwanted application programs that's gonna mess up your work flow. If you know computers and how to build one, fine. If not, then you should buy a good computer that you can use for audio recording/MIDI sequencing. You could check out DAWBOX computers; they're really great at affordable prices. Go to their website at www.DAWBOX.com. As for Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 XL, from my experience, it is a very good program! It has plenty of good features including ReWire support. The only way to use this software, for starters, is that you need to read the manual (both hard copy and on-line) to get the most out of it and start experimenting! Also you need to setup the audio settings for your soundcard and the driver in Cakewalk Home Studio. Once you start using the program a little more, it'll be easier for you at the starting point in which you can record and make good music! You can't blame on this software or any other audio/MIDI software for nothing!! You don't know that this software IS good on others depending on their reference and their computer setup they have. As for me, I have Home Studio 2004 and the latest Home Studio Version Two among other Cakewalk programs in my software collection. This one is very good.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: First off, this is a great package. If you know all the details and you just want to know what someone who has actually used it thinks, I love it, and I recommend it completely. But everyone has different needs, so Home Studio XL isn't the perfect package for everyone.

If you're a total novice and you want to get started learning how to make music on your computer, Home Studio is a good, powerful, diverse package. On the other hand, you will probably look at all the stuff on the screen when you open it for the first time and be absolutely stumped about how to get it to play music. There are some tutorials in the manual and online help that will get you started. Even better, there's a full-featured downloadable demo from cakewalk.com (with save disabled) that will allow you to try before you buy. If you want to see what you're getting into before you spend your money, try the demo.

If you're trying to figure out what you can do in Home Studio, it does just about everything you're likely to need. Build music out of loops, record your own audio tracks, compose your own music, add effects to the tracks -- Home Studio does it. Both Home Studio and XL come with a good general-purpose software synthesizer (Virtual Sound Canvas) that can sound like a whole orchestra of good-quality instruments, and XL comes with the Dyad DXi sampler which allows you to play any sampled sounds in the SoundFont format. XL comes with a good starter library of SoundFonts, and there are literally thousands of SoundFonts available free on the internet. Home Studio also comes with a good library of effects -- reverb, chorus, EQ, delay, etc. -- and XL comes with some nice extras. For people who know their way around recording, the dynamics processing tools (compressor, limiter, etc.) will be really useful, and the SpectraFX channel processor allows you to add several different effects to a number of tracks (with individual settings for each track) without overloading your processor. The other nifty toy is the full version of AmpSim (the basic HomeStudio has AmpSim Lite), which allows you to process your tracks through the sound of an overdriven (or fuzzy, or other effects) ampilfier. If you want to toughen up your tracks, AmpSim is a very nice tool. Both versions of Home Studio also come with DreamStation, a good basic analog-style synth where you can adjust the controls to create a good variety of synthesized sounds. You can also buy a wide variety of third-party synths and FX to plug into Home Studio using DXi.

For me, the Dyad sampler alone justified the extra price, because I have a lot of SoundFonts, and I wanted to be able to create a more versatile array of sounds than a Sound Canvas can generate on its own -- custom drum kits, sounds of specific synthesizers, a different acoustic bass. Still, if the $50 is a deal-breaker, the basic Home Studio already comes with a terrific array of features. If you change your mind, you can always upgrade.

If you are mostly looking at other budget software, it's hard to go wrong with Home Studio. The looping features are at least as good as Acid, and they're as easy to use. And it has all of the other features that give it a lot more power and versatility than Acid. There's only two reasons I can think of to buy anything other than Home Studio: you're a student for whom even $100 is an impossible amount of money to spend, or you want something that has fewer features and an easier learning curve. If either of these is the case Plasma, Music Creator, or Guitar Tracks might get the job done, depending on what set of features you need. However, except for a couple of stray plug-ins, Home Studio has all the features of all of these programs put together, plus some more besides, so you may find yourself upgrading before long.

The one other caveat is that if you work primarily in guitar, I think Cakewalk Guitar Tracks Pro is a better choice. While the AmpSim effect is pretty nice for casual use, if you're doing serious guitar work, ReValver has a lot more power to give you the amp sound you're looking for. You can buy GT Pro and upgrade to the full version of Revalver (Cakewalk has a discount) for about the price of Home Studio XL, and that's probably going to work better for you. If you want the other features of Home Studio but also do guitar work, AmpSim isn't bad, but you may end up buying ReValver as an add-on.

One last category of people that I recommend Home Studio for is people who spent most of their money on an expensive pro-grade package and are looking for an affordable sequencer to use it with. For example, Home Studio is ideal to host Reaktor synthesizers (or any other high-end soft-synths) using DXi. It supports 96/24 audio, high-quality MIDI sequencing, control automation, and everything else you need to get the most out of a really nice softsynth. One warning: if you want to use VST-only synths or effects, you'll have to get a VST adapter (there's a free one with limited power, and several that you can purchase), since Home Studio doesn't support VST natively. Alternatively, if you bought an integrated softstudio like Reason or Project5, but you need a sequencer that can record its own audio and play it back alongside the softstudio tracks, Home Studio will integrate using ReWire and do the job perfectly. However, if you're integrating it with pro-grade packages, you may only want the basic version of Home Studio, because if you have effects and synths that cost you hundreds of dollars, the ones you get with the XL upgrade may not be all that useful.

Rating:
Summary: Don't buy this software.
Review: I, like many others, have a SoundBlaster card. Cakewalk has numerous problems with SoundBlaster. It took me two hours to figure out how to just get some sound out of Cakewalk. I recorded a ten second vocal test but it wouldn't play back, nothing came out. Turns out there's some deeply embedded setting you have to change in the software that you can only figure out after hours of searching through online chat-rooms.

The metronome doesn't work through the speakers, it only comes out of the PC's internal speaker or MIDI. Being a musician I have no need for MIDI.

I'm a 16-year techie who happens to also be a musician. This is one of the worst pieces of software I have used in my entire adult life. If you're a musician who just wants to sit down, press record, play some music, stop, play it back, tweak it a little, add more tracks, etc....sounds simple right? Don't buy this software. You will be screaming at the top of your lungs for a whole day and then putting it on eBay in an attempt to try and recoup the $150 you just spent on it.