MICHAEL HOOVER: I'm sure you'd like to see how this thing works. I'd like to invite Brandon to come up and give us a demo.

BRANDON RYAN: Hello everybody. So it is my great pleasure to be able to be the first one to show you this thing publicly, and I'm just going to load up a project here. You know, what I've come to find out over using this thing for a little while is that it's just really great having all this kind of tight integration with Sonar, and I think you'll find that in using this product that it's probably got really unprecedented control when it comes to working with software. Everything's really right here, and some of the nice things about it is you've got a monitor section right here for headphones and two sets of monitors. You've got controls for EQs and plugins and instruments. You've got obviously control over your mix. It's completely configurable and also having the Fantom synth and then all the I/O you need and everything is just one cable into your computer, so all of this stuff happens really, really cleanly and easily. I just want to give you a quick look. We have a control panel here, are we seeing -- there we go. This allows to customize every aspect of the surface so if for instance you want to change what the buttons do, you can do that and any button can control any aspect of Sonar. There's even footswitches you can plugin that you can also assign to anything you want, two different footswitches, and you can save presets. You can also set up what all the knobs and sliders do. There are remote control mic pres inside that controls the analog gain stage. They can be controlled from the surface. You can save presets for like maybe drums or vocals or what have you. There's also a zero-latency mixer called the Direct Mix so you can use the thing as like a big mixing console outside of -- for your inputs and everything. So, all of that information can be saved as a preset so different people using it can bring up and reconfigure the entire system very, very easily.

So, in working with it, one of really nice things, the control surface has essentially like a dual-ring jog shell, so I can jog around but then I can also forward or rewind very easily but this wheel also has a lot of other capabilities. For instance, just by hitting a modifier key, I can easily zoom with it, I can scroll, and I can job shuttle just very, very simply without having to change any modes. Everything's really just one button away from you, but I can also use this to edit if I want to. So, for instance I've got a loop here. You'll see there's a little loop up there which says Beatscape and maybe I want to roll that loop back to the beginning. I can just hit select, and I get this little cursor that can move around, and I can just go up to something, hit edit, it selects it, grab the endpoint, roll it back, and I've just rolled up the loop, did editing without touching the mouse or the keyboard really, really easily.

[BRANDON RYAN PLAYS A SONAR PROJECT]

So here's a project we got going so far. Another really nice thing is all the metering that's right here on the surface that allows me to see what's playing and what the levels of different things are. What I'd like to do is write a little bit of automation on this Beatscape part, so I'd like to see Beatscape come up; it's one of our new instruments. If I just select the channel that's connected to it and hit command synth rack, it pops right up and I've got control over that instrument right there. And I want to write a little bit of automation on it. I'm just going to click what channel I'm going to be controlling so you can see it, and I'm going to write a little bit of automation. Really, really easy. I just enable automation, and it's all ready to go and I can start moving anything that I want. Now, what you may not be able to see now though is that I've got total control over Beatscape, so these knobs here are controlling things like the bit reduction, cutoff, resonance, and I see all the parameters right in front of me, and to automate I literally just hit play, then we'll find the parts coming up here, and we're just going to write a little bit of automation. You can see it.

[BRANDON RYAN WRITES AUTOMATION ON SONAR PROJECT]

And let's ay then I want to go back and EQ a little bit. I just select go in EQ mode, I can bring up the EQ, make a little adjustment there, go back to the snare, and automatically my reverb pops up. When I'm done with everything, I can just fade those back, and I've got my whole mix there. So, I haven't really touched a keyboard yet, and I've done automation instruments, EQ on a kit and a snare. I know I don't have very long on this demo so last thing I want to show you is just a little bit or recording and automation. There is a Fantom synth built in here as we mentioned, and I'm just going to go up and select it, and so I can actually play it. Okay let's go and just make sure we are on the right channel one second, and playing the Fantom synth.

[BRANDON RYAN AUDITIONS FANTOM SYNTH]

Okay, now since this sort of like VST synth even though it's hardware, you can actually run it through plugins, and in this case I'm running it through the built-in Guitar Rig LE and we just bring it up. So I'm running the Fantom through the synth right now, and I can actually record Audio and MIDI simultaneously since it's a hardware synth if I want to, and we'll just put a little lead.

[BRANDON RYAN RECORDS A LEAD LINE USING THE FANTOM SYNTH]

So you see that it's recording the audio and the MIDI. It doesn't add any latency to the system at all. I can go ahead and just disarm record and go back to the beginning, and it's right there. And lastly, I'd just like to write a little bit of automation so I'm just going to go back to all of the drums and I can just arm automation on my kick, snare, and clap. Those are right in the automation mode. I'm just going to pull them all down to see -- and just pull them all down and I'll write a little bit of click automation you'll see it up on screen.

[BRANDON RYAN RECORDS AUTOMATION PROJECT]

Okay, so see all the automation curves there, just roll forward a little bit, play that back, so it's just dead easy to really do everything from the surface, so you've got great monitoring section, great hands-on control of instruments, effects, plugins, dedicating controls for every aspect of Sonar, totally customizable, great sounding I/O, and it all connects with one cable, Vista compatible, 64-bit capable, and I really think it's an unprecedented control and value for today's musicians, so thank you everybody for coming. I appreciate it. Thanks.