MIKE PAYNE: Welcome to the Gearwire.Com Crosstalk podcast for Friday, September 29th. I'm your host Mike Payne and I'm joined by the beautiful Britton Wetherald...

BRITTON WETHERALD: Hello.

MIKE PAYNE: ...and the wonderful and amazing Dan Agosto.

DAN AGOSTO: I thought you said I was pretty?

MIKE PAYNE: Well you are pretty.

BRITTON WETHERALD: You're also pretty.

DAN AGOSTO: Oh, thanks.

MIKE PAYNE: I mean look at him. No hat today. He's gorgeous. I can't contain myself. Unfortunately, Drew Krag couldn't make it today, got a call the last minute, and he's not able to join us which is unfortunate. We got Ableton Live and we're going to take a look at that. It's version 6. We got a public beta version. We're going to dig into that and Drew was the Ableton expert but we're going to do our best for the Gearwire audience.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Good luck, folks.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: A few weeks ago, we reviewed the Krakli Cygnus Software Synthesizer and we had some suggestions for the developer on air, and it turns our that the developer, Ian Webster, has actually implemented some of those suggestions and we've got a version of that that we're going to take a look at in a little bit. Also, earlier this week, we had Cakewalk's Tom Beier in to give us a clinic on Cakewalk Sonar number 6, and he did that and we've got some video of that so we're going to shoot him out and he's pretty little self. Everybody's pretty today by the way, you know, just how it goes, the Beautiful Friday.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Isn't it obvious that he didn't go out drinking too late last night? [LAUGHS]

MIKE PAYNE: [LAUGHING] For the first time in quite a long time. A few reminders before we get started. A reminder from last week, Gearwire now has a newsletter. If you want to join and stay tuned on big product releases, industry news, stuff like that, you can sign up on the upper right hand corner of every page on Gearwire.Com. Also, if you want to send us some email, hate mail, love mail, fan mail for Britton...,

BRITTON WETHERALD: You're damn right.

MIKE PAYNE: ...you can send us an email at crosstalk@gearwire.com, and we will get back to you. We're very --

BRITTON WETHERALD: Have you gotten any mail? I mean we keep on --

MIKE PAYNE: Absolutely. Absolutely.

DAN AGOSTO: We have gotten...

BRITTON WETHERALD: What's up?

DAN AGOSTO: ...some mail, and we have gotten back to all of it.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Why am I not like at all privy to this?

DAN AGOSTO: Well I don't know, man. Probably because you're not around. You're only around for like an hour and a half a week in here.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Maybe we should do something about that.

MIKE PAYNE: If you don't like email, you can also join us on the forums at forums.gearwire.com/crosstalk. [OVERLAPPING]

BRITTON WETHERALD: And there's an 800 number flashing at the screen right now.

DAN AGOSTO: They're not mutually exclusive though. You can still like email and still be on the forums, just to clarify.

MIKE PAYNE: No, absolutely. You can do both, if you want. If you really want.

BRITTON WETHERALD: And if you act now, we'll give you a set of these fabulous knives.

MIKE PAYNE: [LOOKS AT BRITTON WITH A ODD STARE THEN LAUGHS] One more thing on a personal note before we get started, I have a Digi 002 at home and I've had it for quite a while, and I want to give a shout out to Digidesign really quick. About three months after I got my Digi 002 years ago, the unit ended up breaking and it wasn't communicating with Pro Tools. I was having a problem, couldn't run it. I had sessions coming up and I was in big trouble. I called Digidesign. They sent out a new unit to me, came to me next day, and then I sent mine back, and I was taken care of. Instantly, all my sessions were fine. Well recently, about two weeks ago, I had a problem. The same thing started happening again with my new Digi 002, and I couldn't figure it out. Well, I ended up contacting Digidesign again. They sent out a part overnight, came to me, and fixed it again. So, I just wanted to give a shout out, so if anybody is considering buying a Digi product versus something else, their service is great. I can attest to that.

DAN AGOSTO: And the next time it breaks, they'll do the same.

MIKE PAYNE: And they'd better. I mean I was out of warranty too. It's pretty cool.

BRITTON WETHERALD: They do have, in my opinion, the best support ever.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Because I don't know. From where I used to, you know, be a part of their little club of the 210 certified guys for operators and what not, and honestly --

MIKE PAYNE: So you know about hot keys.

BRITTON WETHERALD: But not only the hot keys but I -- you know you know like everything about -- you have to know everything about this system. You know what I mean? In like they make you take a test. It's like you only have three tries too like it's a really comprehensive test on everything about Pro Tools. You only get three tries at it.

MIKE PAYNE: Wow.

DAN AGOSTO: But one thing that I'd like to bring up with this is that I use MOTU stuff.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: In my studio and RME stuff at my studio, and I've had a few things happens to my MOTU like some of the lights go out but they still work.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: So, while MOTU may not have as good service as Digidesign, I don't think, you know, we're not hearing about tons of people having to deal with that sort of thing.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: And when you buy a product, why would you want to even have to deal with service [OVERLAPPING]?

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah, but the thing with Digi -- You don't hear many Digidesign users do that.

DAN AGOSTO: I've heard just about every person I hear about who uses the 002 like has this problem with the power supply.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Oh all right. I have that [INDISCERNIBLE]

DAN AGOSTO: So it's a defective product basically...,

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: ...but they've done a good job at keeping people happy but --

BRITTON WETHERALD: I've never had a problem with my Mbox though, which is their other LE product. They only have two. [LAUGHS]

MIKE PAYNE: It's got to but it's got -- the problem with the Digi 002 is the power harness issue.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah, yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: ...and the Mbox doesn't use the same system.

BRITTON WETHERALD: And their TDM systems, I can attest to, are way more stable than anything MOTU's ever made.

DAN AGOSTO: Well, I don't know. I've [OVERLAPPING]

BRITTON WETHERALD: I know [OVERLAPPING]

MIKE PAYNE: Dan's got a good point. Dan's got a good point about reliability, but I wanted to give a personal shout out to Digidesign for taking care of me and wanted to send that to the Gearwire audience because that is kind of a big deal. So --

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Round 1, fight. Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: I'm choosing Ryu. I call Ryu.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Okay.

MIKE PAYNE: He gets to be Guile. Sonic boom. [LAUGHS] All right. Anyway...,

BRITTON WETHERALD: Just --

MIKE PAYNE: ...moving on to the first topic this week, some sad news that actually just came up about an hour or two ago. Capitol Records, the building in LA, has been sold to a New York commercial property firm. Capitol Records is expected to stay in the building on a long-term lease, but the building also houses Capitol Records' famed recording studio with greats such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, The Beach Boys, many others have recorded there since. It was founded in 1956.

BRITTON WETHERALD: [SPEAKING IN AWE] Oh. Ah.

MIKE PAYNE: So that's a big deal.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Dude --

MIKE PAYNE: The New York commercial property firm is expected to demolish the building and rebuild the statue of our marshmallow fairy princess designed by Frank Gary. Okay, they're not really going to demolish it but still --

BRITTON WETHERALD: No, no. Like this really makes me -- I signed a petition. I lived in North Hollywood, of course, and that's like right around the corner, worked first in competing studios but the Capitol Records building is like this thing that is essentially a landmark. It's like on the same level of like going to The Bean but better, in Chicago.

DAN AGOSTO: The Bean.

BRITTON WETHERALD: You know, it's just this thing that symbolizes like for me it symbolized like my hopes and dreams of moving to LA and like...

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

BRITTON WETHERALD: ...doing some records, stuff, and what not, and it was totally like this -- it's this, you know, symbol of like you can do what you want to do out there and it's okay, and so when they threatened to tear it down and build condos like that was the big thing like they threatened to tear it down and build condos. I don't know if you guys knew about that but it was just horrendous. I'm kind of I'm hurt.

MIKE PAYNE: Well, who knows? I didn't find any detail about what they're going to do. It could be a simple as, you know, just redesigning the interior and building offices within that or it could be as extreme as knocking it down.

DAN AGOSTO: Is the studio going or [INDISCERNIBLE]?

MIKE PAYNE: All the detail that I had said that Columbia is -- I'm sorry -- Capitol is staying put, but they're on a long-term lease and I didn't say anything about their studio; I just talked about there Capitol as a whole, so I don't have much detail on that and I'm keeping my fingers crossed because that is kind of the end of an era, you know.

BRITTON WETHERALD: That is a very important building, man, you know.

DAN AGOSTO: Sure.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

BRITTON WETHERALD: I think they got great gear there, so if you've got cash and you want to support them, go record there. Yeah. [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: All right. Well, that's pretty sad but we'll move on into some happier details in just a minute. As we mentioned, Ableton 6 Public Beta, we got our hands on one of those and we're going to take a look at that, and we've got our own Britton Wetherald who's going to man the station here, and we're going to take a listen. So let's check that out. Britton, what have you got for us?

BRITTON WETHERALD: I got a series of drum loops that are probably really - and some nice, cheesy guitars.

MIKE PAYNE: Sweet.

BRITTON WETHERALD: And we're just going to kind of go through and mess around with it and --

MIKE PAYNE: Give me Iggy Pop meets Bell Biv DeVoe.

DAN AGOSTO: Are we set up for that?

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYS BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

MIKE PAYNE: We should always be set up for that.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

DAN AGOSTO: I think that guitar needs some echo. I think it needs some echo.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Some echo? All right. Let me find it. [LAUGHS]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So you're in the loop browser.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. Nice

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

DAN AGOSTO: Now, I'm not too familiar with previous versions of Ableton but does it look exactly -- like much like this?

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. It looks basically the same, you know. It's not much different than the other one, and it really operates on the same principles. I guess maybe they've gotten better with how the operate like seamlessly and the way everything's kind of moving around and what not.

MIKE PAYNE: Is there a track window as well as opposed to a [OVERLAPPING].

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. There is.

MIKE PAYNE: A big [INDISCERNIBLE]

BRITTON WETHERALD: There definitely is.

MIKE PAYNE: Maybe gotcha you know.

DAN AGOSTO: So how do we bring? Do you know how we bring stuff into there.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Actually, if you wanted to, instead of just operating out of these loops, you just drop files.

DAN AGOSTO: Oh I see.

BRITTON WETHERALD: You know, so like --

DAN AGOSTO: So this is -- this would be like the mode where you, that you're being if...

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

DAN AGOSTO: ...you're actually building a sequence. The other one --

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: Because I know they call it a Live Set, so this seems kind of like the live mode whereas the other one would be like the beat creation mode.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. Well kind of. We'll mess around with that one for a second right now since you kind of see this thing. We'll get back to this window in a second. We are going into the mix window now.

DAN AGOSTO: This is like the sequence window?

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. It's kind of like the sequence window.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

BRITTON WETHERALD: So we just drag and drop these loops, and then we're supposed to be able to play them...

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

...and notice how that sometimes they know what's going on.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

And then this is New Jack Swing.

MIKE PAYNE: It totally is.

BRITTON WETHERALD: And then you can drag some more stuff in it.

DAN AGOSTO: Oh sweet.

BRITTON WETHERALD: [SINGING] Ayesha.

DAN AGOSTO: So yeah, when I was playing with this, I was trying to figure out like how we could like skip measures because when you're in the other window, it just loops.

BRITTON WETHERALD: It just plays it continuously.

DAN AGOSTO: It just stupidly loops.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. I mean so like.

DAN AGOSTO: So that sequence window is mandatory I would say.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah, yeah. The thing is that for some reason track 1 right now is having some issues with playing as a sequence so like if we were to move on to 2, we'll just get rid of this stuff.

MIKE PAYNE: Where do we get this public beta?

DAN AGOSTO: Well, you can download it, but by the time this podcast gets out, it's going to be expired. It's not going to be available anymore.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: The 30th is the last day.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: If somehow you find a download on some bit torrent of our podcast before it's released, check it out.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

DAN AGOSTO: So I heard that one of the new features is like the effects rack where it's sort of -- we discussed it before -- kind of like [PH] Kore...

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: ...where it contains a bunch of plugins in one, and it has a bunch of presets so if we want to take a look at that.

MIKE PAYNE: We can. Sure.

DAN AGOSTO: What kind of track do we have going?

BRITTON WETHERALD: I just put up a series of loops just to kind of -- I know it will be kind of repetitive but, you know, just to kind of show what's going on.

DAN AGOSTO: Well yeah, sure. The loop.

BRITTON WETHERALD: And there's these presets like here's Beat Repeat. We're going to put a chopping block right here. Why not? And we just drag it in, you know, you can do this in real time.

DAN AGOSTO: Is this one of the rack things?

BRITTON WETHERALD: It is. This is kind of the --

DAN AGOSTO: Oh, it's a -- Oh actually, it's a bunch of -- so there's all the effects.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. And we're just going to -- we're going to start with Beat Repeat, so it kind of gives like that --

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BRITTON WETHERALD: And you can like, you know.

DAN AGOSTO: That's cool.

BRITTON WETHERALD: So hey, you know, wow, cool, you know, and then I really want an auto filter. That's what I want, you know, and instead of doing Beat Repeat, I'm going to go to my auto filter section, and I'm just going to -- Hey, I don't want to deal with what I'm going to do so let's just do a notch up. Just drag it in, and then you can quantize it to a certain beat part, and then -- Wow.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

...and maybe I want a filter delay. Nah. I'll do a resonator. Here's the [PH] Berlin resonator

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING BACK PROJECT IN ABLETON LIVE 6 PUBLIC BETA]

DAN AGOSTO: It seems to sound like a vocoder.

MIKE PAYNE: : [OVERLAPPING] the effects rack.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. You just drag it in, and it's that I'm like, oh man I'm -- I want more of like that, and I'm bored.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

BRITTON WETHERALD: And let's do a redux for a second I guess, and down to two-six I guess. I'll put it right here actually, and here and we're going to down-sample it.

DAN AGOSTO: Did you check out the effects rack though? Scroll up over here.

BRITTON WETHERALD: This is the audio effects rack.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That's what I was --

BRITTON WETHERALD: Well this is the actual rack right here because look it'll scroll.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah that's the rack but it actually has like --

BRITTON WETHERALD: Different.

DAN AGOSTO: If you take the audio effects rack and put it in there, it'll put it in an empty rack.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah, so like we could just.

DAN AGOSTO: So now you can just drag more...

BRITTON WETHERALD: Effects right there.

DAN AGOSTO: Effects into there.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Which is even cooler [INDISCERNIBLE]

DAN AGOSTO: And then you could save it as a preset under your audio effects rack, so you threw an auto filter in there. Let's throw in Eruption in there.

BRITTON WETHERALD: All right cool. I know -- So we did that auto filter, you know, and I want it to sound kind of -- nah.

DAN AGOSTO: But isn't there like -- I know there's like a vinyl sound.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Well, let's phase it with an acoustic cascade.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So now you can grab that rack --

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: See the --

BRITTON WETHERALD: Oh, we’re going to throw this one in there next to this guy.

DAN AGOSTO: You can grab that guy, and if you scroll back up on here --

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. We're grabbing. We're grabbing the rack.

DAN AGOSTO: If grab the rack, you can bring it up to the line devices. Scroll up over here, and then under audio effects rack, grab the head of the rack, and now you can stick it up there, and now we have a brand new audio effects rack.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Nice, and that's kickass.

DAN AGOSTO: So yeah. That's -- I think that probably one of the cooler new features of Live.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Very cool, and then you just go and switch in real time until you're clocking at a sweet level.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Okay, so there. Well, sweet.

MIKE PAYNE: Well, that's a nice update on Ableton Live 6. The effects rack is a very, very cool feature, very cool functionality. Unfortunately, if Drew Krag had been around, we could have done a little bit more detail about that, but that's a good quick glance. The full version of that comes out -- do we have an idea on that?

DAN AGOSTO: It was slated -- No.

MIKE PAYNE: No. Okay. All right, so that's Ableton Live 6 Public Beta and we took a look at that. It's pretty cool. That audio effects rack has some pretty cool functionality. We miss Drew Krag who could have shown us a little bit of a better tour, but at least we give you a quick glance of what's coming in Ableton Live 6.

DAN AGOSTO: And we got some cool sounds coming out right now.

MIKE PAYNE: Absolutely with our own Britton Wetherald.

DAN AGOSTO: And this is the first time Britton's messing with Live 6 and...

MIKE PAYNE: And he's doing a pretty good job.

DAN AGOSTO: ...doing all right. Like that's kind of what I noticed about it. The first time you just sit down, it just has a wow factor to it.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice. Nice. Well, all right. So next we've got the Krakli Cygnus, which has been updated. A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at the Krakli Cygnus for the first time on air, demoing that, and we had some suggestions for the developer, and sure enough, the developer implemented some of those suggestions, and we've got a new version of that and we're going to take a look at it right now. Let's check it out.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: All right, due to the magic of podcasting, Mike and myself have switched places almost instantly.

MIKE PAYNE: Yes.

DAN AGOSTO: So basically, as far as the new version of the Cygnus goes, last time we tried it out, I mentioned that it would be cool if there was some sort of SoundFont oscillator.

MIKE PAYNE: And it would.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, and Ian got back to us after seeing the podcast and said that he was thinking about the idea, and then he did this one better actually added three SoundFont oscillators. So, if we take a look at the Cygnus, this is the classic too, I can actually show you what it looks like. So this is the original Cygnus, and our version is actually right here, and as you can see he added our little logo there -- Thanks Ian -- and so we have each oscillator here just like regular. We have three oscillators, and on each of the oscillators, we have a section here for loading SoundFonts. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in here, and these are SoundFonts I got off of the microKORG. I got these myself using a program called SampleRobot. So, what we have here is what's called SF Mix, and this mix is between each oscillator, in this case oscillator 1 and the SoundFont, so what I can do is just crossfade into the -- It's called a wow, so you can kind of hear that.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

MIKE PAYNE: Wow.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: So that's just oscillator 1 and I can mix back into the wow, and it's going through all -- All of these are going through all the effects of the Cygnus so I can control the amount of chorus and reverb as well.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: So, it's -- Actually, it's also a free soundfont but which I think is secretly cool.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. No doubt.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: And I can tune the SoundFont, control the level, so now that's without the SoundFont. Back up, it's tuned up an octave, tuned down an octave.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: So that's -- I'm just going to start loading some more SoundFonts, and I know I have one font that I got from the Moog Voyager.

MIKE PAYNE: Sweet.

DAN AGOSTO: There it is.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: It's just sort of a sine loop there. Try and loop the...

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: ...this thing can go down an octave, go wow up an octave.

MIKE PAYNE: Sweet.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: I think this is super cool. Let's check out some more patches. What happens when you change patches, that's something that I wondered how Ian would deal with it, and actually that was exactly the same way as I would. The SoundFont stayed loaded but all of the SoundFont mix knobs are defaulted to zero.

MIKE PAYNE: Oh yeah. Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: So we had just the plain sound, so if we want to hear some more of that, so this is just a preset and of course we can just mix in our SoundFonts as much as we want.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: All the other settings stay the same for the SoundFont, at least the tune does and the level seems to go down, so it's an interesting way to bring samples that you've created or downloaded on the Internet in the SF2 format into like this space synth.

MIKE PAYNE: I'm absolutely impressed.

DAN AGOSTO: What do you think, Britton?

BRITTON WETHERALD: Really airy.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That's one of the things about this. It's got the harmonic oscillator over here. Okay, now we're just hearing the SoundFonts. Turn this up a little bit. Unfortunately, the SoundFonts that I have are a little quiet.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: So now it's just acting as a SoundFont player.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: Go back to -- yeah, this third oscillator is like an airy oscillator.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's a lot.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: Let's go to another preset

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: [LAUGHS] So we got our beat from Ableton Live back up.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: I'm going to load in a different SoundFont.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: So, now we got the sequencing going on.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

DAN AGOSTO: [LAUGHS] So now we got Live 6 Beta and Krakli Cygnus SoundFont player.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

MIKE PAYNE: Is Krakli Cygnus a free synthesizer.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, and so is this new version, and we will be hosting this version for download.

MIKE PAYNE: Perfect

[BRITTON WETHERALD PLAYING THE UPDATED KRAKLI CYGNUS]

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. We have one more. All right, so that's the Krakli Cygnus, and as Dan has mentioned we're going to have that available for download at Gearwire.Com, so if you want to check out the Crosstalk page on that, you should get some more detailed about that. Also, you can check out the Cygnus itself and download that for your own.

DAN AGOSTO: Nice space stream by the way, Britton.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah, absolutely.

BRITTON WETHERALD: You liked that guys?

MIKE PAYNE: Mmm hmm. Let's record it.

BRITTON WETHERALD: [INDISCERNIBLE]

MIKE PAYNE: Let's put it out.

BRITTON WETHERALD: I want to start a thing called 8-bit gospel.

MIKE PAYNE: See, we can do that. We can do that. Can I sing?

BRITTON WETHERALD: Vocoded. Everything has to be vocoded. It's like vocoded choruses, you know, like an ensemble of like...

MIKE PAYNE: Sweet.

BRITTON WETHERALD: ...you know, Nina Simone meets [EXPLETIVE] Kraftwerk.

DAN AGOSTO: I'll play bass through it.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Can you bleep that out.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. Bleep! Nina Simone?

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: We'll bleep it out, that little curse you had. All right, so one last thing to take a look at. Cakewalk was in the Gearwire crib earlier this week showing off their proverbial jewels in Cakewalk Sonar 6. Let's check out some of that video of the lovely Tom Beier.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. This is going to be sort of a short demo on AudioSnap.

MIKE PAYNE: Mmm hmm.

DAN AGOSTO: And we can talk about some of the other features since we can hear a nice song demoing all of them. Let's check out this one video.

MIKE PAYNE: All right. Let's do it.

[CAKEWALK AUDIOSNAP DEMO VIDEO START]

TOM BEIER: In this example, we're going to show you how you can use AudioSnap once again to do a very simple thing, and that would be to tighten up a tambourine track against, you know, the rest of the band, and that's something you'll run into now and then. You'll lay down a track and it's not tight enough. Well, we can make it tight now with -- very easily. So let's go ahead and listen to what we have going first.

[TOM BEIER PLAYS A CAKEWALK PROJECT]

Let's bring in the tambourine.

[TOM BEIER UN-MUTES THE TAMBOURINE TRACK IN CAKEWALK PROJECT, PUTS DRUMS AND TAMBOURINE TRACKS ON SOLO]

Now listen to that against the drums.

[TOM BEIER CONTINUES PLAYBACK OF TAMBOURINE AND DRUM TRACKS]

Not too band but, you know, I mean since you can nowadays, why not try simply quantizing this to 16th notes, one-e-and-uh, two-e-and-uh, three-e-and-uh, four-e-and-uh.

[TOM BEIER APPLIES QUANTIZATION TO TAMBOURINE TRACK]

So now it's a lot tighter so let's go ahead and listen to it with the rest of the band.

[TOM BEIER PLAYS A CAKEWALK PROJECT WITH QUANTIZED TAMBOURINE TRACK]

Mix it back. So again, to repeat the procedure was simple as turning on AudioSnap, hitting quantize, and selecting your resolution. This particular feature could also be used on other percussion instruments if you want to lock them tighter into the drums or the main click or another band member.

[CAKEWALK AUDIOSNAP DEMO VIDEO END]

MIKE PAYNE: So that's Snap by Cakewalk Sonar.

DAN AGOSTO: The AudioSnap.

MIKE PAYNE: That's AudioSnap.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Snap!

MIKE PAYNE: A new feature in Cakewalk Sonar 6, and that is Mr. Personality himself, Tom Beier demoing that instrument.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. Well, I think AudioSnap is pretty damn cool.

MIKE PAYNE: It is.

DAN AGOSTO: It comes with Sonar 6 Producer Edition only.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: And what's the Pro Tools analog to this? Is it Drum Replacer or Sound Replacer?

MIKE PAYNE: Beat Detective.

DAN AGOSTO: Beat Detective.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Beat Detective is better [LAUGHS].

DAN AGOSTO: I'd have to say AudioSnap, it can do more stuff. Sit down, man. Sit down! Just sit down!

MIKE PAYNE: See, but you're a Cakewalk guy.

DAN AGOSTO: Well, it can do more stuff. Okay, can Beat Detective create MIDI?

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. It can actually.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay, can it -- does it? Well, okay I'm obviously uneducated on that. Does it?

BRITTON WETHERALD: It creates the song tempo maps too.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay It creates its own tempo maps. All right, so they're basically the same thing.

BRITTON WETHERALD: [LAUGHS]

MIKE PAYNE: But it's a cool feature that Cakewalk is having it anyway.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah, yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: I think it's really cool.

BRITTON WETHERALD: I think it's nice.

DAN AGOSTO: Are you like? -- I think the really cool thing is that you can take, you know, the tempo map from any source and then apply that to...

BRITTON WETHERALD: You can do that...

DAN AGOSTO: ...another one.

BRITTON WETHERALD: ...with the detective too.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. I mean it's really awesome.

BRITTON WETHERALD: But it'll stretch the audio.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, it'll stretch the audio. Yeah, so basically it's Sonar catching up to Pro Tools. I'm glad that they did that.

MIKE PAYNE: No. Absolutely

BRITTON WETHERALD: No. It’s nice.

DAN AGOSTO: And there's a lot of other features on there including ACT, which is like a controller technology where basically any controller automatically becomes -- you don't need to worry about having a universal thing like something that is premapped or something you have to map yourself. Basically, you go in and it opens this one window and you click on one of the buttons there, move it, and then you're ready to go, and it automatically saves it in like a template.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice, nice.

DAN AGOSTO: And then as soon as you change to another window, like another softsynth or something like that, it changes to that automatically.

BRITTON WETHERALD: That's nice. I think that's somewhere where Sonar is ahead of the pack.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I would have to agree. It does seem. I mean we were unable to get a super good look at it but Tom Beier definitely told us he's going to get us an NFR of it, so we'll be able to take a look into it, and hopefully have like a lab video or some sort of insider review or tutorial on or something like that.

MIKE PAYNE: Great. Well thank yo, Tom.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah. Thanks, Tom.

DAN AGOSTO: And also, on a side note, we had a clinic that night where a lot of Chicago-area Sonar users came in, and [OVERLAPPING]

MIKE PAYNE: [OVERLAPPING] with Tom?

BRITTON WETHERALD: [LAUGHS]

DAN AGOSTO: Actually, way more than five, about 30 more than five, and --

MIKE PAYNE: That would be 35.

DAN AGOSTO: That is 35. I've been playing this game, Brain Age, on the DS and my math is great, man, so yeah 35 people came in, I'd like to thank all those 35 people. You're on our newsletter now if you've signed up for it, and hopefully to be able to come in again.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Absolutely. That was great.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: So, any other comments about Cakewalk Sonar 6 before we move on?

DAN AGOSTO: Uh, that's it for now.

MIKE PAYNE: All right, and that's actually it for the whole podcast. One other thing we actually just brainstormed down we'd like to announce to you. We're going to have a contest with the Gearwire audience. It's basically make Britton dress up as a bunny, so we're going to put a PayPal account up on the Gearwire Crosstalk home page, and if you want to throw some money towards buying Britton a bunny outfit, he will have to wear that bunny outfit on the Podcast.

BRITTON WETHERALD: [INDISCERNIBLE MUMBLING]

MIKE PAYNE: So we'll find an inexpensive bunny outfit, and then you can chip in a dollar or two, and we'll buy it for Britton, and Dan and I will dress as something a little more distinguished while Britton will have to wear a bunny outfit if you guys chip in and make him do that.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Even with the head. Even the papier-mache head like I'll have to wear that too.

MIKE PAYNE: There you go.

DAN AGOSTO: How are you going to use the mic?

BRITTON WETHERALD: Well, I won't be able. I'll just --

DAN AGOSTO: You'll just be sitting there.

BRITTON WETHERALD: Yeah, I'll just be sitting there going [GESTURING]

DAN AGOSTO: "I think it's some...."

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

BRITTON WETHERALD: I'll be writing stuff on the net.

MIKE PAYNE: We'll get the sampler back out. "I think it sucks." "Will it come in hot pink?" [OVERLAPPING]

BRITTON WETHERALD: I'll play my own samples. I'll be like [PLAYS SYNTH]

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: All right. Thanks everybody for listening and watching the Gearwire.Com Crosstalk podcast for Friday, September 29th. Again, I'm your host Mike Payne, and this is Britton Wetherald, this is Dan Agosto...,

DAN AGOSTO: [COUGHS]

MIKE PAYNE: ...and all three of us say thank you for watching. Join us again next week. You all rock, have a wonderful week. Bye Bye.