When the people who brought the world Cubase and the VST plug-in architecture roll out a new $99.00 DAW/studio product with some Ableton Live-ish features, you can expect some innovations. In the case of Sequel, these are found mainly in the user interface, which has been engineered for ease of use at seemingly little power cost. Find out where its strengths lie with today's new 45-day trial version announcement.

A few caveats: Sequel Trial version projects are not loadable in the main payware product without the paying user downloading and installing special installers for Mac ad PC platforms. Also, the free trial date scheme is as follows: in order to get the greatest amount of free trial days, download and install the program and wait until its 15-day period to elapse before you click "Prolong Trial" and get yourself another 30 days out of the software. (Prolonging the trial starts a 30-day countdown, so to get 45 days...oh you get it.)

• Record, edit and mix music in any popular style
• Perform your projects live – on stage or at home
• Arranger track for lightning-fast pattern-style producing
• Audio and instrument parts follow tempo and key in realtime
• More than 5000 of loops from world-class producers included, covering popular styles like Hip-Hop, R&B, Dance, Electronic, Pop, Metal, World, and many more
• Use a keyboard to control 600+ of ready-to-play instruments, or record your own instrument through dozens of great-sounding track presets
• Mix your projects like a pro with EQ and Dynamics in every channel
• Polish your mix with a complete set of integrated audio effects
• Export your music directly to iTunes
• One window – many possibilities: learn how to make music in just minutes – on either PC or Mac

Minimum System Requirements for Mac or PC:

• 1.5 GHz Processor
• 1 GB RAM
• 6 GB free hard disk space for content
• Windows XP (SP2) or Vista Home Basic, or Mac OS X 10.4
• DVD-ROM Drive
• Windows DirectX, ASIO, or CoreAudio compatible hardware
• Internet access for license activation