Kudos to Bakers on the New Pro Channel!

Of course, I haven't had a chance to check out the actual sound and flex, but by design, I think you've beaten the devil! ;-)

One of the major items in the new Pro Tools is their tape saturation system.... and the Bakers didn't wait for them to be second in offering it (ok, a few days)... Very uncelebrated/overlooked seems to be the tape saturation incorporated into every channel. It appears even more flexible and well organized than the PT counterpart.... Excellent!

And the 1176 clone for compressor! Nice touch. Tho we all have favorite compressors for particular jobs, this choice is probably one of the most versatile... Excellent choice.

Routing! Nice.... I wonder if we'll be able to control inter-fx-bin routing discretely by effect? I guess I'm pushing it for this release? ;-)

Here's hoping the sound qualities of these devices meet or exceed expectations!

Thanks Bakers!

Now back to trying to make some extra money to upgrade my DAW so that it can handle X1! <sigh>...

Love Ya'
Keni

Lanceindastudio


X1 runs as efficiently or better than 8.5 according to the Cakewalk guys here on th forum!

Hmmm... Something's not right then... The minimum system requirements have gone up considerably and while I'm guessing it will work on my poor "old" Core2duo 2G machine, they will not support it. That reeks of "it's not gonna work real well" to me...

I'm not down on them for it as I'm guessing that's a price to be paid for the power, but I'm so broke these days it's gonna be near impossible for me to get a new machine.... for quite a while... So I'll be running "underground" and clunky for the future... <sigh>...

The difference in system requirements is because of the channel strip.
If you're going to use it, it's going to use CPU.

The situation for devices such as the channel strip is on an enable/disable nature. While the Channel Strip "may" be cpu hungry. it can be used on a track-by-track decision...

What I'm guessing is that the GUI itself while more capable (stable???) must be more demanding to begin with in some manner or the minimums wouldn't have changed so much...

John T

Keni

It appears even more flexible and well organized than the PT counterpart.... Excellent!

Indeed. Heat is either on or off globally for all channels at once, with the same setting applied to all channels. It's a really good feature, but it's definitely not as flexible as the X1 approach.

This is true.  But as far as I can tell, Heat is HD only. 

I would really love to know how the new pro channel compares to its modeling counterparts like UA and Waves?

Storm


Don't believe everything too automatically Keni.

The GUI improvements should run better because of better graphics handling in the OS. Remember our Aero discussions? SONAR worked better with Aero on for me.

Somewhere on the forum a week or so ago it was mentioned casually that Cakewalk hadn't really upped the required specs in a couple of versions, so they upped it on the technical requirements but the implied reality was that it wasn't really a necessary jump for SONAR X1 to run.

I think Cakewalk are very good programmers and so it should be no different than each subsequent version. if you start running all the new plug-ins and features at once on every track, you're going to notice a hit. But if you're working as you were before, it should be minimal.

Thanks Storm, but even with this in mind, they raised the bar quite a bit... But again I must say I'm not upset at them about it, just that I'm too broke to catch up with the world.. (I once maintained bleeding edge)...;-)

I'm guessing it will run, and 8.5.3 has been handling my demands pretty well on my little Core2Duo 2G machine... But as they raised the bar, they do not support users running on a machine lower than their' minimum requirements so I'll be somewhat flying solo.... I've been there many times... ;-)

I use enuf plugins to simulate a well equipped 24 track analog studio and then some and my CPU meter never reaches 50%... Of course this is because I freeze/refreeze my midi/synth tracks as I work on them so I eliminate as much cpu demand as I can...

I am looking forward to the new changes tho... and hoping somehow I'll be able to buy it.... Time will tell (My birthday is next week if I get anything and don't get forced to spend it on bills.... oh, and I have $60 credit at the store from last year! ;-))

Inek

mmarton


"I'm thinking about doing a quick test using the new Pro-channel in 1176 mode vs the UAD-2 1176 plug vs a real 1176.  Ditto for the SSL comp mode and my real SSL bus comp.  Not sure when I'll get to it but I'll post results if anyone is interested.


Dean"
 
I'd be very interested...

Ditto Dean!
 
I always like these kinds of reviews by forum members. Always gets a lively discussion going. And I'd also like to know the answer.

You got me excited now Dean, you really should do those comparisons - wouldn't take you too long :-) Maybe you could make it a competition, and SSL would sponsor it, like Garritan did for the orchestral shootout, and the winner gets an SSL bus comp! Or perhaps they'll be worried that their hardware unit is indiscernible from the plugs, and try to sabotage the comp...

Hey folks,
Sure, once X1 is out I'll give some audio a quick run through the various comps and post examples.

Oh, and apologies if I kinda hijacked your thread Keni.

Dean

Oooh!  Dean, that'd be awesome!!!

Can't wait to hear the results :-)

John T

Keni

It appears even more flexible and well organized than the PT counterpart.... Excellent!

Indeed. Heat is either on or off globally for all channels at once, with the same setting applied to all channels. It's a really good feature, but it's definitely not as flexible as the X1 approach.

The thing that counts in the end is of course how it sounds. I haven't played with Heat yet but I am familiar with the CraneSong Phoenix TDM plugin and that sounds great!

More importantly, I am not sure I am too happy about this whole Pro Channel thing. If it sounds good then great but even then I am not sure the "classic" looking GUI makes much sense in 2010. I would just  want a small saturation/harmonics tool that you can apply to any channel you want. I don't really want something that looks like an old device.

This is what Paul Frindle has to say about SSL emulations in general: (Note that this is not about Pro Channel specifically!)

I'm not going to indulge in comparing other people's products or offering critique of them, because this would be really unfair :-( But to be honest from a personal point of view as one of the people who designed these things way back, every time I see yet another 'SSL-esque' GUI with yet another supposed 'copy' my heart sinks further.

Knowing what I know, there's no way that I want what we made back then (let alone an incomplete 'emulation' of one of them) because we have moved on so much further than the restrictions which applied in those days.

In other words, we can do much better today.

Why limit ourselves to the technology we had three decades ago? Why not offer a tool that has a dozen flavours of harmonics and various saturation curves? Give it some "Classic" presets for those that don't want to tweak too much or are not confident in their monitoring/acoustics/experience...  Why limit the compressor ratios to 4|8|12|20|infinity? There is no reason to limit things in that way in 2010. So for me this is a gimmick more than a real tool. YMMV.

UnderTow

Given they're also musicians, it's just assumed...

It is actually general programming slang. Code bakers are programmers.

UnderTow

It is actually general programming slang. Code bakers are programmers.

Not on any planet that Google indexes.

I've found with the Cake plugz that at first I used them just for setup speed in a temporary fashion, figuring when it's mix time I would swap 'em out with my preferred processing. But, as I used them more and more I stopped swapping and was able to dial in a very nice sound. Some things may always need to be pieced out to specific plugs... the lack of Attack and Release settings for the compressors in VX-64 for example... but I'm impressed with how much I go to it. If the Pro Channel is even "better than average" I suspect having it inline will make me use it that much more.

many of the plug emulations we now strive to return to were not "out of the box" hits after all, but became famous because of the skilled engineers who massaged the best qualities out of them and their omnipresence. I don't mind having an artificial limitation put on me...especially when if I want I can always invest a little more production time to really dig into the sound if I need to.