So the new addition in Kingston upgrade "Rapture Session" surprised me, I downloaded, it was "free" why not ?
It gathered up all my Rapture Classic, Dimension Pro Classic and old Cakewalk Sound center patches and displayed them in a new fancy searchable plugin. Reminds me of the great search ability that came with Omnisphere 1, which I have great appreciation for . . . to quickly find multiple types of sounds you're looking for by searching a database of patches.
 
The ezine PDF really undersells this new addition, since it really only mentions that it is a Rapture Pro greatest hits type sound browser. Don't most Cakewalk users by now actually have the original Rapture and Dimension Pro synths ?
 
If you click on the gear icon, there's even a button to upgrade to Rapture Pro.  Hmmm.
I can't help wondering why development on Rapture Session preceded further development on Rapture Pro ?
 
Anyways, this new Rapture Session addition is something I find very usable, and my appreciation goes out to the Cakewalk developer team for offering it this way, at this time.

My guess is if they can get more people to pay for Rapture Pro then they will be able to put more resources into further development.

+1, I actually installed some old Digital Sound Factory content for Cakewalk Sound Center when I saw Rapture Session announced. It is nice to be able to use those sounds without needing to load the 32-bit CW Sound Center. Not gotten to use it much yet, but is a very spiffy addition for sure.

mettelus
+1, I actually installed some old Digital Sound Factory content for Cakewalk Sound Center when I saw Rapture Session announced. It is nice to be able to use those sounds without needing to load the 32-bit CW Sound Center. Not gotten to use it much yet, but is a very spiffy addition for sure.

+ lots
 
This is the best thing about it for me.
 
There are certain sounds I use a lot from SC (Taurus pedals, CP70, sound effects etc.).  I have been loading SC and constantly freezing it, and unfreezing it to edit , freezing again, etc.  Really happy.
 
 

mettelus
+1, I actually installed some old Digital Sound Factory content for Cakewalk Sound Center when I saw Rapture Session announced. It is nice to be able to use those sounds without needing to load the 32-bit CW Sound Center. Not gotten to use it much yet, but is a very spiffy addition for sure.

Well, what about macros? Are they mapped the same way as in CSC? I mean, when you use old CSC programs in RS and open an instrument page, do you see any mapped macros there?

The only nicety still missing is knowing which keys have samples mapped to them or not. CSC and sforzando (for DimPro stuff) cannot be completely laid to rest yet. A keyboard showing live/dead keys would be helpful when browsing through patches... Some of these are oddballs with only 4 keys on the entire keyboard set (and on like G6 where no one with a 25-key controller would even think to look)

Edit: Just saw your post about macros. Not dug into it very deeply yet, but the sequenced samples play fine, just the Rapture Session is more for playback, not editting, AFAICT.

Rapture session is the replacement for sound center. It's way cooler, more powerful and modern. It also sounds better and has a ton of content. Session has the same synth engine as rapture pro and fixes in rapture pro apply to session as well. So is not like this was done in isolation. Pro also has tons of updates in this release.

Just for clarity, Session didn't precede future development of Rapture Pro, it was done alongside a rather large update.
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/Rapture/Whats-New
 
We can't wait to hear what you all create with the updates.
 
Keith
 
 
 

Thanks for the details and development of this to everyone at Cakewalk!! Although I rarely have used Sound Center in the past, now I'm certainly looking forward to using Rapture Session.
 
 You guys have done a fantastic job with SPLAT over this past year, and I do appreciate all continuous work put into making Sonar a fun/refined program to work with. I'm not a fanboi, but rather an appreciative customer that would like to give credit to where credit's due. Well done guys!!  

Nice library content look on the left side, excellent GUI.

This is like a simple Hybrid of : Kontakt, Sound center and Specrasonic GUI layout.

i really like the X/Y pad and the vector mixer.

Sounds : well some are good others is not that god, i cant stand all those FX sounds
useless on standard music production, maybe some is usable for film score FX.

That's why i hardly do use Dimension pro, Rapture, Dropzone and z3ta+

What about real piano, bass, pads, strings, choir, flutes and trumpets and so forth..

To consider fixing :
* Adjustment of room / reverb sound
* Quite high CPU usage in some of the patches, probably due to FX's processing.