The Competition YOU ASK????? Well here it is.

I have a This C24 and an ICON.
http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?langid=100&navid=219&itemid=5342

Or if you have some extra change.....go ICON (don't forget to move your mouse up to the top to select some studio views) My studio is up there.
http://www.digidesign.com/xtras/iconStudios.cfm


< Message edited by gtgarner -- 10/3/2008 5:02:43 PM >

Heh heh... nice stuff. I've never seen an ICON in the wild, but they look great in photos.

Which studio is yours?

ICON is fantastic, but I don't think these are directly competing products. ICON is a level or two up from this in terms of functionality. And it's way, way more expensive - £10k for the core module

John, you could SAVE $30K when buying an ICON bundle! With the money left over, you could by some more great gear!

Save Almost $30K with New ICON Bundles09/30/08
Get complete ICON and Pro Tools|HD system integration for all studio and production needs

ORIGINAL: stratton

ICON is fantastic, but I don't think these are directly competing products. ICON is a level or two up from this in terms of functionality. And it's way, way more expensive - £10k for the core module

John, you could SAVE $30K when buying an ICON bundle! With the money left over, you could by some more great gear!

Save Almost $30K with New ICON Bundles09/30/08
Get complete ICON and Pro Tools|HD system integration for all studio and production needs

Well, I'm not planning on spending 30k any time soon, so it wouldn't really be a saving would it?

I'm disappointed. Thats all i need to say. Only 9 faders and its $2800. Yes it had knobs and transports and such, but i or we need atleast 24 faders and a sperate bus section
Cj

ORIGINAL: John T

ORIGINAL: gtgarner

John T.

How do you connect a microphone to the unit? THROUGH THE AUDIO INTERFACE!!! HOW DO YOU CONNECT ANY AUDIO INPUTS AND OUTPUTS?

THROUGH THE AUDIO INTERFACE!!!!.

THe control surface is controlling that audio interface. The audio interface has SONAR 8 in it. As well as the synths and everything else.

It's no different than ProTools control surfaces. C24 and ICON.

No, that's not how it works. Watch the sonicstate video. Sonar is installed to a PC as usual. The only thing that's working on the interface DSP is the Fantom synth.

John.

Look at the entire package you get with this product. SonicState is not showing the audio interface. This is a 2 unit package.

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/exclusive-cakewalk-and-roland-launch-v-studio-700-176068

I'm talking about the 13 minute video on sonicstate, where Brandon explains the whole thing. I know there are two seperate units. What I'm saying is that Sonar is not running on the IO.

The IO is connected to the control surface, and the whole lot is connected to a PC via USB. Audio is recorded to the PC's hard drive as normal, which is also where Sonar is running.

How do you put a picture in the forum?

ORIGINAL: gtgarner

How do you put a picture in the forum?

Upload a pic to a server and then put the link to it in a post.

Cj, Psycho,

just how many hands/fingers do you guys have? Since moving faders cost at least $100 a pop, more faders is more cost and space.

One of the videos has Brandon "locking" the faders so they stay focused to their tracks. Pretty nice - you can rearrange each fader as you go. Granted, you don't have 24 faders moving all at once, but you can't really move more than 8 at a time, anyway.

ORIGINAL: AT

Cj, Psycho,

just how many hands/fingers do you guys have? Since moving faders cost at least $100 a pop, more faders is more cost and space.

One of the videos has Brandon "locking" the faders so they stay focused to their tracks. Pretty nice - you can rearrange each fader as you go. Granted, you don't have 24 faders moving all at once, but you can't really move more than 8 at a time, anyway.

I like to have more available at one time rather than scroll through banks. Not a deal breaker for me, I'm failry content with one Mackie MCU.

The Competition YOU ASK????? Well here it is.

I have a This C24 and an ICON.

Lovely, but over double the price, so not really fair to call it competition.

In tems of Sonar running ON the interface: The web site doesn't have any "requirements" listed that I can see, but I'd be extremely surprised if Sonar was actually running ON the interface. Pretty certain you'd have to have a PC running Sonar.

Regarding USB2: Who cares if it gets the job done? USB1.1 wouldn't even be a contender here because of bandwidth requirements, but USB2 is past that. Why doesn't the "competition" use USB? Who knows? Who cares? Lots of Pro studios use NS10 monitors. Why? Not because they are so good, but because they are a known quantity and gained such widespread use that they became a standard of sorts. ProTools isn't "the best" available either in every respect. I've known a few folks who feel that Sonar has some things to offer that they would like, but ProTools is what they basically HAVE to use - because of the demand and because that's what the studio employees know well and use efficiently. That STILL doesn't mean its better. I think the same applies in this case - the technology is not well adopted as opposed to inferior.

Also, everyone is throwing around this $2800 price tag with the sort of understanding that it is JUST a control surface.

I'm going to quote myself here, since this seems to be the busier thread on the topic with what I would expect the price breakdown to be...

<though reading back through this and looking again at the interface, it may be a little over that $600 I said, which would effectively reduce the price of the controller portion>

I saw about $4000 street price in the press release. That would be for the whole thing. I wonder if they will offering this as parts of the whole as well. The control surface is really the part I would want. I already have all the rest of the stuff, including Sonar, synths, audio interface, etc. Unfornately, just about everyting in the package is new and doesn't have component prices out there yet, except for Sonar itself.

It seems like about a $600 audio interface in terms of comparing to others out there at rough glance.
I'd guess that the Fantom VS thing is in line with their Fantom Rack - assuming that the sound cration and processing is REALLY taking place on the hardware not the CPU (cue line6 devices like the UX2, which I love, but wouldn't want a synth to work like this - then it may as well be a VSTi), so let's assume that may knock off another $1400 or so.
Sonar 8 Producer is another $619 (new)
Rapture is another $200

Using $4000 as the starting point, that would leave about $1200. Of course, that's pretty much what you would pay for a Mackie Control, $1500 for a Euphonix (which of course is onle Mac anyway, but...), about $1200 for a Digidesign Command|8, etc.

If my guesses are anywhere close, and they offer the product as a seperate item, I think that we would be able to expect the level of quality in all of the above-mentioned control surfaces + the added benefit of true integration. It'll be interesting (for me) to see where this goes.

ORIGINAL: stratton

"Another Country" Chicago Il. shows my c24 upgraded with D-Command panels.

I have a full ICON in my main room. THere are no pictures of that.

VERY nice! You're right downtown, huh? Beautiful.

So, what's your take on the new Cake/Roland thingy?

I think that the Cake/Roland unit is a HUGE step in the right direction for Cakewalk...especially since they didn't have anything dedicated to Sonar.

The only thing I believe they should do now is make sure that their pluggins automatically line up with the buttons and knobs like ICON (which is TDM). It's a wonderful thing on ICON that I've never had to sit there and make ICON learn the buttons of pro-tools pluggins. The pan of thier pluggins is always the same rotary no matter what pluggin is selected.

Maybe cakewalk can come up with their own Control surface naming convention like "CAK" - So that when you order something like a pantheon pluggin you can have the originating company auto map all of the buttons to the V-Studio format.

Of course it's doesn't come close to my ICON ($85K) or my c24 ($8.5K) but I would expect it to.

All in all - I applaud Cakewalk. They are definitely going in the right direction!!!!! Of course I haven't used it, but I like what I see.

Ok...so I just read this in another thread - don't know who the person is who posted it, but appeared to be posting as Cakewalk (though not according to forum name):

Just to clear up a few things:

* SONAR V-Studio 700 is not shipping until Q1, 2009.
* SONAR 8 customers who purchase SONAR V-Studio 700 will be eligible for a rebate.
* SONAR V-Studio is designed as a complete solution. It will not be sold seperately.
* SONAR V-Studio has native support for VST effects & instruments, and ReWire devices. You can add thousands of virtual instruments and effects to your system.
* SONAR V-Studio can switch functionality to control any V-Link compatible video and image hardware including the Edirol DV-7 line of direct linear video editing systems.
* It is a full featured control surface with unlimited tracks, inserts, effects, and busses / extensive I/O / ACT hands-on control / video intergration / etc.

So I guess my speculation is now useless. No control surface for the rest of us.

I do like the screws on the side of the Cake/Roland unit .

It's kinda like my ICON. THe screws on the side of my ICON meant that I could remove them and insert another 16 faders anytime that I wanted. It was extrememly simple to do.

I wonder if that's what the screws are for.

ORIGINAL: SvenArne

ORIGINAL: John T

ORIGINAL: SvenArne


That big airplane throttle-style lever is kinda chunky, though. Anybody know what it does?

Sven

It "destroys alderan".

LOL, yeah I figured it would do something of cataclysmic proportions... The size of that thing!

Sven

"That's no console..."