Cloudpage Logo and Mailing List

At the moment I'm working together with my good friend Ringo on a new software product that we plan to release as a private cloud solution for small and medium sized businesses. We think it can improve efficiency for these companies in handling their information and document/files and make working together a lot easier. It will be a new way to work we think. More information will come soon. I Can't tell you more now. It is still early in the process and we still have a lot of work to do. Ringo works hard on the software and my job is the commercial part and there I already made a little start. We thought of the name Cloudpage for the product and Robin from Frontline Studios made this very nice logo for us.

We also registered the domain names cloudpage.com, .eu, .nl etc and I also started building a little website last week in Joomla for it. The most important thing on there right now is our contact information so we can keep you posted on the progress. There is a mailing list where you can subscribe and also a link to the Twitter, Linked-In, Google Plus and Facebook pages that we made for this product. So do subscribe to the mailinglist and connect on your preferred social media site to keep updated. You can always send me an E-mail as well if you want to know a little more already. You can find the website on http://www.cloudpage.com. Thanks for your interest!

Synth.nl Soundbank in Rob Papen's Predator 1.6.2 update

I have some nice news for you. In the latest update of the Predator synthesizer made by Rob Papen you'll find a nice surprise. I made a complete bank with 103 sounds for Rob. All the sounds are in the traditional classic synthesizer music style that I also use in my own music. So now you can play with those Synth.nl sounds yourself :) The update is free if you already have a license and if you don't I would suggest you to check Predator out because it is really good in my opinion. You can find more information about the 1.6.2 update here: http://www.robpapen.com/nl/15Dec2011.htm and more information on Rob Papen's Predator here: http://www.robpapen.com/predator.html. If you download the update do let me know what you think of the sound bank. It is the first time I did something like this and I'd like to hear if you appreciate it.

Punch, Rob Papen and Synth.nl

This evening I visited I4 Muzique in Eindhoven where Rob Papen introduced his new Punch plugin. Rob gave a nice demonstration of the product for quite some people that showed up there. It is a drum / percussion oriented plugin that uses samples, but also synthesized drum and percussion sounds. I liked it very much. It was nice that by accident by the way that I read about his demonstration on Facebook today and I happened to have nothing else planned this evening. Of course I took a copy of his product home to support Rob, since I like both the person as his work. All his plugins are top notch. It was nice to talk to Rob again and Marc from I4 took this picture. I tried to smile I guess ;) Well it was very late already and I was quite tired. As you can see I even pulled my Rob Papen T-shirt from the shelve for the occasion ;) If you don't know Rob's plugins yet I would say go check them out on his website http://www.robpapen.com

Apollo progress slow because of Sonar X1 Crashes

I have been a very happy Sonar Cakewalk user for the last few years. I started recording  my own music in 2005 and I have selected Sonar back then since I liked the work flow and intuitive layout. Since then I have upgraded on all versions coming after that. I never had any real problems so far. When Sonar X1 came out I was already working on my Apollo album and thought it would be wise to wait with the upgrade until the album was finished. But I could not resist downloading the demo and was very pleasantly surprised by the new layout. So I decided to upgrade anyway. At first everything looked OK, but now I'm working with heavier projects and I get a lot of unexpected and unexplainable crashes. I looks like a memory leak problem to me. My Roland contact told me an update was coming soon, but so far it still isn't there. I can still continue working, but I have to work around the bugs and the crashes slow me down a lot. If I don't make the deadline for the April 16th release it will be mainly due to these technical issues :( And I'm afraid to tell you that things are not looking good at the moment :( The chances I made release on E-day are not more than 50/50 at the moment. Just wanted to let you know. And I hope the Roland guys read this post too and hurry up a bit with that update ;)

Sonar X1 Update

Last week Cakewalk released the new update for Sonar called X1. They completely changed the interface and I was very skeptical at first about it. Actually I thought about skipping upgrading for the very first time. But then when I read the new work-flow coming along with the new interface I decided to order the update and just check it out. The last two days I have been working a lot with this new version. First on my notebook and after I found out that I liked it a lot (even though I didn't expect to) I updated my studio PC too today. I worked on some projects and I must say I'm getting happier by the minute. Especially that fact that you can dock all views so that you can easily recall them is superb. And also the editing functions have become smart now. You don't have to change tools that much anymore. A lot of options are easier to reach and you can build custom views that you can recall easily. I had to look up some things in the manual, because also the keyboard short cuts have changed and some functions are in different places, but in better places I must say. After one day I was already working like I never used another version. So a good update I must say :)

Jazzmutant Dexter Finally works with Sonar 8

Last year when Cakewalk released the upgrade to Sonar 8 my Dexter unfortunately stopped working. Back then I E-mailed to Jazzmutant about this. They replied that they knew it didn't work, but could not say when it would be fixed. But weeks and months went by without an update. Then on the Musik Messe last year I visited their booth and they promised to look at it. Well last week (almost a year later) I mailed again when something was going to happen. Then I got a reply I didn't expect for anymore actually. I got a beta version to test. And what do you know it works :) I'm quite happy about this because it really is a cool gadget, but also a very useful tool.

If you don't know what it is you should really check it out. It is a multi touch controller that you can use as a DAW controller. It also works with Cubase and Logic by the way. Here you see the standard mixer view. Here you get 8 + 1 faders that you can all control simultaneous. Another nice thing is that this thing talks over ethernet with your DAW software. And it sees what software is active. I have two PC's in my studio and I can control both with this control surface without having to rewire anything. But I already have a control surface with real faders so why do I use this?

Well I especially love this view. On top in the red part is the equalizer controller. You can move four points simultaneous here to shape your EQ. That really beats the crap out of a mouse :) In the green part is a XY surface that you can easily asign to parameters of a VST effect in on your channel strip. You could use Resonance and Cutoff of a filter plugin for example. And on the lower right in the blue circle is a surround panner and on the far right you have all sends on the channel on a fader. Very useful for adding reverb or delay. And the great thing is when you set your channel to record you can record all movements you do with automation. I really love this and I'm very glad that I can use it again :) Now I just hope Jazzmutant will be a bit quicker on the next Sonar update.

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Update

Yesterday I upgraded my Sonar installation to the latest version. The update from Sonar 8 to 8.5 is paid but it gives a lot of new stuff. So I really don't get why they didn't call it version 9, but OK. I'm very happy though that they did honor a feature request I did. I have quite some USB connected Midi devices and I ran into a limitation in Sonar of max 64 ports. It looks like they upgraded this because now they all work :) I had about 72 the last time I counted. Most devices nowadays immediately add multiple ports and so you run out quickly. Another neat thing is that now the midi ports are plug and play. You can insert (or switch on) devices without having to restart Sonar again before Sonar sees them. Great work guys :) If you don't know Sonar have a look here -> http://www.cakewalk.com. I use this software as my main midi and audio sequencer. In other words all my music is recorded with this software.

Main Studio PC reinstall

Last week I have been busy reinstalling my PC. I had some trouble with this machine. I moved around a lot with hardware and installing and deleting drivers usually leaves some mess behind. So I decided to take out my Windows Vista CD and start all over. It is a lot of work but usually worth it. It is just amazing how much software I have installed on my PC. Here you see a crate where all the install CD's are in. I don't even use all this software anymore, but still I want to have it installed in case I need to open an old project. All in all it took me almost three days to install everything. Only Vista and all the updates and service pack 1 and then updates again is several hours of work. And then I searched for all the latest drivers for the hardware on the Internet. Ah well. Now the PC is running like new again :)

Cakewalk V-Studio 700 arrived

I posted an entry before about the demonstration that Roland did in my studio with their latest product the V-Studio 700. Well I was so enthusiastic about it that I decided to order it right away. As one of the launching customers I could make a good deal on it that will benefit us both I guess :) I will tell you more about that later. I used to work on a Tascam US2400, but always had trouble properly integrating it in Sonar. Well this really is a dream come true. This is really total integration for me. I can do almost everything from the console without even touching a mouse or keyboard. Great job Roland and Cakewalk! I love it already. This will really speed up my work flow. And it also really finished my desk.

Here you see a close up of the right part of the console. One of the things I love is the surround panner that I never got working on the US-2400. Well now it works like a charm and it even can be assigned to more functions. The transport part also is very neat. Also the jog shuttle has multiple functions you can easily assign. You can use it to navigate your project, but also to select parts of your track and zoom in and out. Very cool! The big handle you see is used for several functions as well, but the neatest is that you can fade the controls from your loaded VST's in and out. Easy to adjust some parameter and then go back to your project without having to close and open the VST again.

And here is another close up of the left part of the console. The left lower part is what I love the most. It holds all kinds of Cakewalk functions like opnening and closing certain views in Sonar. I used to grab my mouse for that, but now it is so much quicker. In the left upper part is the ACT controller. You can use this to adjust parameter of the currently access VST. You can see in the display right away which parameter you are changing. The same goes for the faders by the way. Very convenient is that you see your track name in the display right over the fader. A great feature Roland came up with is fader locking. You can browse through all your tracks per bank of 8 faders but you can lock one of them. In this way you can assign tracks to faders from different parts of your projects and have just the ones you need at that moment in front of you. Very clever!

In this last picture you see the audio box that comes with it. I won't use the inputs and outputs on there. I'm sure they are very good, but I already have 128 inputs and outputs on my RME MADI interfaces and using two audio interfaces together is possible with WDM/KS but it will have different latencies then and that is not convenient. I usually use the ASIO drivers by the way and then it is not possible at all. But what is cool is that in this box is also an actual Roland Fantom synthesizer that you can use as a VST in Sonar. The unit acts as a DSP and doesn't use any CPU on you host. You can even add an extra ARX board to the synthesizer for even more sounds. The sounds is very good of this synthesizer I can tell you. Well all in all I'm very impressed already and even haven't dug into all the functions yet, but I already know this will save me a lot of time when I'm working on my music production. So big compliments for Cakewalk and Sonar!

Sonar 8 Upgrade

Yesterday my upgrade to Sonar 8 Producer version arrived. I use Cakewalk's Sonar as my main sequencer. All my music so far is produced in this software. I really love it. If you ever want to go and write your own music I can really recommend it. This new version has some new features that will make working for me again a bit easier. Besides that it came with some brand new software synthesizers like Dimension Pro and True Pianos, but also some new effects like a transient designer and a stereo width controller. I started working with version 4 of this software and upgraded every time. I never regretted it since upgrades are quite cheap with Sonar and every time you get a lot of new stuff. You can find more information on Cakewalk's main website http://www.cakewalk.com/

Spectracsonics Omnisphere

I have always been a big fan of all Spectrasonics software. I got a very nice upgrade offer since I already had all their software. So I ordered it right away. Nice to see how their boxshot matches my CD cover by the way :) I tried it out right away. It comes on 9 DVD's and it takes about 45 minutes per DVD to instal. You should plan some time for that. The total installation will set you back 50 Gbytes on your harddisk. My first impression was quite good. I wasn't as blown away as I expected to be after watching the video's. But it is a very good successor to their 'Atmosphere' synth (nice name). Only much more sounds and sound sources and now you have the ability to create your own sounds as well. Either from the samples that some with it or using the included synthesizer engine. I'm sure I will be using this synthesizer in the future. I like especially the ever evolving moody sounds it can create.

Sonar 7 demonstration at Live Music

Today I was at Live Music in Arnhem (one of my favorite synth suppliers) for a Sonar 7 demonstration. I have been working with Sonar already for a long time, but last time that I attended a demonstration like this I did learn some new stuff. So I decided to go again today. The demonstration was combined with a demonstration of some new products from East-West as well. The demonstration was given by Tim Hüfken. He is a very experienced music producer that has been working with my big synth hero Jean-Michel Jarre on his last album Teo and Tea. He is a very nice guy as well by the way. Tim started out with the East-West products. All great sounding sampled instruments. I use their Symphonic Choirs myself and I love it. What I heard sounded great and the new player that were promoting looks very promising. The Sonar demonstration was even more interesting. Off course I already knew 90% of what Tim showed, but he also demonstrated the very powerful audio snap feature that I haven't used yet. And I found out that there is a lot of new plugins that came with the upgrade from 6 to 7 that I never even saw before :) I really need to read a manual sometimes ;)

before the demonstration and during the break I played a bit around on some synthesizers. I do that more often at Live Music, but I seem to have always skipped the SH-201. Because it is very cheap I thought it wasn't going to be much. But I was amazed. This little thing was great. I had so much fun with it. I always loved the Roland sound as you can probably tell from my gear list. And soon it will be even more ;) After the demo I played again on it and was sold. I bought the demonstration unit that was in the shop for a very low price. I didn't plan to buy something today at all, but well sometimes you just fall in love with something instantly. Love at first sight that is called. This little thing is a great performance / lead synthesizer. It is a VA but it sounds really analog. Now I have to find a spot for it.

FXpansion Guru

I talked a lot about hardware already on this blog, but I also use a lot of software stuff. Especially for drums, since that is very timing critical and actually also because I can't drum :) I use different software for drums, but one of my favorites is Guru from FXpansion. It is like a mini sequencer inside your main sequencer. You can run 8 different sequences simultaneously. Each sequence can hold a lot of different patterns and sounds. From these you can make kind off snapshots that are called 'scenes' that you can assign to a key on you keyboard to play them in your arrangement. A very flexible and great sounding tool. Another nice this is that you can run it standalone, so that you can design the drum patterns first and integrate it in your track later.

On the right you see a screen shot of a pattern. You also see the drumpads you can use to play or you can just click the notes on top with your mouse. Usually that is what I do. There are a lot of drum kits included, but you can use any samples that you want. I hear from a lot of Akai MPC users that this looks a bit like a software version of a MPC. In Guru there are also several nice effects that you can assign to sequences or even individual notes. If you don't know this software I would say give it a try. It is really worth it. You can find more information here: http://www.fxpansion.com/