Cakewalk’s Sonar digital audio editor has a lot of fans. (Most of my musician friends that aren’t using Macs are almost exclusively on Sonar these days, for what little data that’s worth.) But there’s never been a dedicated hardware mixing station for Sonar, despite the fact that Roland, Cakewalk’s parent company, is one of the heavies in the music hardware business.
No longer! The VS-700C is a new $4,000 workstation that includes a mixing board with nine touch-sensitive, motorized faders, 12 rotary encoders, jog and shuttle wheels, and lots and lots of shiny buttons. Even better, there’s a separate breakout box with 20 inputs and 26 outputs (XLR, 1/4-inch, coax, etc.). There’s also a built-in Roland Fantom VS hardware synth built in there somewhere.
The whole rig hooks up to your Windows PC with a single USB 2.0 cable. It looks a treat for the serious home musician. It’s enough to make me want to try to learn Sonar again.
EXCLUSIVE: Cakewalk and Roland launch V-Studio 700 [Music Radar]
If it can do live mixing as well, WANT! (I do some field recording, and being able to use the same hardware to mix the mains and monitors while capturing, and then mix down later, would be a definite win.)
$4000 for a console manufactured by Roland for use with Cakewalk?
I dunno…
Apparently there’s still a lot of people who haven’t tried Ableton.
I do like old Roland gear and all, but I wouldn’t want to get stuck with THAT.
try thees:
http://www.mackie.com/products/mcupro/splash.html
If that dont look bad ass!
Works with pretty much any DAW these days. Expandable and much more affordable.
I think the MCU has had support for Sonar for a long time, even before the new USB units came out. Some folks bitch about the MCU faders, but I love mine and find it to be amazingly well paired to Logic.
Maybe this Roland thing has better pairing to Sonar features? I dont know anyone with Sonar to ask tho.
Oh and Mister Staal #2, Ableton Live is not the be all and end all of DAW tools.
Not as cool as http://www.jazzmutant.com/