Cakewalk Music Creator

I am currentl using Music Creator 4. I was using 3 last year. They seem pretty much the same. Uh, presets... IDK. Haven't really looked into them. I don't get into that patch stuff yet. I'll do another review when I'm more aquainted. Manual's there, but I never use it. I used Acid 2.0 or 3.0, so I know where to go and what to do to simply get what I need done. It's got a lot os features, though. so since I don't know so much, I guess it ain't that easy.

Effects are alright. Again, I need to practice using these things. I'll do another review.

Midi is as good as my oboard MIDI synth, which is pretty fake. Had to set the program up to use the right MIDI rivers though. Just mess around with the thing to hear sounds.

I like it a lot. Seems fairly reliable.

Eh.

I'm just sick and tired of people dogging on this product wherever I go. I need a program to record my live guitar with a TEMPO! The old Acid didn't have that. Also, I could break riffs down into separate tracks, add individual clip edits. I need to records songs, basically. And I can finally do it with this prgram. Integrates other effects from other programs you have installed on your PC as well. Like I got Sound Forge 7.0, so it has access to these effects without any prompting.

What everyone keep s complaing about to me is that they can't the sound to work, get tempo's right, playback is bad, etc etc. These people need to learn how to mess with the settings to things. Take chances to see what works for your system. OR watch the damn movie the CD comes with!!! It specifaically tells you how to set up if you're gonna record directly into your PC!!!! I used this on my crappy Windows 200 Pro PC and my buff Windows XP Pro, and I've been entirely fine. Just co to Options>Audio>Advanced>Driver Mode, then select "MME (32-bit)" then restart. Not hard, idots...

I'm using the Cakewalk Music Creater 2002. The presets? Yeah I don't even bother with them, it took me forever to learn how to just record and then EDITING. Geez, that took me forever to. I don't have a manual.

I guess the features are ok. I mean they have some nice stuff but at the same time they have useless stuff that takes up space on your computer.

I record something and it sounds pretty good, I try to play it again and its all staticy.

It freezes up my computer and then its not saved so I have to start over again.

I havn't

If this program was lost or stolen, I would say um, yeah screw that. Mom lets get a newer better program. I ahve been doing this program for about a month. No I didn't compare this to other programs.

This software was very hard for me to use even after experimenting with different things, it was useless.

The features for this was ok

Recording with this software was a nightmare. I'd play a slow bluesy or jazz solo. When I played it back, it was like listening to a heavy metal solo. No matter what I did, it played it back the same way.

it's as dependable as a screen door on a submarine

Shop and ask around for the best recording software, before trying this one.

Not easy to use too many hidden features the screens are confusing. If someone had not done a lot of recording in the past they would be completely lost with this.

features are good for a basic recording progran

not reliable no customer support.................would not use this if I didn't buy it

Horrible! No support at all. Had to E-mail my question (still havent got it back) They would not take my phone call for this product!

Would not recomend this to anyone

I am using Music Creator 2002, which worked fine on my old Windows 98 SE computer. Right now, I just recently got a Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 160GB, DVD+/-RW, well, needless to say, it's a very advanced machine. installing and starting up were not problems and easy to use. However, the program won't find the midi, making this very frustraing. That has brought the ease to a very low rating.

The polyphony on it is amazing, as it goes with what you put on it. However, dynamics, pitch bending, etc, is extremely difficult to use. On my XP, it finds a midi, but refuses to acknowledge it. It appears that the most advanced midi card will not be able to be used in the program.

The realism of the instruments depends on the midi card and sound card. This, however, was apparently not made to withstand newer midis. When using the DXi program included to at least hear something, it was extremely static.

This program is not reliable when it comes to dependability. Because of its serious limitations on advancement in technology, it cannot be used with newer computers.

Cakewalk seems to forget about a program after it's released. Not one patch has been created, nor any actual help regarding the FAQ section, being that it only has about 7 FAQ's.

The only thing to love about this software is that it can be used in older, used computers when you are on a tight budget, and will work pretty well. However, if you really are a serious musician, I recommend Finale. For production, get a Mac.

I am using Cakewalk Music Creator Pro Version 2 which was upgraded from Cakewalk Music Creator 2002. I have had no real problems with it since I upgraded my machine to a Windows XP 1.7 ghz processor with 128 mb RAM.

It comes with two soft synths although you can download another free one, Traingle II, from their web page. The sounds are good on the Edoril VSC, but the Dream Station is just like an old skool analogue synth. The presets that come with Traingle II are also cool for basses and dance music.

I don't use the manual as I tend to use their online help feature as all you need to do is to serach what you are looking for and some instructions will appear on how to do it.

I find it easy to use if you are familair with ANY type of sequencer (even Codemasters 'toy' music sequencer Music 2000). It seems to do everything that expensive sequencers do although some things are harder to grasp or are perhaps less user friendly.

The main soft synth that comes with it (Edirol VSC) has up to 64 note polyphony which depending on your soundcard plays in real time with low latency. The touch response is good and if connected through an amplifier and not your PC spekaers, sounds just like, or better than, the sounds that come as presets with your electronic keyboard.

It has tonnes of effects, the whole sequncer, such as reverbs, chorus, flanger, EQ, pitch shifter, normalize to apply to audio.

To apply to MIDI you have quantinize, chorus, reverb, delay, appergio and echo delay. You also have something called a session drummer.

You can sequence audio with an unlimited amount of tracks by connecting your keyboard or mic through the line-in/mic socket of your sound card. Effects can be applied to this audio and it can be zoomed in and clipped, copied, pasted, cut, have the pitch changed, looped, repeated, normalized...in fact there is a very big list of things you can do to tbis audio to give you almost professional sounding results.

You can sequence MIDI with up to 16 different channels (one for each instrument). You can sequence this along side audio so you can sing to MIDI composed tracks. It's best if you bounce all the MIDI tracks on to one audio track when you have finished the music to free up CPU. You can import additional soft synths and use them ALONG SIDE the Edirol VSC so you can have countless of different sounds or patches to record from. You can record in real time or note by note using the piano role feature.

It also has the abiltiy to print sheet music with titles and copyright notes that looks professional. And it has a console style mixer so you can use sliders to control the volume and pan of each track.

When your mix is done, you can export the file to wav format which can then be converted to MP3 to put on the net or burn to CD with no loss of quality.

There are tonnes of features and it costs a hell of a lot less than the #200+ you would pay for Cubase.

Some of sounds that come with the Edirol VSC synth are realistic. There is dampened piano and an acoustic piano for example. Layer them both together and you have a very relaistic piano sound. The strings are good...in fact it is all good. They are nearly 1000 sounds altogther...no joke. Add some flanger effect and reverb to any sound and you will have a full rich sounding ensemble that can be likened to a professional synth. The only thing which isn't that good are the drum samples, a bit 'toy like' and 'electronic'.

I use drum loops as Cakewalk is Acid drum loop compatible. On the CD itself are many drum loops to choose from. There's a dry studio kit so you can add your effects and many dance and hip hop variations.

I have had one or two drop outs but I usually know what is causing them. A program working in the background or a system sound or a screen saver...or someone sending you an e-mail. They are easily resolved, simply be restarting where you left off. I have had the program crash when it is overloaded with audio or effects, but there is only one solution...no program is 100% fail safe so ALWAYS save after every effect added, after every bit of editing.

If you know what you are doing and how to resolve any issues and you are running it on a stable system, I would use it at a gig.

Never had to deal with it.

Well, i couldn't really lose it as it is loaded on my computer but if I got another PC I would definately re-install it or its upgrade. I think I will keep uprgrading and using Cakewalk for a long time now as I have become familiar with its user interface.

I have been playing the keyboard for years, since I was about four and I am now twenty one. I own a Yamaha PSR-275 as my main MIDI controller amongst others as well as some decent PA speakers, a power amp and other music software.

Home Studio and Music creator
It is not a friendly user interface, though the drag-and-drop note
feature is kinda nice. They probably have a patent on it though =(

When all is set and ready to go, the banking and patches can sound pretty nice... there tends to be problems with the recording when
you actually hit _chords_ !(god forbid), or exceptionally fast melodic lines. My keyboard has expanded capabilities, but I have found that Cakewalk uses as few patches as possible; expansion is almost a 100% joke.

To the extent that I can actually get Cakewalk to accept my very nice
sound card and electronic keyboard; yes, it doesn't sound to shabby =P The program reacts to velocity and touch fairly well, but again; it cannot handle rapid melodic lines or chords well at all; this will typically freeze the program.

Well.. it has no 'auto-back-up' feature; which is actually fairly common to _not_ have. So I couldn't give a thumbs down here. The program has managed to keep my songs saved in the directory in which I stored them. The code executes this function effectively. The program will crash from time to time; and you will lose unsaved data, but it is quite the exception for programs to run intermittent, let alone real-time back-ups so you don't have a complete loss. There is no option to even choose this in Cakewalk.. much like any e-mail client if it crashes.. You would need a third party program for this feature. I would use it on a Gig without back-up - just use common sense.

My customer support has always been atrocious with Cakewalk.
1st: Tech support is not toll-free!
2nd: Only issue I ever really _tried_ to pump out of them was how to print sheet music (to this day, still a very shaky feature across the board for all Cakewalk proggies) I never had the issue resolved and quit after about $60 in telephone fees.

3rd: I'll save the last for my over-all rating section

This is one thing users need be very aware of with Cakewalk!
Cakewalk makes it's money by offering ZERO support for the previous years product.. actually, they have "this one guy who has been here like forever, and he handles that stuff (over e-mail)".

Perfect example here:

You buy Music Creator! Yeah, good for you! Next year, music creator 2002 comes out. Well you upgraded your OS to windows XP.. guess what? You're out $50 bucks (period) end of story. I don't mind that Cakewalk may be continuing sonic research, and developing complex and labor intensive algorythms to raise the total bar of the music experience every year (which they don't!).. to charge a little extra for this upgrade (40 bucks) might actually seem reasonable. One problem, Cakewalk will not patch any program to ensure BASIC functionality and compatability with an additional operating system or operating system patches.
I have tons of old regularware/freeware/sharerware/'junkware' programs over a decade old that are running just fine on Windows XP (no patch necessary)!! In fact, both of my Cakewalks are the only two programs that don't run as intended (on over 70 gigabytes of -- well, you'd be amazed!). Both freeze after a song is played once. My theory is that Cakewalk utilizes zero interupt capacity when dealing with port register addresses. It also obviosly utilizes zero functionality that an application like DirectX offers. For sound to work on Cakewalk, you basically have to manually reset the interrupt registers in the device manager (which I _always_ did even when running these programs in their 'optimal' environments in their respective times of release.)
I completely deleted the automatic device manager that comes with Windows XP and took over ALL drivers myself. After experimenting with the port and interrupt configurations for about two days; I just gave up. You also are required to do extremely tedious work-arounds to gain printer functionality for Cakewalk, reconfiguring the device manager and a few .ini configurations _EVERY_ time you want to use the printer. Both of these manual tasks create a situation where to get the printer and the sound to work with Cakewalk, they don't work with ANY other application or program that you have. To regain a 'normal' functioning state with your computer, you have to reverse all the work just accomplished; which will cause at least one reboot. Cakewalk advertising has been phenomenal; but the substance still carries the same fundamental flaws generation after generation; and they refuse to address it, by intentionally not supporting previous products, and then playing dumb about it; or accusing you of actually thinking you might be able to use last years Cakewalk in this years environment; that you might actually expect a basic functionality patch, rather than the $40 upgrade. This corperation and it's product are seriously flawed; in fact.. there are freeware programs that I have found more enjoyable because they work! Cakewalk doesn't even offer an option for 64th notes.. I could go on and on... I hope you take this to heart and reconsider going with Cakewalk.

it is fairly easy to use, some technical knowledge is helpful, you have to sift through the help file to really get into using all of the features.

again you have to go through the help files to learn to use everything but when you get it going it sounds good

there are several good sounds, however getting some of the percussion sounds out can be trying

sometimes i have experienced some dropout but it seems to wrork 99% of the time

n/a

i would probably look around and see what else is out there, but i might get it again due to the fact that i have become familiar with it

This is the first music software I have dealt with. It was fairly easy to understand if you are technical at all. The manual give a bit of an overview, however they make you depend on the help menu. However, things can be difficult to find, and the same help menu is used for many different programs, and it will give you answers to things that the version of the software will not do.

Seems to be fairly feature-packed for the money. Easy to get from page to page. This will not support a clock in or out, such as to or from a drum machine, or sequencer, one of the main reasons for me buying it, it took me four e-mails to the company to find this out.

Follows your playing pretty well, although it is very limited on quantizing.

I have actually quit using it altogether because of it's limits, and switch to MicroLogic by E-Magic.

BAD customer service-I e-mailed a question in and got back useless responses, and then was told I had to e-mail somone else. It took me two weeks to find out the program would not do what I needed it to do.I purchased this direct, and was OVERCHARGED $20.00. It was like pulling teeth to get my money back

Would not buy this, or any other program from this company-based on the largely useless help menu, limited manual, and useless yet rude customer service. Have had much better luck with my E-magic software-spend the extra $50.00 and buy micro logic; you would have spent the 50 on aspirin anyway.