As I’m sure will be news to no one who reads this blog, Audio Damage have released a new, free¹ compressor plugin: Rough Rider.

Because I’m in the middle of moving and because I have way too much work, I haven’t had a chance to “strap it on” anything, but when watching the Colbert Report the other day I got an extra chuckle at the joke above.

So big thanks and apologies² to Adam and Chris. This is a nice gift, boys. I’m looking forward to trying Automaton.

Also in my absence, another Digital Lo-Fi fanboy favorite SonicCouture have produced not one, but two new products: the hugely intriguing Bowed Pianos and the menacing looking Temors.

For the same reasons, I haven’t had a chance to explore either of the these products, but I hope to have a full review of one soon(ish). However, I will stand by my claim that they will be indeed top-notch. Get them for your favorite sampler now!

So, lots more news, leaks and product announcements. I’ll try to pick the pace over here.

^{1That’s right, this fucker is free. How awesome is that?3}

^{2That would be for over-stating the joke, intentional or not.}

^{3Most. Most Awesome.}

No, no. Don’t get your shorts in a bunch. I don’t have any insider info, or a leak or anything.

But my half-abstracted mutterings of the other day, I made a bunch of vague criticisms of Sonar in regards to future of the program. While my speculation came primarily from a grass-is-greener place and not any measurable dissatisfaction, the estimable Peter Kirn of CreateDigitalMusic reasonably wondered what specifically I am finding lacking in Sonar, and where I’d like to see it go with this next supposed version.

So, let’s see…

• ACT (Active controller technology): This is one of Sonar’s biggest “almost there” features. You’ll notice if you watch the promo videos for this feature they always use a particular Edirol controller. Since Edirol is a Cakewalk partner it looks pretty slick, with a nice GUI and and a nice easy handshake between controller and DAW. But I don’t have an Edirol controller. And working with the ACT interface that controls the 95% of the controllers out there is pretty kludgy. In Cake’s effort to make it simple for us musicians, they left out a deeper level of control that doesn’t involve some digging. 75% of the time it works pretty great; it’s that other 25% that’s a bitch.
• Track presets: As I have been trying to “optimize my workflow” I’ve been setting up a bunch of track presets. They’re great: setup a synth you like, or a chain of plugins that has that certain something, complete with folders sends and buses, and call it back up with a few mouse clicks. Sweet. But these aren’t effect chains per se, so if you have an already recorded track it takes a little juggling to make that work. And it doesn’t include buses, and that would be handy.
• Better asset management: That “Audio Pool” feature in Logic sounds awful handy. How about being able to audition MIDI clips? Come on, admit it, the “Clean Audio” utility is pretty long in the tooth.
• Windows… sigh: Come to think of it, some of the modal windows could use a little bit of buffing. It’s pretty apparent there’s at least a bit of legacy code in there that, while perfectly functional and not entirely essential, could stand to be upgraded. And a lot of vst plugins that are more vertical than horizontal (like a few of the fabulous Bootsy plugins) can end up with a swath of dead window space Sonar fills up the Window bar with it’s functions. There’s got to be a more elegant way.
• I refuse to believe that video can’t be improved. I haven’t used it in a while, but last time I tried it was pretty easy to get the video stream to stutter and fall over, even some rudimentary editing, cuing features would be helpful.

Anyway, I’m getting picky. I’m really not that much of a bitch.

I’m sure I’ll think of something later on. So this is subject to revision.

Here’s the big thread at the Cakewalk forums from a lot people who a.) possibly use Sonar a lot more than me. b.) mostly spend more time on the forums than I do.