Cakewalk is a company based in Boston, Massachusetts that develops music production software. Their best known product is their comprehensive music sequencer SONAR, which is designed for professional use. SONAR incorporates multi-track recording and editing of both audio and MIDI. Moreover, the company offers a full range of music software products, including pyro Audio Creator—a digital music management program, and Dimension Pro—a virtual instrument.

SONAR creates projects that allow the operator to edit MIDI files, raw audio tracks, and other associated information like lyrics, and to present them in a range of formats including musical scores, editing console, event lists, etc. The operator can also mix the various tracks down into a stereo .WAV format ready to be saved on a CD.

Although MIDI is a widely recognized standard for representation of digital music, there is no broadly accepted standard for the interchange of projects between competing recording/editing software (e.g., see Cubase). Consequently, one can not easily import a Cubase project in its native format into SONAR and vice versa. You can however swap multitrack audio projects between applications as OMFI files, which keeps audio timing, tempo, volume, and pan information intact.

Originally, back in the 1980s and in the 1990s, the company was named Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. and Cakewalk was the name of their flagship MIDI sequencer, first for DOS and since 1991 for Windows 3.0. Early versions of Cakewalk for DOS (up to 3.0) required the intelligent mode of the MPU-401 card and could not be used with today's clones, while later versions (since 4.0) relied on dumb UART mode only. Cakewalk was renamed Cakewalk Pro at some point, and later into Cakewalk Pro Audio when support for digitized audio was added.

In January 2008, Cakewalk's logo was changed to say "Cakewalk by Roland" to reflect the fact that Roland acquired a majority interest in the company.[1][2]

In 2009, Cakewalk by Roland announced a new product line: SONAR V-Studio 700 and SONAR V-Studio 100 are the flagship products in Cakewalk's new line of hardware and software music production solutions. The next generation V-Studio line of products is modeled off of Roland's renowned hardware expertise and the power and flexibility of Cakewalk's SONAR Producer.

Greg Hendershott is Cakewalk's founder and CEO.

[edit] Current Cakewalk products

Sequencers & Digital Audio Workstations

1. SONAR 8 Producer Edition (Flagship DAW)
2. SONAR 8 Studio Edition
3. SONAR Home Studio 7
4. SONAR Home Studio 7 XL
5. Guitar Tracks Pro

Integrated Hardware and Software

1. SONAR V-Studio 700
2. SONAR V-Studio 100
3. USB Cable Interfaces for Audio & Midi: UA-1G, UM-1G, UM-2G, UM-3G

Instruments

1. Dimension Pro
2. Rapture
3. Z3TA+
4. SFZ+
5. Studio Instruments
6. Session Drummer 2
7. Pentagon
8. Square
9. Triangle

Effects

1. Sonitus:fx Suite

Consumer Products

1. Music Creator
2. Pyro Audio Creator
3. Kinetic
4. USB Music Pack

Most products have multiple versions[3]

[edit] External links

• Cakewalk
• SONAR V-Studio Homepage
• The Cakewalk Blog
• SONAR User Wiki
• HD Videos on Cakewalk Products
• Videos on Cakewalk