Is it a clever marketing ploy, or a way to make life easier for consumers and save them a few bucks? Cakewalk has two "all in one" packages that include Sonar Studio Edition, Roland V-Vocal technology and a USB or Firewire soundcard. The Cakewalk Power Studio 250 includes the USB soundcard, which is surprisingly similar to the Edirol UA-25 (actually, it isn't a surprise when you consider that Edirol/Roland has an ownership stake in Cakewalk.)
Cakewalk's reasoning behind the SONAR Power Studio production system is to offer users an integration between Cakewalk hardware and software. This should offer a number of benefits, such as the ease of the installation process, and the speed of starting a recording project. It also ships with an easy to understand 4-panel Getting Started Guide with clearly illustrated instructions. You may laugh, but how many times have you actually sat down and read the manual before you started with some new software or hardware? If you are new to audio recording, the Getting Started Guide with pictures will be a big bonus - believe me, you'll be glad they thought of this.
Also included will be one User's Guide covering both the hardware and software (again, very clever, Cakewalk we love this idea!), and there is one installer for complete setup of all software and hardware drivers and components. (Isn't that great - no more install this, then restart that and hold this cable while turning the system on, but before putting the CD, while standing on one foot and humming. One install package - nice.)
As well, SONAR Studio Edition will have all audio and MIDI device settings pre-configured for the included Cakewalk hardware, so all the user has to do is enable a track and click "record."
Finally, and don't underestimate this - you will have one phone number to call in the unlikely event that you need tech support, rather than getting bounced back and forth between separate hardware and software companies. (Or, for the pessimist, now you just have to deal with one company that is ignoring your tech support requests!)
Sequencing & Multi-track Recording
