Mackie Digs In with Tracktion
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Factory effects are marginal at best. For the price however, I find it difficult to complain. The compressor was the best of the lot, with the EQ being fairly standard. The most refreshing factor though, is due to the minimal junk going on in the Tracktion application, it rides nice and soft on the processor. I never hammered the CPU at all with several effects going on 24 tracks of audio.
Working with a few WAVES plugs, I still didn't see the CPU ever cross 20%, so even fully pushed, this app will allow for a huge number of tracks to be inserted. On my Sony VAIO laptop, Tracktion had no problems accessing the ASIO drivers for my Echo Layla, and working with the MIDI input via my M-Audio Oxygen, latency was unnoticed.
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Tracktion does have built in effects, and they are automatable, while remaining fairly basic. They are incredibly well thought out in terms of teaching newcomers to digital audio how to learn what effect parameters control various aspects of sound.
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| Tracktion does have built in effects, and they are automatable, while remaining fairly basic. They are incredibly well thought out in terms of teaching newcomers to digital audio how to learn what effect parameters control various aspects of sound. |
I was only accessing a single synth, testing with a Native Instruments Prophet 52. I was amazed at how simple it was. Step sequencing or loop sequencing, piano roll editing, quantization, and groove templates are all part of the standard package. Following on the heels of Sony's Vegas, this app opened just about every kind of audio I threw at it excepting wma formats, and I understand that's coming soon.
Tracktion provides a click-track with a number of options for volume, routing, mixing, etc. This was handy, and Tracktion allows for tempo maps to be built in the timeline, permitting tempo changes at specific points in time. Some of the more expensive audio tools don't even offer this feature. In Tracktion, you can even tap out a tempo!
Video editors lacking a great audio tool will find this application incredibly useful. Create all sorts of stingers, dialog edits, repairs, automation, etc all within the timeline of Tracktion. With VST support, great audio effects can be used here to, although if you already have VST effects, you might well have a higher-end editor.
The interface is very, very clean and uncluttered with the detritus that some of us have come to know and love during the creative phases of our workflow. On a standard 1280 x 1024 screen, it was wonderful how everything seemed to be immediately available, no tiny or minimalized dialog boxes to be hunted down. Everything was simply there that one could immediately think of needing to immediately access. I'd not realized how much information was constantly in front of my eyes in the various applications out there, and found Tracktion to be a little confusing in that while I didn't really miss the features I've come to know and love in various tools, I also found myself wanting for more information. I just couldn't think of what I wanted to have more immediate access to.
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| Accessing MIDI functions and outputs are always close to hand, simply clicking on one or all MIDI files opens access to all MIDI tools. |
I suppose one of Traction's next steps is to manage timecode import/chase capability, which can't be that far off. I also found myself looking for a little more feedback regarding input to FX, but that's a pretty minimal wish.
I suppose that from my perspective, I find Tracktion refreshing in that rather than attempting to be the Uber-recording MIDI and audio software app that many tools are attempting to be right now, this is simple. As an experiment, I showed this application to a 10 year old who knows nothing about audio. After explaining that audio has to come into the computer at the soundcard, and explaining that it also has to come out of the computer at a different soundcard, I had her recording and maneuvering the software in a matter of less than 10 minutes. Comparatively, this software does more than a DA-88 locked to Cubase could do 5 years ago, and for the price, it's a steal. In fact, Mackie was still giving away free copies at the NAMM show, check their website to see if you can still score a copy.
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| Automation of effects, routing, volume, and panning is very simple in Tracktion. |
Of further and perhaps greatest interest is that Tracktion has the ability to read/write OggVorbis files, allowing tremendous compression without loss, making downloads of files quite easy and fast. They've announced that they'll soon have a free player model available. Just as a curiousity, can you imagine bands releasing 'unmixed' versions of their songs for fans to remix in a product like Tracktion?
Coupled with the Mackie Control and their new "Big Knob" studio control, this is all that's needed for a DAW starter lab that surpasses anything available just a few short years ago. For older engineers that haven't quite abandoned tape-based multi-tracking and the heat generating monster consoles that have mostly gone the way of the Model-T, this is a fabulous way to get into the race without breaking the bank and spending 6 months getting re-educated. It really does behave much like tape if you want it to.
Traction isn't any major threat to Vegas, Sonar, Pro-Tools, Nuendo, or similar applications. It's not going to replace standard DAW tools in post production houses any time soon. It's not going to set the music or video industry into a 'new format' tizzy as many software apps have recently done. That said, Tracktion is a serious contender for cleanest running, most easy learning, fast installation, and feature for dollar application released in a long, long time. I suspect that if Mackie and Raw Material continue their development, Tracktion will live up to it's name and quickly find a grip in the slippery slopes of DAW software. What will be interesting to see is who is the chaser and who is the chasee in a year's time of development for this software.
Happy Editing!
SPOT
Tracktion $79.99 MSRP
Distributed by Mackie, Woodenville, WA
www.mackie.com
http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/products/TRACKTION/
Mac/Windows (Soon to be ported to Linux)
Recommended to: Beginning audio editors, professional analog engineers looking to jump into Digital Audio Workstations, video editors looking for a great audio tool for editing the audio of their video applications or creating cues, stingers, transitional pieces, or beds, educational institutions with a small budget for multimedia application education.
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