Guitar Tracks Pro 3
It sounds a little strange to have an audio recording, editing and mixing program just for the guitar -- all the general recording applications can record, edit and mix the guitar just fine. But when you look at the guitar factory Cakewalk has put together, it starts to make more sense.
Guitar Tracks Pro 3 ($209 MSRP) is a 32-track platform that is tailor-made for guitar-based projects. Among the noteworthy inclusions for guitar recording is IK Multimedia's Amplitube LE guitar amp simulator and the GT:FX suite of effects, with chorus/flange, compressor/gate, parametric EQ, phaser, reverb and tempo delay. These plug-ins are seamlessly integrated into the program -- to use them you just right-click on a wave file and select Audio Effects. Then you can tweak the knobs of the amp model or effects box you've chosen, for a wide range of tones from clean to twisted, distorted and bent.
Based on technology developed for SONAR, Cakewalk's full-featured audio production program, Guitar Tracks Pro 3 starts from a solid foundation. Version 3 includes a number of new features, including a redesigned 32x8 mixing view with multi I/O support for up to 32 channels at 24-bit/96k resolution. Plus, all track parameters and effects are now completely automatable with Version 3.
The program also includes audio looping tools and support for ACID loops. This makes it a great tool for composing, and it comes with a Smart Loops library to get you started. This library includes a variety of drum loops, grooves, fills and individual hits. Among the grooves are basic, funk and reggae styles. There are also bass -- and yes -- guitar loops in the Smart Loops collection. If that's not enough guitar content for you (remember you're supposed to record your own guitar with this program!), another dozen or so guitar loops by Joboj (aka Joe Bochar) are included.
To get a real world user experience, I installed Guitar Tracks Pro 3 on an older DAW -- a 1.4GHz Athlon XP with 1.5GB RAM, a separate drive for audio files and a Card Deluxe audio interface. Installation went smoothly, and upon starting the program a Wave Profiler dialog box popped up for the audio hardware's DMA settings. This verified the audio card's ability to record and play back at various sample rates from 11 to 96kHz.
The program opens into the redesigned Mix View, one of Guitar Tracks Pro's two principal workspaces, the other being the Edit View. The console-style Mix View is divided into three screens -- one for tracks 1-16, one for tracks 17-32, and one for the eight Bus channels. It's a good functional control surface emulation, well-organized with a wide range of tools, but still uncluttered (the options include volume and pan faders, Record/Solo/Mute arming, Aux knobs, effects knobs, automation buttons, looping tools and navigation buttons). Extensive use has been made of the right mouse button; right-clicking throughout the Mix View's console brings up context-sensitive options. To switch between the 1-16 and 17-32 fader groups, you click their icons at the top of the screen. You can also select the Bus or All icons. The Bus button shows you the eight buses and two Aux channels. The All button shows you all tracks and buses simultaneously -- which is great if you have two monitors. But with one monitor at a display resolution of 1024x768, you can only get 16 tracks on the screen at once anyway. So the grouping of tracks into two screens works well.
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Besides the Mix View, the other major workspace in Guitar Tracks Pro 3 is the Edit View. This is where you'll probably spend most of your time during tracking. It's a standard linear representation of a project with waveform views, and it'll be familiar to SONAR users. You could also use the Mix View for recording if you want, with the aid of a little global project view pane at the bottom that can be turned on or off. Called the Navigator view, this lets you know where you are in the project, with a graphic display of every waveform (except the one being recorded) and a place indicator.
You can flip back and forth between the Mix and Edit Views, depending on which you find most comfortable for various functions. The two Views are really different graphical representations of the same thing. It's easier to adjust levels with the Mix View's faders, but levels can also be adjusted in the Edit View by dragging a bar left or right. The same goes for busing, panning, volume, track arming and sound card routing. But recording in the Edit View is better, if for no other reason than the fact that you can see by the waveform being drawn that a track is being recorded.
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