It seems that version 8 is the in number for DAWs as of late. Most of them are getting their version 8 upgrade or have already gotten it. Of course, Pro Tools didn’t want to be left out in the version 8 dark, so they decided to join the club.

I know I’m a little late on breaking this as news, but it’s better late than never. Even with being late on this, I thought I would chime in on the new upgrade.

Now, I’m a Pro Tools LE guy and have been using it for a little while now. While it has some deficiencies, it also has some positives.

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The recording industry is changing very quickly and things keep getting better and better for independent artists. Whether it’s recording your own music or distributing it yourself online, there has never been a better time for artists.

Now, I’m not going to tell you that I know everything about the recording industry. I know very little about how everything works, but I know that things are changing and changing quickly.

As with just about any artist that records music at home, I like for someone other than me to hear the music I make. I’m not all that concerned with becoming rich from music, I just love to play and record music.

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I thought for this 3rd installment of my recording monitors basics I would touch on a few quick tips about them. I will probably add more in this series of posts in the future, because there is a lot to talk about concerning studio monitors. But for right now this will be the last on monitors for a little while.

Studio monitors are your reference for everything that is your recording chain, so it’s fairly important to spend some time when purchasing them.

There are many different pieces of gear that help you make great recordings, but the quality of your studio monitors is huge part of the equation. This is why it’s good to get the best studio monitors that you can afford.

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Cakewalk recently announced that their flagship DAW will be upgrading to version 8. Cakewalk Sonar was already a very good DAW, but Cakewalk has upped the ante with version 8.

Now, I know I’m a Pro Tools user, but I first cut my teeth in a home recording environment with Cakewalk. Actually, my first experience overall with a computer based DAW was Pro Tools and that was at The Recording Workshop, but that’s a different story.

I really have nothing but good things to say about Cakewalk products. Though I decided to use a different DAW, it doesn’t mean that I couldn’t jump into a Cakewalk DAW and produce satisfying results.

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What are active studio monitors and passive studio monitors? And what the heck does reference mean? These are just a few questions I’ll address on this post.

If you haven’t read the first part of this series, you can go here to check it out.

With the trend in home recording equipment being lower prices, people who are buying the gear are reaping the benefits. When you used to buy studio monitors you also had to buy a separate amp to power them. Talk about a budget buster. That is, if you are on a small budget like I am.

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If you’re a Cubase 4 user, you have to be a little excited about the new upgrade that was recently anounced by Steinberg. The new upgrade brings Cubase and Cubase Studio to version 4.5.

I have not used Cubase personally, but I know it has a strong following among the home recording community, and there is good reason for that.

Cubase 4 is a very good DAW and comes complete with a lot of bells and whistles that will get you up and recording in no time. It doesn’t just record audio and work with MIDI, it gives you whole suite of creative tools and plug-ins.

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Choosing studio monitors can be considered kind of a tricky business, but it doesn’t have to be a hard one. If you are totally new to this, one thing to remember is studio reference monitors aren’t your home stereo system.

Studio monitors aren’t made to shake your house with thundering lows, although some can with add on subwoofers.

The goal of studio monitors should be to produce a flat frequency response and a truthful representation of the sound coming from them. This is the main reason why studio monitors are made.

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If you like free stuff, than you can’t go wrong by getting the Bias GateEx full-featured noise gate and downward expander for free. Yup, you heard right. For a limited time Bias is giving away one of their plug-ins from their Master Perfection Suite.

I’m not quite sure how long they are going to have this offer, but I hope it holds out for a little longer. Actually, when I found out about it, the promotion was supposed to have been over, but I was still able to get a free copy.

Not only is the GateEx a free plug-in, but it’s also a very nice plug-in. They say you get what you pay for, but you get a lot more than what you pay for with this plug-in. Actually, the plug-in is a $59 value. Thank you Bias.

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You may have heard the term plug-in but what exactly does it mean? Basically, a plug-in refers to a computer program that interacts with a host application.

It isn’t a new term that was created for audio and computer recording, but it’s a term that has been widely accepted by the recording equipment industry.

Plug-ins, pertaining to computer recording, are programs that run inside a larger application (DAW) and do things that the application (DAW) can’t or doesn’t. Sometimes it does things better than the application can do. Basically, they are add-ons for DAW’s.

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It had to happen sooner or later and I’m glad it happened sooner. UA finally updated their venerable UAD-1 line, and are now shipping their UAD-2 products worldwide.

Big deal, right? Wrong. There are many plug-in makers on the market, but UA makes some great sounding ones. Not too mention that UA is also the ones responsible for such great sounding analog audio tools such as the often modeled LA-2A and 1176LN.

I also can’t leave out the fact that UAD plug-ins don’t run off your computers processor, but run on their included PCIe card. This takes a load off of your computer giving you more power to use more plug-ins and virtual instruments in your mixes.

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