Cakewalk's Home Studio 9.0 provides a truly impressive home recording package that will let any musician create and mix music. Regardless of your level of expertise, chances are this package will fit the bill with its array of powerful features--enough to please even most professionals. If you've ever wanted to compose music at home with your MIDI-compatible instrument, Home Studio puts a nicely functional package within reach. Home Studio's sophisticated interface for recording, editing, and mixing musical tracks has to be its standout feature. It lets you add MIDI (up to 256 tracks) and digital audio (including MP3 support, though playback of digital tracks has a limit of eight). The interface allows you to view your music in different ways: by track; in traditional music notation; in raw MIDI events; and even as a "piano roll."
Generally, we found Home Studio to be a very flexible music-editing package that's easily customized to the way you work best. Beginners can drag and drop existing MIDI and MP3 files to start creating their own grooves. More experienced users can record and edit MIDI input from external devices or even use the bundled Virtual Piano--a handy tool that mimics a musical keyboard on your computer. Instead of printed manuals, this package offers excellent online tutorials, which will be a good place to start for any user.
We liked the control of mixing tracks here, including echo, chorus, and panning tracks. You can even open video files to sync up soundtracks for digital home movies. Home Studio also doubles as a capable score printer, and songwriters will appreciate the ability to add lyrics and guitar-chord diagrams easily to their music. Overall, there are almost no limits on what you can accomplish with this rich and powerful musical-editing package. Whether you want to add music to home movies, design custom mixes for raves, or compose your own music in virtually any style, Home Studio can put powerful music-making abilities into your hands. --Rich Dragan
