Cakewalk's Project5 Version 2, in the words of the company's founder, “blurs the boundary between studio and stage,” and indeed it does. The program encompasses a built-in array of instruments and effects — including drum machines, samplers and synths — as well as hosting for external instruments, ReWire support, audio and MIDI recording, sequencing and editing, loop arranging and more. Project5 puts all of these tools under one hood. Version 2 retains the best features of its predecessor — such as the DS864 sampler, the Velocity drum sampler, the nPulse drum synth and open-synth hosting — while adding a slew of new features, most notable of which is a streamlined user interface. Other enhancements are the new PSYN II, Roland GrooveSynth and Dimension instruments; two-way ReWire modes; audio recording and playback with unlimited clip size; real-time triggering, editing and exporting of Acidized (Groove) clips; direct input monitoring; tap tempo; track freezing — the list goes on. Suffice it to say, this latest incarnation of Project5 is designed to be a complete recording, composition and performance platform that will work right out of the box with essentially infinite expansion possibilities.

START ME UP

I installed and tested Project5 Version 2 on a Windows XP Dell Intel Celeron/2.4GHz notebook with the listed minimum of 512 MB of RAM (although that soon changed) and, later, a Windows XP Dell Pentium 4/2.8GHz tower with 1 GB of RAM. Project5 is written for Windows PCs only; there is no Mac (or other OS) implementation. The application comes on a single DVD-ROM, but Cakewalk offers a set of installation CDs for registered users with an extra charge. Considering the DVD implementation as well as the minimum requirements of Windows 2000, an Athlon or Pentium processor (more on that later) and 5 GB of disk space (Windows XP and 5 GB are recommended), P5 is definitely not for older machines. For audio I/O, I used an Edirol UA-25 interface connected via USB, and for MIDI Input, I used an Evolution MIDI control keyboard connected via a MOTU FastLane USB MIDI interface. I monitored through Tannoy Reveal near-fields, a variety of off-the-shelf computer speakers and some AKG K 240 Studio headphones.

Project5 comes with a short 90-page quick-start guide, and a detailed online manual is available from the help menu. Both guides are concise and well-organized, but for beginners, the online manual is probably best; the book doesn't give much of an introduction. No hardware dongle is required; all you need to enter is the correct serial code. Installation was a simple follow-the-prompts affair, but unless you have a fast DVD drive, you might consider taking lunch during installation: A full install on the Pentium machine took about 15 minutes, but with the laptop, it consumed more than an hour. During installation, Project5 Version 2 prompts you for extra plug-in folders, and on startup, it asks for your MIDI settings. Getting P5 to recognize both machines' default audio drivers as well as the various Edirol drivers was painless; the program supports ASIO, WDM and Direct Sound types.

I'VE GOT THE POWER?

Upon launching Project5, the interface looked clean and well-designed. One of the first aspects I noticed was the real-time CPU meter that lives in the top-right corner. This is definitely handy, but on the laptop, it quickly became an object of concern as I launched the program and attempted to listen back to the five different demo songs that are included. Although the CPU meter in a new, empty song fluctuated between a cool 1 and 2 percent, all but one of the demo songs drove the CPU up to 100 percent capacity, some even with the sequencer at rest. I tried both the ASIO and WDM drivers in 24- and 16-bit modes with various buffer sizes, but even with the buffer set to max, the demos either wouldn't play back at all or were very choppy until they also froze.

After all of this initial grief, I called Cakewalk's tech-support line, and during a two-day period, I spoke or e-mailed with three different people who clearly communicated my situation among one another. They e-mailed me back promptly and even cold-called me to check in. Among other things, I was informed that even though the Celeron PC would work, an Athlon or Pentium machine is recommended. I added an additional 256 MB of RAM, and it helped, though by a small margin. After a few days of frustration, I gave up and switched to the Pentium 4 machine. It ran at least twice as fast and efficiently — from then on, my experience was smooth sailing. So if you wish to run Project5 Version 2, you should absolutely heed the package's advice on minimum system requirements and avoid running it on a Celeron.

Project5's user interface has been redesigned for more efficient work flow, and although it integrates a lot of controls into essentially one window, it should be easy to understand or learn for both seasoned pros and newcomers. The interface is divided into a few main sections, and some of the components are holdovers from the last version but with different names. The sections comprise the main controls, the Track and Bus Panes, the Groove Matrix, the Arrange Pane (formerly the Tracker), the Editor (formerly the P-SEQ view) and the Track/Bus Inspector (the Track Inspector was formerly the SYN.OPS view). The Editor can be swapped out with the Loops/Patterns view (formerly the Pattern Bin), and each section has a corresponding tab to bring it into focus.

The main controls run across the top in three sections. The first of these consists of tempo and swing controls, a handy new tap tempo button, a metronome and a time display as well as master-record arm and mute and solo buttons. In the second section live the transport controls, including play, record, rewind and jog forward and back buttons. The third section contains controls for select, automation, snap, loop and main volume, in addition to meters for the main output and CPU usage.

Below the main controls are the Show/Hide Track Inspector and Groove Matrix buttons as well as the Add Audio/Add Instrument Track buttons. The Show/Hide buttons help minimize screen clutter (which is already quite minimal) and are quite useful. Below these are the Track and Bus panes, which contain audio, instrument (MIDI), aux, master and tempo tracks, with different controls on each depending upon type. Audio and MIDI tracks share controls such as record arm, automation edit, mute, solo, pan and volume. Master and aux tracks also share similar controls whereas the tempo track is specifically for tempo automation. Creating new tracks is as simple as a click of a button. Pressing the Add Instrument button pulls up a list of all available device chains (more on this later), DXi and VST instruments. Next to the Track and Bus panes is the Track/Bus Inspector, which provides detailed information about the currently selected track and is conveniently divided into three sections: MIDI Input, Aux Sends and Device Chain.

FLEX YOUR FX

The MIDI Input section contains a few goodies, including a drop-down list of all available MIDI Input ports and channels, which provides excellent control of individual track channels; a key range filter, which offers precise control of the span of active MIDI notes within a full 10-octave range; a velocity-range filter, which does the same for note velocity within a 1 to 127 MIDI range; and an input transposition field that can instantly transpose all incoming MIDI notes up or down a 127 half-step range (more than 12 octaves). In short, Project5's MIDI implementation is deep and responsive. The Aux Sends section is simple: It includes horizontal send-level sliders, which can display or collapse as a group, with an Enable/Disable switch on each. The cool thing is that these controls are track-specific, not global. In other words, you can, for example, enable a send for one track while you disable it for another. To access the effects that these control, you select the relevant aux track in the Track or Bus pane. To my surprise, each bus is not limited to just one effect; you can keep adding effects to the chain until you exhaust your CPU. Best of all, these are irrespective of the tracks' individual effects buses, which also can be stacked in series. Changing the order of the effects chain is as simple as a drag-and-drop.

At the top is the Device Chain section, a key area in which you view, edit, recall and save the entire signal chain of any currently selected track. At the top is a drop-down menu with a huge library of device-chain presets. Below that are buttons — Add MFX, Add Instrument and Add FX — with which you can add or change components of an existing preset or build a new one. Once an instrument is chosen, the Arpeggiator section appears; there, you can hypercustomize Project5's new built-in arpeggios to affect the chosen instrument. Within any one preset, there are so many parameters to tweak that you're not likely to get bored soon, and dialing in good ones is a breeze. The optional MIDI effects (these are optional upon installation) include functional items such as Quantize, Transpose, Velocity and Chord Analyzer, as well as Synchron 32, Project5's flexible, easy-to-program 32-step sequencer. The available instruments include all of Project5's own virtual instruments, any installed third-party VST instruments and all available ReWire devices. Space does not allow descriptions of all of Project5's instruments, but they include the new PSYN II and Dimension (more on these later); the Cyclone DXi, a 16-pad groove sampler and loop editor; the DS864 DXi, an eight-layer, 64-voice sampler with eight stereo outs; the Roland GrooveSynth, a basic General MIDI 2 soft synth; nPulse, a 12-part-monophonic, analog-style modular drum synth; and Velocity, an 18-voice polyphonic multiple-output synth that specializes in velocity layers. Project5's audio effects (which can be beefed up with additional VST and DX effects) range from basic (ParaQ and Compressor/Gate) to strange (Alias Factor) to powerful (Spectral Transformer). Overall, I like the effects, but I was most pleasantly surprised by Studioverb 2, which despite its basic controls has a nice, natural sound.

SHINY NEW INSTRUMENTS

Dimension, a new instrument, is a simple-to-learn yet powerful sample-playback synth. It generates sound using four Elements, which are essentially sample storage banks; each is identical in architecture and easily accessible with tabs. A ton of factory programs and a large sample library for custom program building are included. Inside each Element is a window with the sample name and editable sample parameters, such as tuning, transposition, key, velocity, pitch-bend ranges, polyphony and more. Each Element has sound-sculpting tools, including a lo-fi effect, a resonant filter, overdrive, a 3-band parametric EQ, a multi-effects section, an LFO and five different modulators (pitch, cutoff, resonance, pan and amplitude). You can dial in the volume and pan of each Element; there are two global effects buses (modulation and reverb) that each Element can send audio to; and there is also a global limiter.

You can use any or all four Elements simultaneously, and custom Elements and custom programs can both be stored for later recall. In a word, Dimension sounds massive. The programs tend toward the theatrical side, and many are beautifully complex, yet the multilayered ones can suck up precious CPU resources pretty quickly. The preset styles are wide-ranging, from pads, leads, pianos and drums to organs, guitars, splits and more. The organs and synth basses are some of my favorites.

PSYN II is a virtual-analog subtractive synth. Its architecture provides four subtractive synthesis-modeling oscillators that are also capable of ring modulation and FM synthesis; dual independent filters that can be run in series or parallel; an internal modulation matrix that can sync to tempo; three assignable LFOs; five six-stage envelope generators; overdrive, delay and modulation effects sections; assignable polyphony, pitch-bend and portamento controls; and eight storage banks with 128 presets available in each. In other words, it has a ton of presets and flexibility. PSYN II also sounds rich and complex, and its presets are far-reaching, as well, from basses and pads to leads and individual percussion hits. Although many of the presets are grouped by category, there seems to be less emphasis on real-instrument simulation — PSYN II sounds like a synth. Some really spacey patches are present, and many of them sound convincingly analog and big. Programming PSYN is a breeze, as the controls are thoughtfully laid out. One of the best features in this synth is that all four oscillators can be active, and each can voice five different waveforms simultaneously, resulting in some truly monstrous sounds. In addition, it seemed less taxing on the CPU compared with Dimension. Most of the presets I called up consumed between 5 and 15 percent on the Pentium machine, yet a few did drive the meter much higher, and at least one drove it to nearly 50 percent capacity all by itself.

NO WRITER'S BLOCK

The Arrange pane is the central area in which songwriting happens, and it's a straightforward affair. Simply create an audio track, arm it for recording, press Play and record; otherwise, you can just drag and drop an audio clip into the song exactly where you want it. To use a virtual instrument, load a preset from the Device Chain or manually add an instrument. From there, you can add an Arpeggiator, FX or MFX to further refine the sound. Then, you can record manual sequences with a MIDI keyboard or other controller or drag and drop loops, patterns or Standard MIDI Files onto the track. The new Extra Track Lanes feature is exactly what neurotic perfectionists like me need: It allows users to keep each and every slightly different sequence or take on its own subtrack for easy identification while still keeping all kicks on one track.

The Arrange pane is like a sonic Swiss Army knife, though there are a few things I'd like to see added or improved upon. On the positive side, extending or contracting clip areas is a simple matter of placing your mouse on either side of the clip and dragging left or right as far out as you want the loop to extend. The dual controls for scrolling and zooming in and out vertically or horizontally are brilliantly designed and very easy to use. One area of improvement I saw is the handy Set Loop Points to Selection button — I would like to see a numeric loop-point display, similar to the Now Time area, in which you can manually set left and right loop points by typing in bar or even subbar assignments — it would be a great time-saver.

FEELING LOOPY

Working with loops and patterns in Project5 is a fun, intuitive affair. Like Ableton's Live, Project5's Groove Matrix contains vertical columns (64 total) for dragging and dropping loops. But the cool thing is that rather than working with straight audio files, you are working with MIDI files that play the horizontal tracks' instruments. This means that you have on-the-fly control of not only different grooves but also the voices of those grooves. Recording loop performances in real time is a snap, and afterward, you can choose to play back from the Arrange pane, continue playing live from the Groove Matrix or combine the two.

Sharing its design with the Device Chain pop-up menu, the Loops/Patterns view (from where you choose loops) is conveniently split into three submenus for speedy navigation; the submenus include categories (Bass, Drums, Leads and so on), subcategories (such as Downtempo, Electro and Glitchhop) and finally the loops and patterns themselves. I personally found the patterns to be hit-and-miss, but because you can play them with any instrument, you can really get creative. Effects can be dropped onto tracks in real time without pause or audio glitches, and tweaking the effects can be done from within the device chain or by opening the effect itself. All parameters are clearly labeled in the Device Chain, so this isn't a problem.

There is so much more to write about Project5 Version 2 than the limits of this review allow for — to do the program justice could mean dedicating an entire issue to it. Suffice it to say, Project5 is easy to learn yet feature-deep, the instruments and effects sound rich and original, the user interface is well-laid-out and intuitive, and its stability and expandability are to be commended. However, it is like an old hot rod: It sports a large engine and consumes a lot of gas (CPU cycles). Project5 is definitely not for wimpy computers. But if you have a powerful PC workstation and want a one-size-fits-all MIDI and audio composition, synthesis, sound-design and live-performance tool, Cakewalk's Project5 is a great way to fit the bill.

CAKEWALK

PROJECT5 VERSION 2 > $429

Pros: Intuitive, easy to learn. Excellent user interface. Powerful, great-sounding synthesis. Good MIDI implementation and open architecture.

Cons: CPU-intensive. Windows-only.

Contact: www.cakewalk.com

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Intel-compatible/1.2GHz; 512 MB RAM; Windows 2000/XP; 5 GB hard drive space; WDM-, ASIO- or DirectSound-compatible audio interface

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