Overview

In today’s economy, where value is even more important, Music Creator offers you limitless fun and creativity in creating your own music.  Music Creator 5 is everything you need to get started making music — and making it quickly — offering a host of new features and a streamlined user interface. Simple recording, editing, mixing, great-sounding instruments, and tons of effects in one package.  Music Creator 5 guides you through initial set-up, making it easy for you to plug in your instrument or microphone and immediately start recording.

Review

Installation – 8

Music Creator 5 is a powerful home recording application and installation goes through a few steps but is easy following the install wizard.  While installing there is an option to add additional components such as WMA and Quicktime which is recommended.

Installing additional effects components are very cool for tweaking and editing your music.

Another great extra component to install is AmpliTube X-GEAR which is a virtual amplifier that allows you to get unique sounds from guitars.  It comes with a free trial then you need to purchase a separate license

After Music Creator is setup you will want to install Cakewalk Sound Center which again is a simple process following the wizard and installs to the VST folder.

Features – 8

While geared at beginners, there is a large amount of professional and studio quality features included in this package.  Here is the default tracks view where you will have a visual representation of how the tracks look.  This is good when first testing out the volume levels of everything.

The Console View allows you to control effects and settings like you would on a mixing board.  The multiple VST effects are controlled on their own panel.

Open the Loop Explorer View to browse for different synth and VST effects.

There is a complete set of virtual instruments you can program to make the sound of your song huge.

Don’t have a drummer?  No problem, just use the virtual drum kits to get the beats you need.

The Piano Roll view lets you add and edit notes, controllers, and automation data interactively, using a graphic display.

Easily control different effects, volume, and other settings in Track View.

The play controls at the top let you change the tempo of the song and easily navigate to different area of the track.

Amplitube X-Gear is a virtual amplifier you can use to get unique tones out of your guitar.  There are several preset amp and speaker combinations or you can manual dial in the settings to get the sound you want.

Other noteworthy features:

• Connecting instruments, microphones, and midi controllers easily
• Playing and recording virtual instruments
• Powerful mixing and editing tools to polish up your music
• Studio quality effects
• 24-bit audio quality
• Tools to help publish your music on CD and on social sites like MySpace
• Easily mix down recordings to MP3 files

Ease of Use – 8

There is a bit of a learning curve to begin using Music Creator 5 and they offer a detailed user guide in the software and also videos on their site.  Once you getting the hang of it everything falls into place.  There are easy to follow Quick Start menu when first starting out.

You can choose up to 24 tracks or the normal 4 track recording which will load the default settings for a basic track.

When you launch the normal mode there are 4 tracks labeled with different instruments and vocals to record.  You can put whatever you want on each track, but it helps keep your first few songs organized.  You can also rename each track and select different instrument icons.

When you get more experienced with recordings you can select 16 or 24 tracks to create a total masterpiece.

Performance - 8

Performance will vary between machines based on the type of hardware and amount of music you’re recording.  We tested it on Windows Vista machine with A dual core processor and 4GB of RAM and it ran very smooth. Also an XP machine with a Pentium D processor and 1GB of RAM and had no problem running it alone without any other programs running.  More resources are used up while mixing down multiple tracks.

Product Support - 8

There are a number of ways to get support from Cakewalk including FAQ, online manuals and videos, tech tips, email, and user forums.  Any questions we had were answered within 24 hours and there are a lot of great users in their forums so answers could be faster.

Conclusion

Music Creator 5 is an affordable, feature rich multi-track recorder that is perfect for the beginning home recording enthusiast.  It has a lot of studio quality effects and is easy to use so you’ll be recording in no time.  There is a bit of learning curve to master all of the editing and MIDI functions and you might experience troubles depending on what sound card you have.  For the best results you might want to consider picking up the Cakewalk UA-1G USB Audio Interface.  It officially supports Windows XP and Vista (32-bit) but we were able to get it to work on Vista (x64) by tweaking a few settings but 32-bit is recommended.  You can either download the software from their online store for $34.99 or buy the boxed version at retailers such as Best Buy or Staples.

Download Cakewalk Music Creator 5

Rating

• Installation: 8
• Ease of Use: 8
• Features: 8
• Performance: 8
• Product Support: 8