Cakewalk V-Studio 100 Portable Music Studio Boston MA

Cakewalk’s V-Studio 100 wears many hats, but one says “mixing machine.”

Yes, we’ve figured out that the state of the economy is even more annoying these days than a late-night celebrity gossip TV show. So we like to review products that have multiple purposes—like if the same box you use live to mix your guitar rig or keyboard setup, or use to play backing tracks, can be the same box that serves as a DAW controller and provides plug-ins for mixing. Well, the V-Studio 100 is that kind of box, and it even accommodates laptop fans.

We’ll concentrate on the DAW/mixing aspects, but let’s at least mention the other functions. The V-Studio 100 is across-platform, 8-in+mix/6-out USB 2.0 audio interface with guitar input, two XLR inputs, two 1/4" TRS ins, and resolution up to 24/96kHz. It’s also a digital mixer with eight ins, two outs, and headphone out, as well as six channels of onboard, hardware DSP based digital EQ, compression, and reverb. And, it’s a portable recorder that records to SD card while also serving as a portable juicer for serving up refreshing fruit smoothies. Okay, well maybe it doesn’t do the juicing thing, but it does do everything else.

MACKIE CONTROL

The key to using the V-Studio 100 as a control surface is that it works with any program that speaks Mackie Control(i.e., just about everything, including Acid, Live, Sonar, Logic, Digital Performer, Record, etc.). For tactile control, the V-Studio 100 has a 100mmmotorized, touch-sensitive fader, five rotary encoders, 11 general-purpose buttons, programmable footswitch, and transport buttons. You can switch the controls among tracks and buses, with the fader and some of the knobs serving as a basic channel strip. There’s also an LCD screen that can switch between showing levels, or displaying what can be controlled with the various knobs.

Of course a single-fader solution isn’t as comprehensive as something like a Euphonix Artist Series control surface or Cakewalk’s own VS-700Cconsole, but in use, moving among operations is surprisingly fluid. Where the single-fader approach works best is when you’re tweaking a mix rather than starting out. My preferred workflow is to set up a rough mix on the onscreen faders with the mouse, then switch over to the control surface fader to optimize one track at a time.

SONAR CONTROL

The V-Studio 100 comes with its own DAW software, Sonar VS (Windows only; it’s similar to Sonar Home Studio7 with some Sonar 8 elements thrown in). The software bundle also includes several independent cross-platform plug-ins, including the VX-64 Vocal Strip, Channel Tools, Boost 11 Maximizer, Guitar Rig 3 LE, and several virtual instruments—Studio Instruments suite (drums, bass, strings, keyboard), Rapture LE, and Dimension LE. So what does this have to do with mixing? Well, if you’re using Sonar VS or other Sonar variants, the V-Studio 100 recognizes Cakewalk’s ACT (Active Controller Technology) protocol. This brings out various signal processor and soft synth parameters to hardware controls that you can re-assign at wi...

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