Reference Guide

1552 Beginner’s guide to Cakewalk software

Audio

Tracks

A track is represented by a horizontal strip in the Track view that has a name and number on the left

side (each track is also represented by a vertical module in the Console view). A track is a container

you usually use to keep the sound from each instrument separate from the others—you usually keep

the sound from each instrument on a separate track.

In the following picture, you can see the visual results of recording the first 3 notes of “Three Blind

Mice” as audio in Track 1, and as MIDI in Track 2.

A. Name of Track 1 B. Three C. Blind C. Mice

Notice that the graph (or picture, SONAR stores these picture files in the Picture Cache folder in the

Cakewalk Projects folder) of the audio data follows the natural decay in loudness of a sound after

each note is struck. This is as expected since the pictures represent the actual sound that is

recorded. The MIDI track’s graph is much simpler, since it only represents commands to turn a

certain note on for a certain time period, then turn another note on, etc. We zoomed in on these two

tracks far enough to expose all the track property fields, such as Volume, Pan, Input, Output, etc.

Notice the different logos left of the track names that distinguish audio tracks from MIDI tracks.

Notice the data in the audio track’s Out field: A. This is the name of the output driver that this

particular sound card uses. If your sound card only has one pair of outputs (or one stereo output),

you don’t have to change anything in the Out field. SONAR fills it in automatically as soon as

SONAR finishes running the Wave Profiler. If your sound card has more than one pair of outputs, or

you have more than one sound card installed and enabled on your computer, you can use this field

to choose what pair of outputs you want to hear a specific track played back through.

Note: It is not necessary to run the Wave Profiler for a sound card using an ASIO driver.

DCB