Next, your decimated, filtered and overdriven sample goes to a three-band parametric equaliser. Although everyone probably has their own favourite third-party distortion effect, the built-in algorithms are useful because they allow you to apply drive to only a single voice within a patch, or use different combinations for each Element. The next section is an overdrive, with knobs for shape and tone and a similar pop-up list of algorithms, including tube, soft, mid, hard and asymmetric. They may not be as dramatic as the low-pass four-pole filter, but are still useful. Many of these don't seem to do much until they are modulated over time, so it is worthwhile experimenting with them. These include not only the usual sort of band-pass/slope combinations (HP/LP/BP from one to six-pole), but also comb, 'pink', all-pass and band-reject filters. Left-clicking on the arrow next to the filter name brings up a list of filter types. The associated envelopes and LFOs reside at the bottom of the Element page. You have to watch out for resonance, as it has a woofer-blowing unpredictability. It will recognise loop points in these, and you can write your own SFZ file (see box) to use with it.įrom here, the sample goes into a bit reducer/decimator effect and then into a very nice filter with cutoff and resonance.
Dimension Pro will load in all manner of samples: WAV, AIFF and Ogg Vorbis formats, 8 to 32 bits, all sample rates, stereo or mono.
Samples can be loaded by clicking on the sample name space, which opens an Explorer window, or you can drag and drop from Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder. Underneath the sample name is a list of general controllers such as low/high key/velocity, pitch-bend, tune and so on, all of which can be edited by placing the cursor over the value and sliding the mouse or wheel up and down. When an Element is loaded, the name of the sample appears below the Program area in what Cakewalk call the Element area - the main body of the synth. You can load and save individual Elements, and combine them with others as a Program. Any samples used in more than one Element (or instance of Dimension Pro) are shared, instead of taking up more RAM.
You can even assign different MIDI channels to each Element, as long as you can live with channels one through four going to Elements one through four.
There is also a waveguide generator, for plucked-string instruments.Įach patch consists of up to four Elements, which are basically complete synth voices except for the global modulation and reverb effects, and are made up of a sample or multisample, along with the associated Element controls. First, any sound that is less than 4000 samples long is read as a single-cycle wavetable, just like an ordinary synthesizer oscillator Dimension Pro generates an image of the sample that eliminates digital aliasing so it can be used across the entire keyboard. Though Dimension is a sample-playback synth, it has a couple of other tricks up its sleeve. Although Dimension was anything but 'unprofessional', Dimension Pro expands the sample set included with the synth, and comes on two DVDs to pack the incorporated samples, which total 7 gigabytes. The original Dimension was one of the synths included with the second incarnation of Cakewalk's Project 5 loop sequencer for an overview, see Sound On Sound 's Project 5 review.
Could it have anything to do with the fact that Apple are turning to Intel chips and that we end users may finally be seeing a harmonic convergence at the end of the tunnel? I don't know about that, but Cakewalk have stuck a toe into a bi-platform future - for their synths anyway - starting with Dimension Pro. If only more hardware units had as much room between pots!Ĭakewalk have taken the workhorse soft synth that was bundled with their Project 5 loop sequencer, put the sound library on steroids and made it available as a separate product on both Mac and PC.Ĭakewalk are gearing up for the future, first compiling a 64-bit version of Sonar and now releasing their first cross-platform product. The knob controls are moused straight up and down, not circular.
Above them is the sample used by the Element. The 'E' buttons at top left control which Element is up for editing. Dimension Pro's basic screen, with two Elements loaded.