Customer Reviews

Cakewalk Music Creator 4 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have never published a review on Amazon , but in this case I felt duty bound considering how much I rely on the opinions expressed by others on this site.


The problems I had are as follows:

I have tried to be as accurate as possible. If I have misspoken on anything, it is because I tried to call customer support, a number found in the manual. After calling, a recording states that Cakewalk does not offer phone support for this product. I was directed to an email address that would answer my questions. Never heard back from anyone.

Poor Customer Support
Never replied to my emails.

Only Allows One Active Input
Most sound cards these days have more than one input. Although this product recognized all of my inputs (Example: Mic In, Line In), it only allows one input to be active. Activating another input requires that the user select the desired input and then shut down the application and restart it. Therefore, more than one input may not be active at one time. This means that you cannot record two tracks simultaneously in stereo. For example, you cannot sing into Mic 1 and have guitar recorded on Line In at the same time. This option is only available if you upgrade. There is no mention of this limitation on the package.

The Use Of Real Estate Is Poor
The interface for the track view requires you to expand the view for each track to view track details such as input and output. Its takes up way too much room and makes the view appear cluttered.

Non-Intuitive Concepts - Over-Complicated To Use
Example: In order to use the software based synth you would think that you would need one track to record the MIDI that has been assigned to output to a particular synthesizer.
However you need three tracks (Again consuming much real estate)
One track for the recording of midi with its output set to a synth.
One track to "hold" the synth with its input set to the Midi track and its output set to an output "bus".
One track to receive the output of the synth and the output set to a wave file destination.

What-You-Hear Is Not Necessarily What-Is-Exported
After creating a short song that sounded ok, I decided to export.
The exported wave file sounded great but had no drums. After much reading I figured out that the midi out was being sent to a synth on my sound card. The only way I figured out to play drums was to use the included software based synth which required building a tedious drum map.


Conclusion
The cost is cheap considering the features. But then you realize this is really an up-sale vehicle. That is, you are almost certainly going to pay to upgrade if you want to record anything serious.

There are better products on the market.

If you are a beginner, this is a hard program to use. I have been mutlitrack recording for over 20 years and if I had problems understanding how to run this application, you certainly will.

Felt cheated because the manual states that more than one instrument can be recorded at the same time but found this not to be true.

Have heard about Cakewalk for years but upon finally trying one of their products, was very disappointed.

This is a great program and it only cost $35! Also they give you free video training. The program GUI looks good and is logically laid out. I don't need a big giant program yet. I just want something that I can record a few guitar tracks and the MC-4 is perfect and it is great training if you do wish to move up to a more full featured program. For the low price you get a lot of bang for your duck.
An interface is needed to get your music instruments and mics into the computer. I use a Eurorack MX-802 mixer going into an M-audio Firewire Solo. The M-audio box comes with Abelton music program which is much more expensive then the MC-4 but I prefer the Cakewalk program.
I can record 1 stereo track or 2 mono at once. That's fine for me. Maybe a guitar to USB cable if all that's needed is one guitar. I also have a midi keyboard (Creative Prodikeys DM)also going into the program.

Wow! What an amazing product for the price. Dozens of channels; uncountable musical instruments; formal music notation; guitar strings that look real; piano keys; export to WAV files...and on and on seemingly never ending feature list--OMG!

Now, like myself, you may not have a fancy MIDI device hooked up to your computer. You may spend sometime trying to figure out how to playback your composition. Here is a useful set of instructions:

Step 1: select "Insert" menu option
Step 2: select "Soft Synths" menu option
Step 3: select "Cakewalk TTS-1" menu option

Now you can play the notes and hear them with your headphone.

Enjoy!

If you happen to take a class that uses this program then it shouldnt be too bad. but if you're just like the rest of us who just want to record something with decent quality and that want to actually get it done then dont bother with this ******** program.

Granted yes with having the power to create something with the details you want comes lots of learning and lots of patience to ultimately achieve what you want. But unfortunately this ******* **** doesn't do anything to help you learn.

Yes there is a booklet which only tells you what features do what(but doesnt tell you how to access them!!!) and yes there are a few tutorial videos(with an already open project without showing you how to get there) but ultimately you are left out on your own. You have to learn through trial and error to find the stuff you are looking for. I would gladly look at each and every single tutorial video if only there WERE videos that show you how to do even the most minimal things.

So skip this program unless you know someone or some website that actually shows you how to use it so you can get something out of it. (And no there are currently no youtube videos that actually help you step by step on how to do what. So dont even go there)

I have used Cakewalk Music Creator 4 with my old HP Pavilion PC (which uses Windows XP) for over a year, and it works great... However, when I bought a computer that used Windows Vista, I lack to have never configured it to even work, then when I did, and recorded my multi track recordings, the tracks were off sync with one another... for instance, If I record my guitar/vocal on track one, bass on track 2 and drums on track 3, my drums are alwasy coming out about 1/4 beat behind the rest of the music.
I thought I was having sound card issues, and have bought three different sound cards for the Vista computer, each one not helping and I wind up taking the sound cards back and finally gave in to the fact that I just have to keep using my old XP maching if I want to multi track with Cakewalk... uuuggghh!!!

I bought MC4 at my local Staples store for $39.95 to record a few guitar and bass riffs to share with my music buddy. I have XP, and had no problems with the install other than hanging on the .wav file for quite some time which another reviewer mentioned. (If you wait it out, it works ok.) I had to learn how to use it, and there were a couple of frustrating moments, but after a day or so of playing around I was able to get some nice clear acoustic guitar and bass recordings. For the price it is a great teaching tool, and works exactly as advertised, but I might move up to Sonar 7 in the next several months as there are a lot more support books and info out there to help me.

This app is a great one most especially for folks that know what they need. The Marketing hype is "no exp ness" but in reality that's not completely true. If you don't know your way around driver modes / signal flow, you don't want this version. It's totally NOT GarageBand-

This is a pretty good ENTRY LEVEL audio editor. It's mostly good for editing a wave file you already have on your computer. It only allows you to record one audio track input at a time, so that right there should tell you it's not that powerful. Don't expect to be able to hook your band's inputs to a $30 software package.

when I bought this I was looking for something similar to garage band but for a pc, after looking at many programs I decided to get this one, not worth it. I hardly ever use it and now I have a mac so pretty much I use garage band. Even the free program audacity is better.

I have no use for this under-featured product. Maybe I was expecting too much for my $35, but Music Creator 4 only fills a niche in my trash can. Difficult to learn, and featureless when you do get it going. If you just throw-away $35, at least you will save yourself the hard-drive space.