( http://www.cakewalk.com/Press/07-10-02-OMFI.asp )

Release date: July 10, 2002
Cakewalk® to Support OMFI Technology
in SONAR 2.0

— Company Joins Advanced Authoring Format Association—

BOSTON- Cakewalk, the leading developer of Windows-based music production software, has announced that it is currently developing support for OMFI (Open Media Framework Interchange) technology into its flagship SONAR 2.0 digital multitrack recording system. OMFI support for SONAR 2.0 is now in the alpha-testing phase at the company.

OMFI is the film, video and audio industry's standard for saving and transferring digital post-production projects between different production studios and workstation platforms. SONAR 2.0 will both import and export OMFI format files, and will be available by early fall, 2002, at no charge to all registered SONAR 2.0 owners.

The company also recently joined the Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) Association- the organization responsible for the continuing development of OMFI-based technology. Cakewalk is the first Windows audio software company to join this influential trade association.

"SONAR is increasingly being used alongside other manufacturers' video and audio editing systems," commented Ron Kuper, vice president of engineering at Cakewalk. "We are looking forward to a bright future with AAF, where we can provide our customers with the seamless interoperability they need."

The AAF is a broadly-based trade association created to promote the development and adoption of AAF technology. AAF technology allows content creators, editors and rich media authors to exchange video, audio, images, text and metadata between applications, and builds on existing OMFI technology.

In addition, Cakewalk plans to support Broadcast Wave files in SONAR 2.0 at the same time that it releases support for OMFI files this fall. The Broadcast Wave Format (EBU Standard N22) allows audio material to be interchanged between different computer platforms and broadcast environments. It extends conventional RIFF WAV files by adding meta-data such as creation date and time, material identifier, and time position (SMPTE).

Launched at Musik Messe in Frankfurt, Germany this March, the SONAR 2.0 digital multitrack recording system provides unlimited digital audio and MIDI recording; real-time, fully-automatable DirectX 8 audio effects and low-latency DXi software synths; support for Reason and other ReWire-compatible synths; comprehensive audio loop construction and editing tools; support for importing and exporting ACID-format .WAV files; flexible project file management; and other professional music production capabilities.
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-david abraham

[ 11 July 2002, 03:46: Message edited by: David Abraham Fenton ]

Wow, Cakewalk is really aggressively pushing Sonar development forward. This is very encouraging. Steinberg needs this kind of competition to stay healthy and focused. With Emagic out of the picture now on the PC, Cakewalk has the opportunity to dramatically increase their market share in PC based professional audio.

-Tronam

...yes. I was working on setting up a MAC/DP3 environment just to make life easier when collaborating with other MAC/DP3 producers... SONAR/OMF should make this unnecessary.

SONAR seems to be going pretty much in the direction I had hoped, now if I can just get Sampletank to add splits/layers/16 outputs/legato and DXi2....

-david abraham

I'd love to just see Cakewalk acquire or license FXpansion's VST-DX adapter like they did with the DR-008 and make it a permanent part of Sonar. They could help make it even more seamless and robust than it currently is. With DXi2, I hope more developers embrace it. Apparently, they have made it much easier to develop for than it has been in the past.

-Tronam

That is a nice feature to add even though I'll never own it. I know in the long run it will benefit Cakewalk, which will in turn lead to it benefiting it's users (i.e. me). I'm with Tronam, no need to support ASIO but including the Adapter with Sonar would just make it all that more sexy to VST users. Now if they could only do something similar to Stieny's System Link...