Cakewalk Kinetic review

Kinetic is a brand new music creation program that focuses squarely on dance music production.

With pictures of DJs spinning records and looking thoughtful on the packaging, it's clearly aimed at those with the creative flair but not the technical training to produce their own music.

With so many similar programs already on the market, Cakewalk has been able to cream the best ideas from a variety of its competitors. Most notable is the use of Grooves, combinations of short, looped sounds triggered with a series of 20 buttons, an idea taken wholesale from Propellerhead's ReBirth. Propellerhead's Reason seems to be another source of inspiration, with tracks constructed from a variety of built-in software synthesisers.

Kinetic's synths aren't as numerous or as inspiring as Reason's, though. The GrooveSynth sample playback module and the Psyn virtual analogue synthesiser are licensed from Roland, a company that makes some excellent hardware synths. However, GrooveSynth's piano isn't Roland's best effort. While it could pass muster in a professional recording, few of its sounds have that extra spark of excitement. Psyn produces some interesting noises, but its sprawling, cryptic interface will confuse even experienced synth programmers. To make matters worse, a bug in the software occasionally makes some of its controls disappear from view.

Fortunately, there's a decent range of effects to spice things up, including a compressor. This is an effect that's used for fattening up mixes and is a feature that's often missing from affordable music software packages.

Kinetic can also import audio loops in WAV format, and they're stretched automatically to fit the tempo of your track. You can adjust their pitch to get them in tune, but that's about it as far as editing is concerned. Kinetic doesn't let you record your own audio tracks.

Track construction is a simple process of finding a synth sound and Pattern (a preset MIDI phrase) that work well together, and repeating the process up to 16 times to build up a Groove. Patterns can be edited using a piano roll editor, and you can create new ones with a MIDI keyboard. You can create up to 64 different Grooves, but while each one can have its own Pattern and mixer setting, synth and effect settings can't be changed mid-track. The Song Arranger is where you define the order in which Grooves play to build up your track.

The comparison with Propellerhead Reason is somewhat unfair, as Reason costs £190 and doesn't have the beginner-friendly Pattern presets that Kinetic offers. Kinetic should be easy for amateurs to get to grips with, but the functional nature of its sounds means exciting results rely on interesting performances, and most people will soon run out of Patterns they like. Those with the means to create MIDI performances will get more from Kinetic, but these people will probably prefer a more traditional MIDI sequencer than Kinetic's use of Grooves and the very simplistic Song Arranger.