Home Studio Cakewalk is tremendously popular, probably because it's marketed as the complete and total solution for any home recording tasks. People who want to get started building their own home studio usually take a look at Cakewalk's capabilities and its low price tag, and figure it's the best inexpensive high quality recording software solution for them. And it's easy to see why...

Home Studio Cakewalk is capable of handling VST (Virtual Studio Technology) instruments and effects. Instead of operating the VSTIs as plug-ins however, everything is converted into the DirectX and DXi format, which is a Windows-friendly audio effects interface. For people who are used to recording with any of the Cubase recording programs though, this will take some time to adjust to. Home Studio Cakewalk does a great job of minimizing added latency when you factor in the extra audio routing of the converter. (Latency is the amount of time it takes for the audio to register in your recording program. For example, if you were using a software program that had high latency and you strummed a guitar, it might take a few fractions of a second before you hear the guitar in your headphones or monitors.)

You have access to hundreds of software synths, and compatibility with additional voicings from Project5, Kinetic, Reason, and ReBirth that can all be exported right into Home Studio Cakewalk. And actually, since Home Studio is compatible with these programs, you can work out just about recording/editing/mixing arrangement you want between any of them, if you're looking for more flexibility.

With Home Studio Cakewalk, you can compose and print your own sheet music and scores. The easiest way to go about using this feature is to route your MIDI directly into the software program, and simply have Home Studio Cakewalk transcribe your performance as you play. However you can also point and click each note, which makes the process a lot slower, but easier as well for if you're not a very good keyboard player.

MIDI editing is not as easy as it's made out to be, but this software does allow you to do quite a bit of editing in this area. You can insert, delete, copy, move, or even modify MIDI notes.

Home Studio Cakewalk gives you unlimited Undo operations, which makes editing material a lot easier. You won't have to worry about stacking a sequence of edits and then not being able to remove one of them.

One of the best features of Home Studio Cakewalk that you can simultaneously record several tracks at once through the support of multi-channel audio cards.

So with all these great features, why are we only giving this software a 7.5?

First and foremost, the whole on-screen layout of this software could be a lot more straightforward. There's just too much content packed in the window. Granted, Cubase also has a very full on-screen layout, but that program offers quite a bit more than Home Studio Cakewalk does.

Secondly, Home Studio only runs on Windows, and beyond that, it's not even compatible with Windows 95, 98, or NT.

There are a few other disappointments... The whole mixing setup could be better, and the inclusion of Pyro Cakewalk is simply a 30 day trial that has to be paid for after it expires if you want to continue using it.

Overall though, Home Studio Cakewalk offers an affordable entry level recording software program that will handle most of the needs of musicians and novice engineers.

For those of you who aren't content with what Home Studio Cakewalk offers, but can't afford to pay for software like Cubase or Pro Tools, we recommend the Mixcraft Recording Studio. It's a great Windows-compatible software program that's less than half the price of Cakewalk and offers a much simpler layout with quite a bit of recording flexibility.