It has been a banner week for DAW announcements and we haven’t even gotten over hump day yet!

First off, not really a new item, but there was an interesting article in Create Digital Music about the Pro Tools 8.0.1 update that was released at the end of August.  They have a compiled list of “legacy” (a relative use of the word for sure) hardware that Digidesign states will no longer be supported after this release.  Also, there’s confirmation that Window 7 and Snow Leopard will NOT be supported.

Our friends at Cakewalk have released Sonar 8.5.  There are a number of tasty goodies to make anyone using Sonar to drool just a little bit.  Cakewalk has a pretty extensive list of updates on the Sonar 8.5 page.  Cakewalk has been quite consistent for adding lots of features to please their customers, but they usually reserve those big ones for major releases.  There have been rumours that this was supposed to be release 9.0, but for some reason got designated a point update.

This isn’t a free update – it starts at USD$79.  They have taken a very different approach with this update by also offering five additional flavours of 8.5:

• Elite Piano Edition (8.5 bundled with full version of True Pianos)
  
• Elite Reverb Edition (8.5 bundled with IK Multimedia’s Classic Reverb plugins)
  
• Elite Guitar Edition (8.5 bundled with NI’s Guitar Rig 4)
• Notation Edition (8.5 bundled with Notion)
  
• Restoration Edition (8.5 bundled with Izotope RX)

Mark of the Unicorn has released Digital Performer 7.  They’ve kept their loyal fan-base appeased with a lot of familiar things, but have added a few goodies which are detailed on the DP7 page on their site.  Guitar Amp modeling, physical modelling of room mic’ing, guitar pedal modeling, enhanced channel strips and tweaked lead sheet creation are some of the major features touted on the site.

And of course, Propellerhead has released their much talked-about and anticipated “not-a-DAW”: Record.

Again, Create Digital Music has an interesting take on the reason that Record isn’t really a “DAW” in the blurry definition of the accronym.  Regardless, it’s worth a look-see if you’re so inclined.  One thing that they’ve done a fantastic job on in launching the new product is offer a LOT of free training and “behind the scenes” videos at “RecordU“, Propellerhead Tutorials Page, and even through a video podcast on iTunes.