First experiences
Cakewalk is a MIDI sequencer program made by Cakewalk Music Software. A lite version of it came with our edition of AWE (I think this has been changed today). The program operates like a tape recorder with play, record, forward and backward buttons. When Cakewalk is started for the first time, the 'Setting/Devices' window pops up automatically. The In- and Out-choices are already updated as 'SB16 MIDI In' and 'Sound Blaster AWE32 MIDI Synth', but they need to be clicked once to get them activated. Next we opened a demo file using the Open command from the File menu and after pushing the play button we heard nice music from the headphones. The volume was quit low but it was audible.
So, what next? We needed good speakers. I knew that the small desktop speakers couldn't be so good. I wanted to get the sound to our home stereo. I had seen a line-out jack on the AWE and checked from the 'Getting Started' manual that it was a stereo output. A suitable plug should be 3.4 mm in diameter, and on the stereo side we needed two so called RCA-plugs. We had to drive downtown and buy such a cable, 3 yards long. Uh, it was expensive (everything in Finland is)!
We played the song once again, now trough the home stereo. We where forced to turn the gain of our stereo almost to the maximum in order to get sufficient volume. What was the reason for this? I opened the 'Mixer' and noticed that the main volume (leftmost slider) was at the half. There is also a slider for the syth-output (marked with a picture of a keyboard). Both slided to a 75 % position we were able to lower the gain of the stereo to a normal position. Note the checkboxes above the sliders. A green dot means that output is enabled. and a red dot that the input is enabled. In the Mixer settings, there's also an adjustable output gain multiplier, but we talk about it later.
So far, we have succeeded listen to a MIDI-song played with Cakewalk trough the AWE soundcard. I'm not going to make this article a course of using Cakewalk. There is a good online course on the net: Cakewalkin' ... the easy way, written by Betty Kainz from Vienna, Austria. I'm refering to a sequencer program only when I need it to illustrate the operation of AWE. Next I'm going to dive deep inside to the AWE-card.
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