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We never thought we'd find ourselves using the words 'Audio Units' when describing a Cakewalk product – until now the American company have rarely strayed out of the relative safety of the Windows domain. Sure, they distributed a Mac product or two back in the day, but this latest release – the Dimension Pro synth – represents their first serious attempt to attract Apple-based musicians.

This new instrument is Cakewalk's latest collaboration with rgc:audio's Rene Ceballos, and is an expanded version of the Dimension synthesizer that comes with Project5 2.

Mixing it up

It seems that many software instruments these days fall into one of two categories: there are the subtractive synthesizers and there are the ROMplers.

Sure, a ROMpler might have a filter and a simple envelope or two so the user can tweak the included samples, and a subtractive synth might fortify its collection of vintage waveforms with a smattering of sampled waves, but most products are weighted towards one side of the spectrum or the other.

Dimension Pro, on the other hand, is bursting with both sampled content and all of the bells and whistles one might expect to see on a complex subtractive synth.

Cakewalk are shipping Dimension Pro with a whopping 7GB of samples (these are spread across a pair of DVDs). The samples are stored as SFZ files, a format we first saw used in rgc: audio's SFZ SoundFont player.

They cover all of the sonic categories one might expect to see in a general purpose ROMpler – there are drum kits galore, ethnic and orchestral instruments and loads of synthesizer waveforms.

Guitars and basses abound, and there's a good selection of keyboard instruments. You also get a nice bonus in the shape of Gary Garritan's Pocket Orchestra.

While the included samples certainly pass muster on their own, Dimension Pro only really comes to life when said samples are pumped through its vast synthesis architecture. It offers the ability to stack four stereo sample sets, each of which has a complete array of advanced synthesis functions.

You can spit the samples through a multimode filter, a bit-reduction processor and a fully parametric 3-band EQ. After these comes a dedicated multi-effects processor with another resonant filter and an LFO. In addition to the insert effects, you can send each layer (or Element) to an aux effect.

20/20 vision

Also onboard are a staggering 20 LFOs and 20 multi-stage envelope generators. This means you have a phenomenal range of modulation possibilities. You can route these mod sources to all the usual destinations (including pitch, pan and amplitude), as well as to filter cut-off and resonance.

Everything that should sync to the host tempo does so, ensuring that your rhythmic machinations automatically lock to your song's bpm. All very nice indeed.

Other goodies include a Vector Mixer for performing X/Y sweeps between the four Elements and a pop-up mod matrix for routing your internal and MIDI modulation sources to the desired parameters.