14 DAY TRIAL // OK, a short, yet important one: Cakewalk's wavetable synthesizer, Rapture, has suffered a rapture and is now changed thoroughly. Rapture is now fully compliant to all Vista specifications and will run in perfect conditions the 64-bit routines in both XP and Vista.
Cakewalk officials also claim that Rapture will as well support 64-bit DXi and VSTi in correlation with the 64-bit hosts such as Sonar, for example. The 1.1 version will be able to run on PowerPC and Intel Macs, in VSTi, AU, and RTAS formats.
Cakewalk also states that "the VSTi format has been updated to version 2.4, and supports now composite and non-composite windows in OSX hosts" which means a better support for a wider range of applications running VSTi; which is quite cool especially since the new wave of "Vista-fying" actions has struck most producers.
It looks like the Vista was some sort of trigger for interoperability: once new specs of compliance were requested, all manufacturers hurried (well, some are slower indeed) to re-design their binaries and with or without intent they have opened new bridging solutions between their so different programs.
The wavetable tool will soon be available in the shape of a standalone application as Cakewalk seems to have changed quite many things along with the Vista specs. It remains to be seen what will Vista have to say in the real working conditions... (now, I am quite evil, but I don't trust Vista yet).
Finally, all registered Cakewalk customers benefit from the 1.1 Rapture update for free.