You can't just walk into a Rocket Network Internet Recording Studio [sic, they capitalize it] and fire up Cubase, Logic Audio, or Pro Tools and start to groove. You've got to own them in the first place. Then they get customized to work in Rocket Network's environment, where you can use them to add tracks by musicians from around the world. To make the thing work properly, you go through your pro recording software company who hooks you into a leased virtual recording space where you do your work. So, then, are you just exchanging prerecorded tracks? I asked Sara:

"No, it is completely a virtual workspace," she explained, "an online space where you can do multitrack recording, work on the same tracks at the same time. I can be working on my part in San Francisco while my colleague is working on his part of the same track in London. When we're ready, we post those tracks.... It's multitrack recording, but it's not serial. In a standard kind of set up maybe the drummer would go in and then the bass player would go in and then the voice-over artist would go in and you'd have to do everything in series. What happens here is you have a central arrangement on a central server which is one of the Rocket Network services and you could all be working on that same project at the same time."

It was becoming clear that Sara's "standard kind of setup" was not the same as mine, so I cut to the chase and asked, "Can I bring in my band at the four corners of the earth into this Internet Recording Studio, do a count-off, and lay down a live basic track?"

"No, it's not real-time in that sense of the word," she admitted, but editorialized that "very little recording is done these days, I'm sure you're aware, where everybody just plugs in and plays at the same time. This is very much mimicking the whole kind of overdubbing and multitrack recording scenario. For most movies and stuff that work from a whole kind of overdub process it wouldn't work to do it in real-time. That's not our aim. Our aim is to reduce costs of brick-and-mortar studios and put artists and professionals in touch with each other that normally wouldn't be able to be because of time and travel costs."

So the cat was out of the bag. Always be suspicious of folks who capitalize generic nouns. This Internet Recording Studio was not the walk-in virtual recording studio I was looking for, but an Internet Overdubbing Studio where you bring your own (often very expensive) software. As a producer, you're going to find it of little use unless you already have your own basic, real-world pro studio setup.

But, if you've got that much, this service is invaluable. Once you get a grip on what the product really offers, Sara's sales pitch begins to make sense: