Feathers Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 To date, I have tried a number of Sequencers on my PC. They all have good points but each one seems to have it's own set of problems and peculiarities. I will list each one and describe the problems I've encountered. Feel free to respond and let me know of your own experiences... 1:Fruityloops 3.56: When I first saw Fruity 3.56 I was blown away! I was amazed by how much it had moved on from it's previous versions. I liked the Speech Synth and the VSTi Support. I also found it very easy to play around with and figure out it's various features, even without consulting the manual or help guide. After playing around with it some more and actually trying to use it as a serious tool, things seemed to slide downhill. Firstly it wouldn't synchronise with my Korg Z1 synth. I spent ages configuring both the Z1 & Fruity in order to make Fruity act as Master and drive my Z1's clock. I gave up after a while and tried to persuade Fruity to receive the Z1's clock signal. No way! Forget it! Even after consulting the help guide I still couldn't get the two in sync. After a while I abandoned the synchronisation and moved onto recording notes from the Z1. This was much easier but I soon discovered that Fruity was totally uninterested in recording my Z1's modulation wheel. After some searching I eventually got it to respond but it would only control things like - attack, decay etc from this wheel. Why was it such a pain just to get Fruity to record the modulation wheel? I'm sure there's a way to do it but with every other sequencer I've used, it's not a problem! I feel that Fruity has some nice features but is lacking some of the refinements we've come to expect on Pro Sequencers. 2:Reason 2.0: It certainly takes a lot of Hdisk space for full install! I was impressed with Reason in terms of it's sound quality and unique design. I love the CV/Gate wiring on the back of the machines and it has some very powerful Synths. Reason had no problems in synchronising itself to my Z1. In fact I had the feeling it was very eager to respond to the Z1's timing signal. I didn't have to refer to the help guide or spend hours trying to get it synced. I could turn the speed dial on my Z1 and watch Reason's tempo change accordingly. Problem? Ummm.... How do I get Reason to play an external midi device? Well of course I now know that Reason isn't actually able to control external devices... Shame! Well it's still a pretty amazing piece of software and worth using, but at this time, it's simply not enough for my needs. 3:Cakewalk Sonal XL: Yuck! Ugly flat windows 98/Me style interface but it seemed to work ok. I didn't have to spend too long figuring out how to play samples and midi at the same time. It was only after a day or so that I noticed all of the samples were playing in mono. I've tried configuring and reconfiguring but apparently Sonar thinks I have a mono soundcard (adlib perhaps?). Apart from this minor problem, I also think it's not as capable as some other sequencers. 4:Emagic's Logic Audio Platinum 5.10: Nice looking interface! It certainly looked very capable. After setting up the hardware I tried recording some notes from the Z1. No problem. Next I decided to add some audio tracks and so I preceeded to import a wave file. Well actually I didn't get very far. One hour later I was still trying to import a single wav file into a single 'Logic Audio' track. I consulted the 'help' of course. It explained very clearly how to do this... I followed the instructions and still nothing happened. Now I'm sure there are many people reading this who will be able to tell me exactly what I should be doing in order to play audio. Well I'm sorry but I don't want to hear it. :-) After trying to carry out some other basic actions I quickly learned that there is nothing Logical about this sequencer. It's the most illogical and unintuitive program I've ever attempted to use! It kind of reminds me of some of those awful MAC ports, you know? Those sugar coated programs that Mac users are used to. Very pretty with sculpted, photorealistic buttons, but actually lacking in all of the basic features and user-friendliness that PC users are used to. Am I right in thinking that Logic Audio began life on the Mac? 4:Acid Pro 4: I've always liked Acid (spare the jokes). I found this program very easy to use and I was able to create whole tracks in a very short time. Acid is great for getting ideas together and giving you totally new ones as well. It's very inspirational and pretty user-friendly. Unfortunately I haven't found a version that's been entirely stable. Every version of Acid I've owned has crashed and crashed again. Pro 4 maintains this crashing tradition and so Acid users won't be disappointed on that score. Acid is great with samples/loops and now of course it supports VSTi. I eventually got it to record and play my Z1 as well. I was shocked to discover however, that you can't create a track and then record into it (as such). You can't re-record either. All you can do is record midi into a new track and edit in step time. To make matters worse... I can see no way of changing the midi channel to anything but 1!!! What use is midi out if it only works on one channel? If anyone here can provide answers then I'd be grateful. Acid pro is certainly great for getting new ideas and producing tracks within a very short time but it's midi support is bad. 5:Cubase Sx: Hmmm... The only sequencer that seems to score on all counts. It syncs with the Z1, It plays audio without any problems and it's very intuitive unlike the Logic Audio thing. I actually used to hate previous versions of cubase. I always found them to be unstable and unfriendly. It used to be a major deal just trying to get the metronome to sound. Sx is much better, it's very easy to create a drum track and play VSTi's and to drop in audio and slice automatically. The software also seems very stable these days. The bottom line is that it's not really worth me spending weeks/months learning other sequencers when they lack important features or don't function well with external hardware. I would like to play around with Reason2 because it's still a very good sequencer but at this time it's not worth my while. I like the speech synth in Fruity but it sucks in some other ways and so again, it's not worth learning at this time. It looks like I'll be relying on Cubase for quite some time... Comments? Feathers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DeeperNETWERK Posted December 19, 2002 Share Posted December 19, 2002 Well if you like fruity's "speech synth", then why not use Fruity as a VSTi? And you can always rewire reason into SX and use SX's sequencer to control all of Reason. Sounds like you got it set. Deeper.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feathers Posted December 19, 2002 Share Posted December 19, 2002 Yes but the idea of controlling one sequencer with another just to use a speech synth seems pretty strange to me. Anyway... I believe Fruity's Speech is rendered as a sample before it's dropped into a music track and so maybe I could save that sample? My current machine wouldn't have enough power to run too many music apps @ once. As far as reason as a VSTi goes... Again, it would stress me out I think. If I use Reason then it will probably be just as a standalone for it's own sounds. I have some very good VSTI's for use in Sx etc. And of course I have the Z1 as well. I will certainly find an easy way to make use of the Fruity speech synth though. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Omar Posted December 20, 2002 Share Posted December 20, 2002 tried Muzys or Massiva, might as well give them a shot and see if you like them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feathers Posted December 20, 2002 Share Posted December 20, 2002 Never heard of them! I will go and search for them! :-) P.S. I get sick of typing and retyping posts. Often when I click the post button, it either doesn't post or gives an error message. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kiph T. Elephant Posted December 20, 2002 Share Posted December 20, 2002 I get sick of typing and retyping posts. I usually copy my message before I post it (Ctrl+C) and if there is a problem I just paste it (Ctrl+V). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest inkubator Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 concerning the "unlogical" logic i have to disagree... 0. the first logic was made for atari, i guess (i am open for correction) 1. one can't compare fl with logic (this one beside) 2. if your logic is configurated correctly you will not have any problem to play samples. to bring samples into logic is just fucking simple (nope, i will not tell you how to do, cauz you dont want to know it) as droppin an mp3 into your winamp... 3. i cannot imagine a better, more logical way to implement automation than in logic 5.xxx. its just fucking, ehm, logical... in the professional ligue, there is no other possibility than logic or cubase. which one you use is just a matter of taste... peace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Maccster Posted January 8, 2003 Share Posted January 8, 2003 I totally agree with Incubator. But you should work with the one that suits you best. If you ever need to tranport your file on a computer in a studio, it might cause a problem if you use one of the lesser knowne sequencers. I have a question for you. How does cubase perform on long arrangements, these days? Cubase used to have a timing problem whith extendet arrangements (example: for movie soundtracks). Do you have any experience with this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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