Best Sequencer to user with GS?

[slagni]

I have been reading this forum for a while now and it seems that most folks are leaning toward either Logic or Cubase VST. I am presently a Cakewalk user but thinking of switching and would like to get input from both Cakewalk users and others on the best sequencer to user with GS. (note: I also user Sound Forge for digital audio)

Thanks in advance

[holger]

In order to get best audio performance, take cubase. If you want to have many professional features and work with THE sequencer, take logic. But logic needs more CPU resources - less tracks, less plugins. But working with platinum is great!

[KIA]

Hi

The old \"sequencer debate\" still holds true. I would suggest getting demo\'s of each of the programs and picking one that has an interface that you feel comfortable with.

The big three \"Cubase, Logic,Cakewalk\" all will do more or less the same thing as the next. \"as Holger Mentions\" Logic seems the more powerful but Holger is a power user. I use Cake having converted from Cubase. Each one of the big three has little nuances that make it a little different ie graphics,audio support.

Good Luck

KIA http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[rpldcox]

FWIW, Musicator is a great notation-based sequencer. It seems to be little known but it has excellent step entry as well as real-time transcribing to notation.

url: http://www.musicator.com/ (\"http://www.musicator.com/\")

[slagni]

KIA: You mentioned that you converted from Cubase to Cakewalk. Did you make the switch because of the user interface? What did you like better/worse?

Thanks in advance

[John Pin]

observations.

A lot of people from the states use cakewalk.
The rest seems to be divided Logic and VST.

Soundcards..Aardvark doesnt really exist here in Oz. I can go on in the same regard about amplifiers, guitars, all types of stuff.

It seems to me to come down to the wholesalers. Whatever they\'ve bought at the trade show..probably dependant upon what deal they got..thats what gets promoted in your region. Of course i know this being undermined by the INternet and online ordering but support issues still scare many people.

Over here, most people use either VST or Logic. Not many cakewalk users here amongst professionals. Vision is non existant except for one or two.

I find it all interesting. All product makers should have users lists. Not suppliers. But, having said that, they dont..so thank goodness for Northern Sounds.

Regards
JP

[SoUlGuY]

THe Roland MC-50 connected to the PC via a midiman thru box.. I don\'t believe in software sequencers coz i feel ackward using them with a mouse..
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, what ever works for you !

[slagni]

Are there any Cakewalk users out there that want to stand up for their product?

[PaPa Chalk]

I prefer Cubase Vst but i\'m very curious about the new logic.
http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
PaPa chalk

[CAT]

I used Cubase on Atari and it worked fine
damn I wish Atari had survived!!
Switching to PC I tried using Cubase again.
I was not satisfied to many crashes and timing problems.
Then I tried VST, okay a nicer interface, good plugins etc. etc.
But something was missing, then this little voice said..\"Cat!! listen to me!, switch to Logic Audio, explore a new world, it will be your new destiny\". Yesss, REDRUM was right..
I don\'t mean to dis Cubase or Cakwalk fans but Logic has all it needs, a very very good timing, a logical interface, environments (so you can control your studio the way you want it) and so much other usefull stuff I did not discover anywhere else, just dreamed about it..
oh yes Logic 4.0 is here! and it has excillent plugins, the ability to zoom individual tracks!! (I dreamed about this hehe) and
a new even better interface that just looks and feels better then anything I have seen out there.
Logic feels Unix/Linux, the rest feels and looks typical Windows
Which reminds me of \'Toy\'s \'r us\'.
Sorry Bill, you do your best,
maybe that is the problem??

CAT

other dreams I had: http://node1007b.a2000.nl/cat (\"http://node1007b.a2000.nl/cat\")

[slagni]

Still amazed that there are no Cakewalk users who are proud enough of there product to defend it on this Forum. I\'m becoming more and more enamoured with Logic. Unfortunately the Emagicusa website is only accessible with a password. Anyone have any idea how to purchase Logic in the US other than through Emagicusa?

[Steve Dimond]

Slagni,
O.K. I\'ll bite.
I\'ve been a Cakewalk user for about 6 years. The problem with software is that you sucked into the \"upgrade\" syndrome (read: wishing it did this). To be perfectly honest with you, I liked Cakewalk better in the early years. They were the first sequencer on the PC platform to offer a Staff View. In those days it was about creating a valuable tool to do midi work.
My problem with them (and pretty much all the sequencer developers out there) is that they turned their concentration to trying to learn how to do digital audio instead of evolving their interface for midi. Because of this both sides of the program suffer.
As a Cakewalk user I can tell you that it has worked for me in the past. I am however shopping for a \"fresher face\". I have an audio editor that does it\'s job extrememly well. I don\'t expect that audio program to do midi and I don\'t expect my sequencer to do audio. I don\'t ask my mechanic to do my taxes either.
There was some great advice offered on one of the earlier posts. Decide what you need to accomplish, Download demos and check out the interface(s).If it feels right . . . GET IT.
Sorry for the rantings, (But HEY I feel better) =^)

All the Best,

Steve Dimond

[Erik Nygaard]

Anyone else using Music Master VS?
It\'s designed to go hand in hand with the Roland VS 880/1680 Digital recorders.
It does not do audio per se but allows complete control over the VS (audio,effects etc).
Staff,Piano roll,Drum and event editors.
Very extensive midi control.
If you\'ve got a VS laying around you ought to check out the demo on http://www.datasonics.com.au/ (\"http://www.datasonics.com.au/\")

[Eddie Hughes]

I am a cakewalk user and proud of it
The midi editing knocks socks off
VST. I admit the audio mixing on VST
is much better but If you use decent
plugins on cakewalk this is not a problem.
Also the audio editing on Cakewalk is simply
the easiest and best around. I have also heard on the grapevine that Cakewalk are
developing a VST type interface for their
mixing console.

[KIA]

Hi Guys

Been reading the thread with interest. I demonstrate Cakewalk in the UK so consequently I use Cake at home. It wasn\'t always like this. I had an Atari and Cubase right back to Pro24. I gave it away to a school earlier this year when I bought a P200 AMD with 64mb ram. Not the most powerful machine but Cake works \"out of the box\" it gives me more audio than Cubase and Logic (I tried them) Interesting enough, If you go onto the Wish List you will see that a couple of people would like to GS move to a windows interface...voila that Cakewalk for you. Yet cakewalk doesn\'t look a \"Glossy\" as Cubase....and people complain that Cakewalk is not as good looking as Logic and Cubase (Nemesys be warned,stick to your guns)at the end of the long long day... It don\'t matter what you use, they all do more or less the same thing. I want to like Logic and Cubase but Cake is faster at getting an idea down for me. Lets be honest most people use about 45% of a sequencer for general things anyway SO IT REALLY DOESN\'T MATTER... like I said before get the demo\'s and get playing.

Have some fun

Peace to all(Legal)GS users

KIA http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[mitchb2]

Slagni,
There\'s really not much to defend. I use Cakewalk several hours a day. It\'s great. It\'s still a Windows program, which means you still deal with frustrating Windows problems.
Cakewalk is very easy to set up and use.. Great sequencer, good audio recording.

I render my Gigasampler tracks to audio tracks to free up memory, and Cake is great for this.

They are promising lots of good stuff in the next version, including true stereo tracks (instead of always working with a pair of mono tracks.)

[Eddie Hughes]

Hey mitchb2

Good Idea but how do you sequence GS from
cakewalk, Cakewalk keeps talking control
of the midi in port so I cannot sequence
GS...Please help.
I will then be able to import the wav file
into Cakewalk as you suggest

Thanks

[grayjohn]

Eddie,

I\'m not sure if this will help, and I can\'t even try it out \'cause I\'m not at my DAW right now. I think I have had this problem when I open Cakewalk before GS. Do you still have this problem when you launch Cakewalk from within GS?

John

[Eddie Hughes]

Hi John

Yes I do have this problem when I launch
Cakewalk from within GS i.e. as soon as cakewalk is loaded it takes control of the
midi in port


[This message has been edited by Eddie Hughes (edited 08-27-1999).]

[mitchb2]

Eddie,
I\'m not sure what you mean.
When I launch Cakewalk, I have a Port called \"Gigasampler/EndlessWave.\" I simply select this port, and I have access to the 16 Gigasampler channels.
BUT, if there is a conflict (both apps trying to use the same card), and you launch GS first, the port will not show up in Cake.
I open Cake first, btw.

I think you should post to the mailing list: that\'s where the tech support guys hang out.

One of the users in the Cakewalk newsgroup (he\'s a power user, too, so I\'m surprised he\'s having trouble) has the same problem as you, and he said he used Hubi\'s Loopback to overcome it.

[Bob Campbell]

I\'ve said this before, but it might help you in this situation.

I think there\'s some kind of bug with the gigasampler/endless wave midi driver. It seems to be linked somehow to the audio driver.
I have found that if I use, say VST and select the endless wav driver as a midi channel in VST, it immediately traps the audio channels that Gigasampler is supposed to be using. I know this, because I have an Aark 20/20+ which can tell you which drivers are in use or idle in it\'s mixer. I experimented with loads of different settings and other software, and the result is always the same. I\'ve heard of other people having problems getting their sequencers to run with GS.

I installed Hubi\'s midi loopback, and I went through my various audio programs, completely de-activating the use of the Endless Wave midi driver.

Instead, I use a Hubi midi port to talk to GS from my sequencer. Since doing this, it works fine.

I think the problem you are having could be the same thing.

Get a hold of Hubi\'s and try this. My recommendation is to use 2 hubi ports (you get the option to specify how many you want, read the hubi readme).

If you use hubi, it\'s important to be aware of looping problems. If you activate say LBP1 as a midi out device in Cakewalk, then deactivate it as a Midi in device, or you\'ll get a feedback loop. Same applies to any other ports, LBP2, LBP3 etc

try this and let me know if it fixes your audio problem.

Bob

[Eddie Hughes]

Hi Guys
Thankyou for all your help, After a complete days meddling, I have finally got it going, I will try your suggested driver a little later but the main problem seems to be with the \'SB live\' audio driver as I have gone into the system Information editor and turned off the SB driver (i think it was in config.sys/autoexec.bat (for some reason the drivers still install at DOS level) as soon as I unticked them I have no problems, I hope this works for other SB live users..
Once again, thanks guys, I will keep in touch

Eddie

P.S. this also removes the intermittent horrible blue error screen on boot-up

[slagni]

As was suggested above I believe the best solution to using mutiple midi applications together is to can the Gigasampler driver and install and use, instead, a midiloopback driver. I am using midiyoke (http://members.xoom.com/MIDIOX/midiox.htm)which is similar to Hubi\'s loopback. It\'s clean and allows me to flip on the fly between hardware midi device drivers and software interfacing. If anyone has experience with Midiyoke as compared to Hubi\'s loopback is would be good info to share. They appear to do the same thing.

[SoUlGuY]

i still think the Mc-50 is the most reliable sequencer around. Call me an old fashion idiot, but at least my hardware sequencer doesn\'t get blue screens and doesn\'t crash !

[john grant]

Returning to this forum after a LONG absence.

Re Cake: For classical it\'s probably the best of the lot: WHY?

1) Because of the accuracy and ease with which tempo can be adjusted.

2) Because the tempo goes right down to 15 bpm, compared with a mere 30 bmp in Emagic and Cubase. That\'s a HUGE advantage, at least for me.

But I also have Cubase because of its ability to map the tempo of an audio track in a midi accessible form using \"audio/tempo\" match... a fabulous feature.

I HATE the fact that none of the BIG three alows effective velocity mapping using NOTATION as oppposed to PIANO ROLL!

Correct me if I\'m wrong on this.

ALSO, I HATE the fact that none of the big three permits 1) adding a fixed length to indifidual notes, (Cakewalk only adjusts by percentages) or 2) the elimination of note clipping, where 2 notes overlap the second sounds staccato.

Again, educate me on this if I\'m wrong!

J. Grant

[john grant]

I forget one other pet peeve... why doesn\'t Cake let me print my velocity map???? Why not? Why not? Can I do that on any of the others????

J.G.

[RavenAudio]

I tried erasing the sblive stuff from the autoexec.bat, rebooted, and it was back there (even setting autoexec.bat to read only after ive edited it didn\'t help). It\'s not that important to get giga/vst to run on that comp, I\'d just like to try to GET it to run properly (without pagefaults when closing gstudio/vst when both ran at the same time and an additional bluescreen when trying to shutdown the OS after that).
Any ideas?

[gigaDiga]

Forgive me if I\'m wrong but isn\'t Autoexec.bat a dos thingummy. Try renaming it as Autoexec.old and moving it to a temp directory. You might well find you can live without it....

if you don\'t use dos.

Try looking at killerBob\'s posts on PC optimisations to verify that. Get a second opinion.

I hope it works for you,

gigaDiga

[ursatz]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by john grant:
...ALSO, I HATE the fact that none of the big three permits 1) adding a fixed length to indifidual notes, (Cakewalk only adjusts by percentages) or 2) the elimination of note clipping, where 2 notes overlap the second sounds staccato.

Again, educate me on this if I\'m wrong!

J. Grant <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It\'s not too hard to write a CAL script that will do what you want. MY pet peeve is that the CAL scripting language is so limited - can\'t manipulate tempos with it, except in *very* kludgy ways that don\'t give you all the flexibility you\'d like.

[Doug Bircher]

Cakewalk, Gigastudio, and the Aardvark Direct Pro work very well on my system. I use Cakewalk because it works.

[EL]

Hi

To get away from these autoexec problems, try reinstall SoundBlaster driver. When asked, unmark the DOS box option.

[EL]

Hi

To get away from these autoexec problems, I believe you may try to reinstall SoundBlaster driver. When asked, unmark the DOS box option.

[Joris Vincken]

There is no best sequencer (I wish there was). For midi most of them do fine, for audio none of them comes close. btw john, Logic can do both. Just stick to what works fine for you and make music. Also, GS works fine on it\'s own. For any serious work, use another computer for your audio and midi. I do not use the internal sequencer from my keyboard workstation to do any sequencing either!!

[Laurence]

I\'ve owned all three: Cakewalk, Logic and Cubase for some time now. I\'ve mainly used Cakewalk for two reasons:

First, the midi editing is so great. I do mainly sequenced midi parts with just an audio track or two for guitar and vocals. I also use NTONYX software quite a bit and that\'s available as a plugin in Cakewalk.

Second, the sysex handling and bank select customization are easier for me to use.

Laurence

[nous]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Steve Dimond:
Slagni,
O.K. I\'ll bite.
I\'ve been a Cakewalk user for about 6 years. The problem with software is that you sucked into the \"upgrade\" syndrome (read: wishing it did this). To be perfectly honest with you, I liked Cakewalk better in the early years.

Agreed! When using midi only I still go back and use CakeDots 3.0.
They literally perfected the sequencer in that version. There\'s nothing lacking in my opinion. It\'s fast to edit on, and solid as a rock. When doing extensive midi work I\'ll finish it in 3.0 then import it to 9.03
if I need to do audio also.