Good choice! - Once you get it, you'll want to go to the Cakewalk site and run the free updates one-by-one so you're totally up to speed. Let us know how it all goes!Originally Posted by Truckload
Randy
Good choice! - Once you get it, you'll want to go to the Cakewalk site and run the free updates one-by-one so you're totally up to speed. Let us know how it all goes!
Randy
Needless to say, I am not an expert like you.... so, measure correctly my words.
I have both 8.5 and X1 (both in light versions) and I am not so hard as you are on the newly arrived.
To me they are essentialy the same program. Graphically, I think 8.5 has actually a nicer interface to look at, somehow classier, but not necessarily better. For the kind of usage I do there are mainly only two noticeable differences.
One regards the staff view. As you point out, 8.5 has a more comfortable one, but... basically it is exactly the same set of features and the same logics. Only, 8.5 has icons with notes' duration locked in an accessible place. X1 has everything hidden in a single scroll down button. Therefore, one more click away. 8.5 is more comfortable, no doubts, but we must also say, at least according to my impression, that 8.5 just refuses to take triplets. You select the note, select the dot(ops.... edit: not the dot, the triplet), place the triplet and it will do whatever it wants: you have to try a few times before getting that triplet down. X1 nails them appropriatedly. Anyway, 8.5 wins, here.
On the other hand, x1 is much better at track envelopes, which I use all the time, and in particular at drawing data into cc. Version 8.5, at least according to my experience, draws sparse data in no continuous line, with x1 you can draw with free hand any continuous shape into cc layers. This way you can draw very convincing cc1 or portamentos, just to name some. Or, at least, I never succeded in making 8.5 believe that he can also do the same.
And as I do everything by hands... x1 is definitely the winner.
I guess that, as everything else in this world, it is always up to personal taste and needs.
Only... I'd definitely like something more on notation side. It is a bit of time I am, too, fiddling with Musescore. If you plan to import everything to a DAW like Sonar for final rendering, Musescore is a pretty good companion in the early stages. Score editing is pretty good, and doesn' t even sound THAT bad considering what it is (free software). If you experiment a bit with several GM soundfonts you get results that are more than acceptable while score-writing, to get a proper idea of what you' re doing. Considering getting a Finale (not the full one), but I' ll see.
Fab
Aheeeem....
I' ve been taught to admit my mistakes and apologize, if it is the case.
First of all sorry to bring this thread back up. I just feel it is for a just cause, but I apologize anyway to all of you.
Something happened with my X1. I am in the middle of something that, for the moment, is still pretty simple. Just four tracks, nothing too complicated. For the first time, I am noticing something not quite working right with X1. Mainly playback issues, it fails to play random notes, without reasonable explanation.
I tried everything, I deleted and reloaded the involved synths, fiddled with the Asio driver, multiple reboots, I downloaded one more upgrade patch and installed it... nothing.
I thought that was something wrong with my file... then re-installed 8.5, loaded the project in there and... everything worked as it is supposed to, "automagically".
I might have been tweaking my pc too much, lately, but still this seems to have affected the sole X1... rather difficult to believe.
Ehm... is it too late to alter my past considerations?
Once again, sorry again for bringing this back up.
Fabry
No apology is really needed, Fabry. Software can act in mysterious ways at times. I do feel that X1 is subject to odd quirks, besides having a clumsier interface than in previous Sonars, but that's a subjective opinion.
Advice--Don't un-install your Sonar 8.5 again! A lot of people have needed to fall back to it when X1 becomes too exasperating.
Randy
Well, I skimmed through the thread, and it looks like you've already made your choice. For everyone else out there though, a really critical element was missed. If you're doing orchestral scores, or any kind of movie style sound design, I'd seriously recommend choosing a DAW with a 32-bit floating point mix engine (don't get this confused with 32 and 64 bit processors - this is not the same thing). To the lay person, a 32-bit floating point mix engine will give you more room in a mix and keep things clearer and less muddy. Using subjective terms, it feels like there's more breathing room, and more can be done before things get muddy. Two of the local studios I work with took the same waveforms and projects from older DAWs and opened them in the newest versions of Pro Tools and Cubase and then remixed them. The difference was really amazing between hearing the output of a 32-bit mix engine vs. older fixed point mix engines. No amount of features or plugins would have made up that difference.
Every professional DAW will have every MIDI tool you need, so deciding based on features or look is actually a little silly. All that really matters in professional audio software is how the end product sounds. You could be working with the prettiest, most expensive and feature-rich DAW out there, but if your mix sounds bad then all of that was for nothing.
I'd recommend newer versions of Cubase, Pro Tools 10 and up, and the latest versions of Sonar. I'd seriously caution anyone against Logic in general, and any older versions of Pro Tools. Your ears will thank you when it gets down to mixing time.
I'm not saying that projects that come from non-floating point DAWs will all sound bad, just that a 32-bit floating point mix engine will get you a cleaner mix much faster with much less frustration, and overall get you a much better result.
Last edited by Sonare Coeli; 02-06-2012 at 03:00 AM. Reason: Clarity and Oversight
Just curious, is there any modern DAW that actually mixes with 24-bit integers (internally, not preferred storage/file format)? I'd be surprised to find any which aren't doing their math with 32-bit floating point. (And some are using 64-bit)
-- Matt
... I apologize for apologizing, then......
No, I do not think I am going to uninstall that 8.5, for a while....
Anyway, the point is that I am really stubborn and I have to look deeply into anything behaving oddly.
X1 had not showed such an odd behaviour up to that moment, so I was curious.
Turns out that there might be a problem with polyphony in there. The guilty track was a piano track full of sustains/pedals. The track was playing, at moments, 150+ notes due to a lethal combination of high release time and pedals. This messed up x1 and it would randomly fail to playback some notes (belonging either to the piano track or to other tracks). This is a piano patch I made myself and might be a bit "raw". Infact, the track would play fine with the piano in GPO, the one in Jabb, the 3v Dimension Pro piano and 4 other piano patches I have in other samplers.
So, probably, the main problem lies in my piano patch..... but still 8.5 would play the track in an absolutely faultless way, therefore x1's engine has definitely something to do with it. At this point, I assume that X1 engine is harder on hardware resources and couples with the average hardware of my laptop worse than 8.5.
That piano track alone sends the cpu load meter sky high, both in X1 and 8.5, but 8.5 still copes with it with no problem.
Will continue to look into this.
Fab
One of the reasons I'm still very fond of the ancient XGworks program is the following:
Both Notation and PRV. But notice at the foot of the notation view we can see the note velocities in one of the controller panes. These can be dragged up and down, of course, but also the length of notes can be extended to overlap the following ones, if required. What need then for PRV? In addition, if the notation is put into "free" mode the notes can be moved around at will, not following any kind of quantisation, like PRV.
The best of both worlds?
Between the PRV and Notation view is a little Notes bar like this:
This pops up whichever of the two views we are using. Giving standard notation, but also allowing note duration to be varied downwards from 100%, it's currently set at 95%. The # can be right clicked on and changes to flat or natural. The triplet sign can also be rght clicked on to give quintuplets or septuplets. (Eat your heart out Sonar users!)
Then we get a section for note velocity, giving ppp through to fff. The velocity selected is automatically set to the values I posted earlier, but can be altered as necessary. Here mp is 56.
There is also a pitch bend window (in both views), and a chord entry window giving 35 different chord shapes from bbb to ###. To name but a few.
It's difficult to wean myself off this for editing purposes.
And all made for Windows 95. Remember that?
BUT, and it's big one, it doesn't support VSTs etc. and its audio editing facilities are minimal, to say the least.
SXJohn.
When you say 32 bit mix do you mean 32 bit sample rate? My DAW allows for up to 96000 HZ and 32 bit sample rate selection.
I dropped you on your head when you were a baby- My ex-aunt Peggy's recent confession. Possibly one of those life changing events.
The 'mix engine' is how the DAW does its math internally, which may be different from the output format (ie. the 96000hz/32-bit you're referring to) which it allows, though the latter will be limited by the former (ie, if it allows you to output at 96000hz/32-bit, presumably the math internally should be capable of that level or better).
As far as I can tell with a bit of poking around, most everything these days seem to do everything inside with 32-bit floating point math (and this is speaking of the DAW itself, and not of plugins which do things their own way independently), and some which use 64-bit floating point. I haven't found any examples of any which are using 32-bit integer math.
Note also the difference between floating point and integer numbers, which is a whole other matter which I'd rather not get into too much because the quirks of how a computer does math can start getting messy, but suffice it to say floating point gives you a LOT more dynamic range (16-bit integer CD quality capable of -96dB; 24-bit integer, -120dB; 32-bit integer -196dB; 32-bit floating point something like 50million dB at the cost of some loss of precision in certain mathematical cases, but basically exceeds our ability to build hardware to record or playback audio with that precision anyhow. 64-bit floating point is something like 2.7 x 10^16 dB with improved precision over 32-bit FP).
Heck, 32-bit integer 96khz audio is pushing the limits of what we can make hardware do nevermind what the ear is capable of distinguishing... anything better than that is just to make sure you don't get rounding errors and other mathematical quirks cropping up overtime as you start mixing more and more things together.
-- Matt
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