DAW Software that doesn't suck as much?

Miscellaneous
1

I’m using a really old version of Cubase (SE 1.0 or something like that) and have been looking to upgrade. Cubase Essentials 5 looks like it would be good enough for me, but one issue I have had in SE 1.0 is routing MIDI in a way that is easy and sensible. If I want to split my controller keyboard, for instance, so I can control different hardware synths and VSTs, I haven’t found a good way to do it in SE 1.0. I need to be able to say “Hey Cubase, if you see notes coming form channel 2 on my MIDI controller, forward this over to channel 3 on this other MIDI interface”. You can do that with the Input Transformer, but it’s not intuitive and it’s time-consuming.

In Reaper, for instance, it’s cake. But after playing around with it for a while, at least on the Mac, it makes me sort of miss Cubase. So, can someone either confirm that newer versions of Cubase fix this or have a suggestions on a multi-platform DAW?

2

Reaper FTW.

3

Well, so far it’s down to Live or Reaper. Both have some features the other doesn’t. I still miss Cubase for some things but Reaper does, indeed, have the ability to easily remap source and destination MIDI channels. Still getting used to the differences between the two. Cubase definitely feels more polished and of all the DAWs I have tried, feels the most like a “studio”. But, it’s expensive, their support sucks, and it doesn’t do the MIID routing that you can do in Reaper and others.

As for Reaper itself, my current hurdle is figuring out how to do step sequencing, which I commonly do for drums…

*shrug* Changing DAWs is hard work :slight_smile:

4

I’ve got Cubase 5 on PC. I haven’t messed around with the MIDI part of it, but it looks like you can setup specific “MIDI devices” (i.e. one for each synth) where the outgoing datastream can be configured and filtered. pp328 in the Cubase 5 manual.

5

Yeah but I don’t think it’s nearly as trivial as it is in Reaper and Live. But, honestly, I don’t have that need all that often and I suppose I can just save templates to help get around the problem.

The pads on my keyboard are a biggie since I almost always want to map those to drums, but not necessarily to channel 10 (typically used for MIDI drums). If I’m triggering drum sequences on my sammichSID, for instance, it would be much easier to remap the pads on my keyboard directly to the SID without that affecting other devices.

So say the pads go to channel 10 but Cubase listens for that and routes that to channel 1 on my SID. Stuff like that is cake in Reaper. Not so much in Cubase since all the conversations surrounding this appear to be related to the Input Transformer. If you know otherwise, do let me know!

Honestly I think I’m settling on upgrading Cubase. I already know it, and it works the best of the others I have tried, though I should give Live another go. Reaper just needs a bit more polish I think but man it’s close. Just a bit rough around the edges…

6

So I have all but pulled the trigger on Ableton Live. The LE version is too limiting I have found so I’m going to have to spring for the full version (which is $100 off until Jan 15th). Other than the price though (which isn’t that bad for the full version considering the alternatives other than Reaper or Ardour), Live is pretty awesome.

Without outright saying it, it combines many concepts of a tracker (ie .MODs from the Amiga days, Impulse Tracker, Fast Tracker ][, Renoise, etc.) for non-linear music making and easy looping. It’s like a magical idea board where I can quickly build out a song and then arrange it how I want. Then I can throw it into a classical DAW view and can work on it using standard linear tools. It’s fantastic and comes with a boatload of samples and soft-synths.

Perhaps it’s too soon to provide lasting impressions but so far I’ve been able to crank at least good ideas out and it doesn’t have the limitations that bugged me about Cubase. The one thing it doesn’t have that Cubase does is a built-in audio editor. Live has one but it’s for doing crazy beat and pitch related stuff. I haven’t used that much but it does seem to be very good for that. But simple things like reversing an audio clip cannot be done (or at least I don’t know how to). In Cubase, I never needed to use an external editor. Now, while I may not need one very often, I’ll likely need to also spring for one of those :confused:

But apart from that, I would highly recommend people try Live. You can try both LE and the full version for 30 days and it’s full featured (other than some missing samples and perhaps some soft-synths). Steinberg doesn’t offer a trial that I could find for Cubase so, frankly, they can suck it.

Just thought I’d share my findings :slight_smile:

7

Hi,

Sounds like you are settled on Live, but just wondered if you had given Sonar a try? I tried the demo, and then have been using it more at a friend’s place. So far I have found it pretty decent. I was switching from EnergyXT, which I thought was a nice idea, but disappointing in a few ways. I found Sonar to run quite adequately on my old 1.8MHz P4, which is a plus for me, until I get a new machine. I think Sonar will handle the kind of MIDI routing you are wanting, though I haven’t tried. For each track, there is an option for MIDI input, and MIDI output, as well as automated echo. I may have to check it out next time I use it. I haven’t looked into it in detail, so I’m not sure if it is a convenient option.

When I tried Live, I think it was an older version, and seem to recall have some MIDI timing issues with it (maybe problems with MIDI clock?). How do you find it for working with MIDI sequencing? I thought the design seems to have emphasized working with audio parts, though I haven’t really done enough with it to make good assessment. Have you found it lacking at all compared to Cubase?

I also couldn’t be bothered with Cubase, without access to a demo. For the price, and the higher system requirements, it was just less attractive.

I also worked with Reaper a bit. I think it is really a great value for money product, specially for non commercial users. Also runs well on slow hardware. I did find it a little clunky in some ways.

Cheers,

madox

8

I looked briefly at Sonar but only got as far as the website. The problem I had was their website was that it was a bit lacking in some of the details and I got confused a bit on the navigation. It’s a shame since I didn’t even see that it does non-linear editing similar to Live and seems a boat-load cheaper. I don’t know how it compared with the other stuff (include instruments, sample packs) but I would suggest those looking at Live also check our Sonar, as well as Renoise (particularly 2.5 which is in beta testing).

Sadly, Renoise doesn’t do MIDI all that well so it’s probably not a great tool for controlling things like MB-SIDs unless you want to manually muck with CC’s all day. It *does* however run on Linux now which is pretty hot!

As for the MIDI timing in Live, I had a few small issues with my MidiSport 1x1 but they were solved by switching to another MIDI driver, which was a snap in Live. That should all go away once I have my GM5x5x5 ready to go (as soon as like 12 more people sign up for the bulk order anyway :slight_smile: and then I can use just a single MIDI interface for my synths. MIDI timings were actually a nightmare in my version of Cubase though I am sure it has been improved since (or I sure hope so anyway).

The only major issue that is lacking that I miss is that Cubase had a better integrated sound editor. Other than that, Live has a typical DAW view and does the same things basically but seems to have more effects, samples, and soft-synths. Agreed on lack of a demo though. That’s why I didn’t look much at Cubase even though I wanted to. Ableton offered 30 day trial of each Live flavor so, if you timed it right, you could get 90 days worth of usage :slight_smile:

I really wanted to go with Reaper and for heavy audio recording it owns face. So it’s great for a typical alternative rock band perhaps. It has some neat built-in effects but it’s MIDI stuff just was kinda vanilla. It DOES allow you to map both MIDI in and out to different channels, something which sparked me to start looking at a new DAW in the first place. So that’s nice, but otherwise it was a typical DAW and the finished quality of other standard DAWs (ie Cubase) made them a bit more compelling.

I will say that Reaper has a very active community with the developers seeming to be very involved. That’s really really nice to see and I definitely hope Reaper sees some great success.

In the end, I already coughed up the dough for Live so I’m set now :wink: If anyone wants it, be sure to get it by Jan 15th since that’s when the promotion ends (which is $50-150 off depending on which Live flavor you get). That plus the $50 off I got with my Korg nanoKontrol made it not quite so expensive, although it is more than I was planning on spending for a DAW.

I guess time will tell, but I’ve already started making a new song in Live and, unlike Cubase, I was able to escape and worry more about music than everything else. It was really nice so I’m pretty excited about the future with both Live and my SID synth.

9

Hi,

Sounds like you’re pretty well sorted.

I looked briefly at Sonar but only got as far as the website. The problem I had was their website was that it was a bit lacking in some of the details and I got confused a bit on the navigation. It’s a shame since I didn’t even see that it does non-linear editing similar to Live and seems a boat-load cheaper. I don’t know how it compared with the other stuff (include instruments, sample packs) but I would suggest those looking at Live also check our Sonar, as well as Renoise (particularly 2.5 which is in beta testing).

I’m still not sure what the non-linear editing refers to, but I’ll take your word for it. :aww:

I also think the Sonar web site is poorly designed. It could benefit from liberal application of the KISS principle. Basic logical structure goes a long way towards presenting one’s information.

I just tried the kind of MIDI echo I think you were referring to. I think it’s easy and convenient with Sonar, using the MIDI settings for each track. I can set each track to have MIDI data echoed from a particular port/channel. However, I’m not sure if there is an easy way to merge MIDI data from multiple sources. So if you want to concurrently echo data from your master keyboard, and a control box, each on different MIDI port and or channel, to a particular destination, I’m not sure how that can be handled. Can Live handle this scenario well? By the way, I’m pretty new to Sonar.

Anyway, this probably doesn’t matter to you any more.

Hope you enjoy your purchase.

Cheers,

Oli

10

The non-linear editing is the tracker-like interface that Sonar and Live have. At least in Live, you make clips for each channel and can play in any order and any combination with clips from other channels (which also include playing them in-sequence). This has a number of nice advantages when arranging a song since you can do looping of, say, a drum track and then play around with arranging leads and basslines, etc. It’s very similar to how you would do it in a tracker (SoundTracker, Fast Tracker ][, Impulse Tracker, Renoise, etc.) except that each channel has its own set of patterns. In most trackers, all channels are lumped into a single pattern, though I think Renoise 2.5 is going to break that trend. The nice thing is you don’t have to make music that way if you prefer conventional recording.

I have not heard what you are referring two called MIDI Echo but it sounds like it’s the same thing. I think of it more as MIDI routing since you can route from one interface and input channel to another interface and channel. Live can definitely do this as it was one of my big requirements. You can do the same thing with the MIDI-Router hardware box I believe but since I’m running everything through a DAW it’s nice to have native support there.

Oddly enough, what Live cannot do (easily anyway) is name your MIDI ports. So my Virus ends up being “Delta MIDI In (1)” or something non-sensical. It will be a non-issue once I get a GM5x5x5 built though, although I’m still waiting for more people to get added to nILS’ <___base_url___>/index.php?/topic/11509-gm5x5x5-bulk-order/.&do=embed *shrug*

11

…I’m still waiting for more people to get added to nILS’ <___base_url___>/index.php?/topic/11509-gm5x5x5-bulk-order/.&do=embed *shrug*

That reminds me, I’d better go sign up for that. I had been meaning to build my own on strip-board, but didn’t get around to it…