Which DAW is MIDI king?

[digitalboytn]

Like Hans Zimmer said - "The best DAW is the one that you know"

They've all got their strengths and weaknesses...

You just have to pick your poison and learn to deal with it

Hans knows Cubase real well as does Harry Gregson Williams and numerous other top composers.

I know Sonar X3e "real" well and that's all that matters to me...

I'm walking in my own shoes here

[Bathrobe]

I´ve found that only Live and Renoise slave to external midi clock.
But only Renoise has a Midi Clock Slave Offset slider.

That´s why it´s king for me.
But Bitwig is my queen, S1 my rook, Logic my bishop, Cirklon my knight, Pyramid my pawn and Live my opponent.

[kelldammit]

For Midi and Audio Cubase is the leading DAW in the market..

I'm not sure who paid you for writing this. I agree that Cubase is top notch regarding MIDI, but definitely not audio.

This is a bit the same with audio, no DAW has such audio manipulation features including this "melodyne style" pitch correction stuff.

That's simply wrong. Samplitude Pro X(2), for example, has similar (if not the same, or even more) features for manipulating audio, including a pitch correction for single notes.

Correct, and DP has had "clip gain" style automation, and inline pitch correction since 2006.

Nitpicking aside, depending on what i'm doing, midi-wise, i prefer either Cubase (quick sketches) or DP (more intensive arrangement). Each have specific features to help facilitate either purpose, both could handle either, too. Back in my mac days, i used DP and Logic similarly.

[LawrenceF]

[Cue Platitude] The one you like best and/or most productive with. [/Platitude]

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Cubase - support for vst midi plugins and editing is said to be quite capable from what I read. Haven't used so advanced editing in Cubase Elements and Cubase Pro is not up and running yet. But no scripting available.

Cubase has "logic editors" , an "Input Transformer" as well a detailed macro system, which are far more comprehensive than Sonar's clunky CAL set-up (steep learning curve tho). There are also Cubase's various midi chord/harmonizing functions (chord track, chord assistant, chord pads, etc.) to consider as well, in addition to it's fairly detailed roster of MIDI plug-ins. Not to mention all the transpose and scale options. Etc., etc.

Cubase is insane for MIDI.

exactly. And logic has transform and awesome midi plugins too now (and you can get cthulu as a logic native midi plugin to compete with cubase chord track).

So basically, in my humble opinion, and for slightly different reasons (i.e they both have strengths in a couple areas that are unique to them), i truly believe that Cubase and logic are the midi kings of the DAW world.. equal first place.

Now it's very possible DP is just as or more powerful, and that's the only one i can't comment on as it took me an hour just to work out how to get an audio file into a project and play it back. It was (for me) the most unintuitive daw i ever tried. So i never went further and deleted the demo. But all the others mentioned I have plenty of experience with - PT/Sonar/FL/Orion/Live/Reason/S1, and Cubase and Logic just can't be beaten.
I do however out of that list, very much like reason's way with midi.. even though it has less features than the others, it's groove engine is absolutely epic and it's floating toolbox just makes essential functions a breeze, and i love it's inspector on top of the track giving critical info that can be edited and matched to multiple data with the equal button.Programming drums being child's play and a lot of fun. So reason actually takes third place for me for midi as it just once again clicks with my mind.

Of course this entire topic is subjective, so no matter what any of us say, i recommend to anyone to just use what clicks with them.

I remember that i found PT extremely difficult also and initially Sonar. I persevered with Sonar as that was my initial logic replacement when apple killed it on windows (then i went to cubase and stuck with it for 5 years before going mac). I also persevered with pro tools as back then i was still running a commercial studio so i learned it for clients. But it can't be coincidence that those three DAWs are American and they are the three I found very unintuitive (with DP taking the crown). Yet Logic/Cubase/Reason/S1/Ableton - i have never looked at any documentation and they all just flowed with my brain - So i think i am just with the European way of thinking with DAW's, and i know tons of people who think logic is the most unintuitive "POS" on the planet. So no matter what DAW is midi "king", it HAS to feel GOOD to use, to YOU. That's the only way it can *ever* be king for anyone.

[LawrenceF]

That's the only way it can *ever* be king for anyone

Yep. You start to wonder why questions like that get asked so often, especially when almost nobody is really fluent in them all to even know.

What's the "best" car? The one I like most that also fits with my wallet. Jeep FTW!

[inkwarp]

for sheer rapidity and options for me it is fl studio for midi. even if only just for that it is worth having and it runs as rewire or plugin also so you can have your cake and eat it

[Robmobius]

For moi it's Ableton. I can even hum my bass lines and have them ported to midi.

[murnau]

Have we all DAWs mentioned now?

[fmr]

For moi it's Ableton. I can even hum my bass lines and have them ported to midi.

And how does that make Live the MIDI king? It's not even a MIDI feature, but an audio feature (Audio to MIDI, which Vision, from Opcode, already had many many years ago).

[NystagmusE]

I've noticed that in Reaper, the first midi note tends to be laggy when playing a project.

Just shift the content of the project a measure later so that when you press play nothing happens for a measure. That usually fixes it. Then, after you render the finished WAV trim it in Audacity or OcenAudio or Wavosaur or whatever you use. Or just leave the first few seconds as silence if you like.

[D-Fusion]

Cakewalk Sonar is my Midi Queen
I love the midi Step recording for quickly adding parts with my keyboard.
You can set up notes and rests so they will be recorded the way you want in step record mode instead of one note after the other like many hosts only do.

[jancivil]

The way I work, I have to have all of the MIDI tracks in one piano roll (with edit as solo enabled) with typically a lot of controller lanes and presets for those defined and named according to instrument. So I never get started with Logic. Single 'hyperedit' controller lanes, this would add a lot of pointless time to get anything done. I'm not a really sophisticated MIDI person, I don't do any cute operations, I have a very simple straightforward workflow with nothing quantized, throughcompose/linear m.o. But I need the whole group in the one editor. Creating the illusion of a real performance, one realizes that not everybody lands in time the same way. A big fat instrument speaks slower, most everybody speaks slower than the crisp hits from a drum kit, so every part has to be in the one editor.

The other strength of Cubase which means I'm not trying to find out about other hosts is, the approach to time. I don't start out guessing my tempo. I get in there and improvise, or maybe it's drum part as a basis and I do the thing. Then via Time Warp (tracks all set to linear time) I drag a barline to a meaningful downbeat and discover tempi here. And the tempo track suits me. I like the high resolution of 4000 pulses per quarter note, as a huge part of my 'writing' is editing. I'm not exactly doing warts and all, but I absolutely require human timing and I do a lot of nudging, I'm not going to nail everything in real time. (The one other host that does this particular trick, warp the timeline to the music by this m.o., is Samplitude.)

When I first got my own computer and some software, I was clueless. The only thing I'd done was work in notation, and cabled MIDI out through a serial port to hardware. So honestly any/all of hosts intimidated me. I had lite versions of Live, FL, Cubasis and the first thing I bought was Reason (2.5). That didn't seem to be it, so I shopped some more at guitar center, and another customer told me - a kind of involved conversation I wasn't having with any salesperson - what I wanted was Cubase. I read too much about it really, but once I got in there it was quite intuitive. I've only looked to the manual for the cuter things, my real workflow is very obvious. Yrs later I bought DP and Logic, first of all wanting better latency than Cubase under OSX. DP is kind of peculiar, Logic the basic things are not hard to sort. But VSL came out with VE Pro; so this issue of Cubase (Core Audio ≠ ASIO = way too much latency) is more or less solved through the plugins enjoying priority in the separate process from Cubase. Then it turns out there are various idiosyncrasies (some of them addressed a little later) as per DP's and Logic's communication with VE Pro, meaning VE Pro (VSL really) is geared towards Cubendo.

[Robmobius]

For moi it's Ableton. I can even hum my bass lines and have them ported to midi.

And how does that make Live the MIDI king? It's not even a MIDI feature, but an audio feature (Audio to MIDI, which Vision, from Opcode, already had many many years ago).

What are you jabbering about? I said 'for me' not you... jog on.

[LawrenceF]

Then via Time Warp (tracks all set to linear time) I drag a barline to a meaningful downbeat and discover tempi here.

That is indeed a nice function. It's also interesting to me that as much as these products occasionally rip good ideas from each other, I've yet to see anyone rip that one.

If I had a "10 things to rip from Cubase" list, that one would be on there somewhere.