T2 vs Samplitude

[Breakpete]

Tell him to forget S8, forget T2, and buy a guitar. Or take some vocal lessons.

What, I have to play the guitar or sing to make music? Damn, that's 10 years down the drain then


Kidding

[Lunch Money]

Hey, no fair! I already covered that base in a post!

Question: are you a famous producer, though?

[Sielsynth]

Okay, here we go,

Just switched to Samplitude from T1. Before you Tracktion guys get started, I used T1 for almost two years and have absolutely nothing bad to say about it! For ease of use I give it a perfect 10!! It was not my first sequencer and I have over 10 years of sequencing/digital recording experience. Now on to Sam, I simply love it!!!!! It did not take me long to get going in Samplitude.(Mind you, I've used a lot of sequencers and I also write software for a living.) That said, I do not think that someone new to the world of DAWs would have any clue of how to get started. Even Tracktion will require a learning curve for a noobie. Samplitude is powerful beyond belief and once you figure out how it does things it is not obtusive or counter productive. It is actually very easy to use once you learn where the tools are and what they do. To put it simply it is not a fair comparison at all!!! Samplitude has so many cool features that each time I discover a new way to do something that I had to bend over backwards to do in Tracktion I can't help but feel it's the best 800 dollars I ever spent. No shit!!! I will always love Tracktion and plan on buying T2 for instructional purposes to new recording artists/producers. But Sam rocks the world!!! And I have had no problems with crashes and the sort. Been running about two weeks straight with no reboots. So it's been nice and stable for me. I'm in looooveeeeeee!!!!!

[Lunch Money]

I can see how some people will need or use the depth. Myself, if I can record audio, apply cross-fades and effects, I'm pretty much done.

As someone mentioned a short while ago, I just approach it like a tape machine, not because I'm limiting myself but because that's all I really need.

To me, the extra features of Tracktion are already deep enough. It may be simple, but I'm STILL learning new things about it.

As with anything, it all depends on needs and expectations.

That said-- I DO still have feature requests and so forth in Tracktion. While I may be 'happy' with the current feature set, it doesn't mean I don't recognize the value of new features-- for example, the loop audio recording I joined in lobbying for. Elastic pitch-shifting and time-stretching is the only feature that I feel I still *need* (as opposed to 'want', which there will always be toys and things that I WANT). I understand Samplitude has great pitch tools...? Cool beans.

Greg

[Lunch Money]

Jeez, could I have used any more smilies in that post???

[multree]

Jeez, could I have used any more smilies in that post???

why do you ask Jeez..... ???

well if you asked me I would've said... yeah it would have been possible... but not advisable

[Isjtar]

in my class everyone has to use samplitude, it's the industry standard for radio here. it's not a difficult program and can be extremely efficient.
i didn't have any problems getting to grips with it, actually faster than T.
maybe you'll be surprised then that i refuse to use it.
it has nowhere near the possibilities for creative use T has. especially implementation of fx and midi suck.
it's great for making interview montages and the like, but it is of absolutely no use making music imo.
a tiny bit buggy too, but not moreso than T.

[johnsholme]

I've been a samplitude user since version 1.5... (1998ish??) it's a great product, and the sound is really really great! Top notch. Fast too... but they make no bones telling you: you need one hell of a machine on samplitude, to use it right. Granted, one hell of a machine these days doesn't cost what it used to... and they may just be the only honest ones out there, when it comes to what you really need in a pc to record properly. Seems like most underguess in the interest of making it sound like "everyone can do this... especially you"... i digress: Tracktion is a much more intuitive interface. In fact, it's the best i've seen. Blows them all out of the water, because you get the same sonic results, using an interface that takes one tenth of the time to get around. One window, everything right in front of you... quite simply: the best. Samplitude 7.23 is the one you want, as 8 does have some new "thingy's" added on, but at this point, they're just trying to compete with Sonar, as an all in one. Samplitude was written to be a great audio multitracker, which it is.... it is NOT a good midi sequencer yet... so as thats what they are trying to sell it as in Version 8.... go ahead and wait for version 9. At versions 6, and 7, they had it nailed. IT is a great audio multitracker, but has a huge learning curve. HUGE>... The sound is top notch, just like it is in Tracktion. Only difference is about $800 in price, and none of the learning curve ache.

[Sielsynth]

Samplitude V8 still may not be the best around when it comes to midi editing, but I tell you it's definitely better than Tracktion 1!!! Now granted it costs alot more, but as I said earlier this is not really a good comparison. I was able to replace Tracktion and Adobe Audition with Samplitude V8. I know a lot of Tracktion users use Adobe Audition and some others as audio editors. I was doing the same thing and this was really the only reason I could justify the price of Samplitude. Think about the cost of T2 plus the cost of a top notch audio editor like Audition or Wavelab. I felt that Samplitude can cover all thes bases plus the built in effects, drum machine and surround/red book CD burning capabilities make it one heck of a mastering tool. The midi capabilities are steadily improving. Since receiving the latest version about a month ago, I have found editing midi notes to be much easier than it was in Tracktion(for me). Since I work almost exclusively with VSTs this was a major deciding factor for me. I don't claim to be a genius but I have not found Samplitude all that difficult to work with. Maybe I should start to feel better about my DAW knowledge.

[braj]

Samplitude V8 still may not be the best around when it comes to midi editing, but I tell you it's definitely better than Tracktion 1!!! Now granted it costs alot more, but as I said earlier this is not really a good comparison. I was able to replace Tracktion and Adobe Audition with Samplitude V8. I know a lot of Tracktion users use Adobe Audition and some others as audio editors. I was doing the same thing and this was really the only reason I could justify the price of Samplitude. Think about the cost of T2 plus the cost of a top notch audio editor like Audition or Wavelab. I felt that Samplitude can cover all thes bases plus the built in effects, drum machine and surround/red book CD burning capabilities make it one heck of a mastering tool. The midi capabilities are steadily improving. Since receiving the latest version about a month ago, I have found editing midi notes to be much easier than it was in Tracktion(for me). Since I work almost exclusively with VSTs this was a major deciding factor for me. I don't claim to be a genius but I have not found Samplitude all that difficult to work with. Maybe I should start to feel better about my DAW knowledge.

Pretty good points there.

[IIRs]

Samplitude V8 still may not be the best around when it comes to midi editing, but I tell you it's definitely better than Tracktion 1!!! ... I don't claim to be a genius but I have not found Samplitude all that difficult to work with. Maybe I should start to feel better about my DAW knowledge.

Interesting.. I've never tried it. How does it compare in terms of flexibility? (ie: track bussing / grouping and modular / parallel routing)

[Sielsynth]

Samplitude is very flexible in terms of routing/bussing. The mixer is a seperate screen as most of you know but it is very easy to use and there is a mixer button at the bottm of the screen so you can pull it up without going up to the menu settings. You can go the traditional track method and use the mixer to assign track information to the available busses or outputs. You can also assign track outputs to other tracks (and yes you can do all of this in Tracktion with racks.) You can group tracks as well. Here is a little twist and where Samplitude becomes interesting. You can treat anything on a track as an object. (Midi or Audio, like Tracktion, Samplitude does not differentiate between audio and midi tracks) Now back to what I was saying, if you have different objects on the same track you can assign each object different routing, automation,effects and so on... Isn't that great!!! This object oriented approach(sorry software guys) allows you to do many things on the same track. All you have to do is slice the audio or midi into chunks and then you have objects that you can operate on. As far as looping and stretching goes, this program rules!!! Grab an object whether audio or midi and select create loop object then grab the corner and off you go!! perfect loop for as many bars as you like.. Need to edit your drum hit velocities? Record some midi, open the midi editor and whalla!! All the notes with velocity info shown at the bottom. Take the mouse and drag it over the velocities to equalize them all or do an up and down pattern with the mouse to vary the velocities!! Is that easy enough!! Quantizing is rock solid with lots of options to add groove feel. Anyway, still not a pro after only amonth of use but I feel I'm getting good with it. Hope I made sense hard to put some of the stuff into words quickly.

[Lunch Money]

Need to edit your drum hit velocities? Record some midi, open the midi editor and whalla!! All the notes with velocity info shown at the bottom. Take the mouse and drag it over the velocities to equalize them all or do an up and down pattern with the mouse to vary the velocities!! Is that easy enough!!

The object-oriented approach you mentioned sounds sweet. As for this velocity function, though, it's fairly standard across the board for sequencers, isn't it? Nothing too remarkable there.

Greg

[Sielsynth]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, there is a ton of information available on the left hand side of the track. Looks a lot like Sonar in this regard but unlike some of the older versions of Cubase(I don't know about SX3) you can access almost all of the parameters from this area. You can see what the Track input and output assignsments are and midi/vst info. If you have a VST on the track you can change the channel and all that jazz. You can also reroute the track from here without pulling up the mixer. Reminds me abit of Tracktion. You can keep this area maximized or you can minimize it just to be able to see the necessary buttons like record, mute and solo. Also the level meters are displayed here so you can keep an eye on your record levels. Seems to me they have borrowed heavily from all the sequencers/audio tools and rolled it into one application. I see hints of almost every sequencer I've used. Maybe that's why it feels slightly familiar to me. Don't get me wrong I have visited the forum more than once and have opened the manual many times. There is alot of stuff going on here. You are not going to see it all in a couple of hours. But you can do basic recording quite easily.

[Sielsynth]

lunch money wrote:

As for this velocity function, though, it's fairly standard across the board for sequencers, isn't it? Nothing too remarkable there

Tracktion 1 didn't do it. You had to either edit all the selected notes or one note at a time. You couldn't just change the note velocity from note to note but dragging your mouse over the gui. I noticed that T2 seems to have the bar graph type of display in the midi editor so I guess T2 will have the ssame type function.