Which sequencer has the BEST midi implementation?

[dhanjit]

While it may not meet all your audio needs, PowerTracks Pro Audio by PG Music http://www.pgmusic.com/powertracks.htm is an extremely well featured MIDI sequencer. It does support DXi, although the latency is huge.

I use it in combination with FL Studio, because it covers all the MIDI shortcomings in FL Studio. I can use FL Studio as a DXi in PowerTracks Pro Audio, or save the MIDI files and import them to FL Studio.

It's also remarkably cheap ($49 USD plus another $20 USD if you want the Roland VSC DXi). I realise you may be looking for one piece of software that can cover all your MIDI and audio needs, but at the price it's got to be worth a look.

[sluggo]

Muzys has very good midi implementation. I think it does everything you mentioned (event list, sysex, etc). The reason I mention this is because the developer of Muzys is working on a new project that he hinted may be unveiled around now. Of course this is vapourware at the moment, but I thought I'd mention it.

s

[tha_man]

Listen to mojkarma. I've tried most, if not all of the PC hosts last year, looking for the perfect midi editor, and the best was Cubase, while the worst was Sonar, IMO. That's from usability point of view, Tracktion 1 was otherwise much worse than Sonar of course, but even this one was faster and easier to use, just missing many of the important midi functions.

Otherwise I like energyXT a lot, except midi CC editing, which is pretty clumsy. I hope this will be improved, because notes editing in piano roll is superb. Muzys was also very good, but sadly discontinued, same with Logic. Other hosts didn't impressed me much with their piano roll, neither in positive or negative way. Well, except maybe Acid, which also has pretty crappy piano roll Live is much better.

I haven't yet tried Project5 2.0 though.

[kuniklo]

the two things that bothered me the most in Live were insufficient note resolution and the inability to scale MIDI tempo to make the tempo of a clip match the tempo of the rest of the song

I found a trick for this in Live that I use all the time since my playing tends to be a little off time. I actully find this easier to do in Live now than in anything else.

All you have to do is turn off looping on the clip and then drag the clip tempo box up and down to stretch out all the notes in your clip. Once you've got it stretched to the length you want just turn looping back on. Makes fixing slightly off-tempo clips a snap.

One kind of annoying thing in Live is that you can't go to lower quantize resolutions unless you zoom in to a certain level. Or is that not what you're talking about.

Anyway, Logic is the king for midi-editing, IMO, but Cubase is pretty close.

[erickhcabrera]

I'm thinking in cakewalk & cubase, but there is much more to compares...

[ross g]

I planned on starting some kind of "what host is best for pc"
thread with features, pros and cons, etc. at some point, but since this one's going: Traction 2 seems to be cool for my needs, simple and somewhat linear, they claim stability and low cpu usage. I wouldn't want to be stuck with a pattern based midi sequencer, stringing them together to make a "song", however, it would be nice to be able to have midi "objects" perhaps, like arpegiators/midi event strings you could trigger, stuff like that. I'm assuming there are vst plug ins that one could use like this? I'm still looking around kvr and elsewhere at different things, any thoughts?

rg

[rockstar_not]

While it may not meet all your audio needs, PowerTracks Pro Audio by PG Music http://www.pgmusic.com/powertracks.htm is an extremely well featured MIDI sequencer. It does support DXi, although the latency is huge.

I use it in combination with FL Studio, because it covers all the MIDI shortcomings in FL Studio. I can use FL Studio as a DXi in PowerTracks Pro Audio, or save the MIDI files and import them to FL Studio.

It's also remarkably cheap ($49 USD plus another $20 USD if you want the Roland VSC DXi). I realise you may be looking for one piece of software that can cover all your MIDI and audio needs, but at the price it's got to be worth a look.

I use PowerTrack Pro Audio as a compliment to Tracktion, as it has a notation editor. It's easier for me to see fat-fingered MIDI on notation than piano roll.

It's really behind the times though, with it's audio engine - no VST support unless you wrap em, and like mentioned, latency stinks, and no play-through of VSTi or DXi.

-Scott

[greendoor]

For plugins - whether midi, FX or instruments, there is far more action and freebies and good shareware in the VST scene. So for that reason alone, make sure you pick a native VST host. Wrappers are uncool. As far as midi sequencing goes - good questions to ask are: how easy is it to quantise to a swing percentage? Unless you just want robotic 16th notes all the time, swing percentage is very important. Also - most hosts can quantise the starts of notes, but think about bass notes for example. The timing of the release is just as critical as the timing of the start. You may have played in a bass note, and the start was a bit late but you released at the right spot. What happens when you quantise the note start? In most hosts you will find that the whole note gets shifted - so you fix the note start, but screw up the note release! I like a host that can (easily) quantise either the Start or the End of the selected notes. Cubase SX suits me fine on all counts.

[Lunch Money]

If Tracktion's looking good to you, but you want that something 'extra' for MIDI (patterns, arp), look no further than energyXT in VST/VSTi mode, hosted within Tracktion.

[Caleb]

For best midi implementation I personally would only scream out Muzys for those on a budget. I don't think anything I've used comes close in that sort of price range. (There may be some I haven't tried that do come close however). Unfortunately as stated above Muzys is a no-buy situation at the moment. I'm holding tight for the next chapter - whatever that is.

Other than that I would start tentatively suggesting Sonar, Cubase etc... moving towards the more expensive.

[DyerMaker]

Does anybody have a clue about Prject5 v 2 regarding its midi. One thing in Sonar that is making me more crazy than I already am is that I cant strech multiple midi notes. How stupid is that, and how easy coding wise would it be to make it work? Sonar is great in almost all other aspects than its MIDI.

Somebody suggested in another thread that some 3rd party developer would develop a MIDI plugin for MIDI editing for all hosts. Waddaya think? Anybody up for it

Mike

[headquest]

If you are looking for really indepth "linear" style MIDI editing then Cubase is probably your best bet.

I didn't spot anyone mention Podium, which I have heard elsewhere has good MIDI implementation.

Tracktion honestly doesn't have much of what you're looking for (and you certainly need to use "workarounds" for quite a few issues, which you mention you would rather not have to do).

I love Live personally, but my needs are probably different to yours (I mostly do "large" pieces in Sibelius, and hate the notation views I have seen in Sonar and Cubase).

[pljones]

As another Muzys veteran, I'm still holding out... though I've just installed the P5V2 demo and, unlike Tracktion, Live and eXT, it didn't make me curl up inside when I looked at the track and midi editing. And it sounded fantastic playing every single hosted instrument together... Mmm except I'd want to do some seriously clever MIDI routing...

At the moment, though, Muzys is still just holding up.

If I changed, I'd want more flexible plugin routing -- P2V5 doesn't look good there yet but I've not even scratched its surface -- but the same ease of editing and playing/triggering/using MIDI that Muzys has.

Other key features? Well, treating chunks of MIDI data as stand-alone building blocks (not bound to tracks or anything), ease of editing the MIDI data (e.g. select all notes above velocity 97 and randomise by 25%), event (list) editor is a must-have, good audio routing (maybe virtual cabling?), good MIDI routing (again, virtual cables would be cool), solid realtime performace - able to switch "scenes" on program change would be good. (Marillion's Mark Kelly covered Forte in SOS Live this month and it sounds rather nice...)

(Oh, and flexible automation went without saying...)

[Lunch Money]

FWIW, Tracktion treats MIDI on a per-clip basis and there's no such thing as an "audio track" or a "MIDI track", so you can copy, paste, and move around MIDI to whatever track you want.

Lots of crazy routing, too.... <grin>

Ah well. Can't blame me for trying.

[sluggo]

Does anybody have a clue about Prject5 v 2 regarding its midi. One thing in Sonar that is making me more crazy than I already am is that I cant strech multiple midi notes. How stupid is that, and how easy coding wise would it be to make it work? Sonar is great in almost all other aspects than its MIDI.
Mike

P5v2 is pretty good in terms of the midi tools being easy and fast to work with. Multiple notes can be lengthened by selecting them and then going to Tools-Length. There isn't a midi editor, and you can't do more advanced things like randomize note position, grid offseting, etc.

s