Storm Studio, Reason, FL Studio, and Orion Platinum

[Kriminal]

In the piano roll, I can't seem to paint notes horizontally.

What do you mean?

No wave editor?

Its a Sequencer, not an audio editor.

Is it possible to see piano roll and instrument at the same time? It seems you can only toggle between the two views. If not, that’s a big issue.

No, why would you want to?

Only four sub groups in the mixer?

Yes.

Are there any spline or lfo drawing tools in event editor?

no, but it has been mentioned in the beta forum by some members. There is an LFO tool in the pattern event editor, not sure about the song event, never use it.

Can Orion do time stretching?

The Drumrack can, which is ok for loops. The Sampler can slice to fit bar length.

Also had a quick look at the fx and synths – there seems to be a good selection of fx, but can’t say I’m impressed by the synths – none of them appear to have anything other than basic ADSR envelopes, which is a big downer.

The WaspXT, has LFO and Env Mods, Wavefusion has 3 LFO and the usual wavetable stuff, Ultran WMS has sample morphing with amazing features etc etc. How many did you actually audition?


I cant comment on the rest, i dont have FL on my machine anymore, and im not working on my audio PC roght now, thats all i can recall for now.

[Wopelka]

And post a link to your music, if you're capable.

In case you didn't know, the "www" link under a person's sceen name at KVR takes you to their website. A good chance you'll find lots of Krim's tracks there. But now that this has become a "you show me yours" kind of chestbeat fest, it'd be only proper for you to post some of your music to carry on your end of the battle. Since your www is missing, please post a link.

shamann, i couldn't have said it better.

and surprisingly (or not) he has remained silent since then....

[speccyteccy]

In the piano roll, I can't seem to paint notes horizontally.

What do you mean?

FL has a paint mode where you can hold the mouse button down a draw a row of notes (i.e. all the same notes, note lengths are the current notelength). Works for patterns in the play list too.

No wave editor?

Its a Sequencer, not an audio editor.

And here's me thinking it was a soft studio with all the tools I needed to make music!

Is it possible to see piano roll and instrument at the same time? It seems you can only toggle between the two views. If not, that’s a big issue.

No, why would you want to?

Eh? So you can see the notes being played whilst programming your synth?

Only four sub groups in the mixer?

Yes.

I'd run up against that limit too easily.

Also had a quick look at the fx and synths – there seems to be a good selection of fx, but can’t say I’m impressed by the synths – none of them appear to have anything other than basic ADSR envelopes, which is a big downer.

The WaspXT, has LFO and Env Mods, Wavefusion has 3 LFO and the usual wavetable stuff, Ultran WMS has sample morphing with amazing features etc etc. How many did you actually audition?

All of them. I'm not saying they're bad, I just wasn't impressed, and I don't think they're any better than FL's. It's a moot point really, cos there's better free synths and fx out there than any of those in either host with the exception of Sytrus.

(I was looking for multi-stage envelopes btw)

[Kriminal]

I havent found a VA better than WaspXT, but thats just my taste.

why do you need to see the notes being played while programming, surely you listen to them, not watch them?

[speccyteccy]

I havent found a VA better than WaspXT, but thats just my taste.

In terms of pure sound quality I prefer Minimogue and ASynth (amongst others), and in terms of sound quality and flexibility, something like KarmaFX imo is leagues ahead of WaspXT.

why do you need to see the notes being played while programming, surely you listen to them, not watch them?

For one thing, I can't hear what's about to be played.

Visuals are very important to me - FL's channel (midi) activity meters, mixer meters, step sequencers, graphical envelopes and lfo's, even better when they're animated (stand up Crystal and Augur!), and FX such as Delayifier, Nyquist EQ, Tug of War, Minion and Multi Lens (all free!) all use graphics to help visualise what's going on with your sound.

[jens]

Well this whole thread is all very stupid, happens almost every time FL, Reason, or Orion are mentioned in the title.

I think this one even tops the previous ones though...

[jens]

Is it possible to see piano roll and instrument at the same time? It seems you can only toggle between the two views. If not, that’s a big issue.

No, why would you want to?

er... maybe e.g. because on basslines there's often some kind of trade-off/interdependence between the note-lenghts and the filter-/gain-envelopes needed/recommended/going on...

[TeeLangSun]

I'm starting to feel sorry for Orion so I'm gonna say something in it's defense. Orion has a couple of very cool things going on for itself. The sampler being one of them. Orion has the best built in beatslicing this side of the Mississippi. It's built right into the sampler. Now that the sampler has multiple outs, you can assign different slices to different mixer channels/outputs. Also, I believe that much of the Reason 3 upgrade shows that the Props definately took a look at Orion and saw some things that they liked that they could build on and take it a step further. Reason's new browser which allows you to browse for samples/instruments and to play them with your midi keyboard, right in the browser window, I believe owes something to Orion. Orion's sampler has been able to browse and play either samples, soundfonts and other formats from a midi keyboard, right in the browser window for as long as I can remember. There was nothing else that could do this, no one other than myself ever raved about how awesome and unique this ability was and I didn't dare to hope that this same ability would appear in all my applications. Now, many years later, Reason shows up with essentially, a new and improved slant on this concept. Coincidence? Well, another thing that is new to Reason 3 and years old in Orion is sidechainable FX. Add to this Reason's new combinator for layering instruments. Orion also had this way back when. Now, people are raving about these cool "new" things in Reason, and of course, Reason has built upon these ideas and made them better, but it's sad that nobody noticed poor Orion and gave Synapes it's props for being a fore runner of this stuff. I'd also add that Orion was very early in the "serious" built in beatslicing game.

I also think that Orion's default skin is excellent. I made very slight modifications to it, that involve only slightly different coloring in different spots. Otherwise, I like it better than any skin I've seen so far. It's perfectly functional.

The way it closes windows never dawned on me as being a problem. If I click the X in the corner, I'm not shocked that it will full close the window. After reading people complain about it, I figure that it would be nice if it only hid the generator, but it's still not a big deal.

I never minimized anything, I just hid everything behind the mixer window.

I like Orion's mixer-centric workflow.

I like clicking on a block in the playlist and going directly to that piano roll. I always wish I get directly into a piano roll from the playlist in FL like that.

Adding FX in Orion and then recalling those FX is easier in Orion than anything else.

Lastly, Orion was the easiest program I ever used but it did give me a great deal of grief. But it's pretty pointless to try to compare it to FL these days. FL just has almost everything you need. Orion doesn't have nearly that many features and nothing in Orion is cooked up with the level of details that FL is.

[lion_cub]

I found Orion's instruments to be ordinary too.

Are we talking instruments here or presets? And are we talking about the demo or the full version with 600mb of sounds? Just curious how your far your head is up your arse.

Since you choose to respond in such a crude and inappropriate manner, I am not prepared to respond to your questions.

[audiojunkie]

Can’t find anything like FL’s browser – which is ESSENTIAL for fast workflow

It's interesting how people can think so differently... I'm a long-time FL user, and I LOVE FLStudio, but I've never been fond of the browser.

A few simple graphical changes could change my opinion.... But to each his own. I'm happy.

--Sean

[Wopelka]

It's interesting how people can think so differently... I'm a long-time FL user, and I LOVE FLStudio, but I've never been fond of the browser.

A few simple graphical changes could change my opinion.... But to each his own. I'm happy.

exactly like me...

however, to be honest, i never took the time to get used to this rather weird browser.

[Kriminal]

Is it possible to see piano roll and instrument at the same time? It seems you can only toggle between the two views. If not, that’s a big issue.

No, why would you want to?

er... maybe e.g. because on basslines there's often some kind of trade-off/interdependence between the note-lenghts and the filter-/gain-envelopes needed/recommended/going on...

and one click is going to change that? thats all it is, one click to see the piano roll. I cant imagine how everyone ever wrote a track using hardware without seeing the notes...

[ceenda]

TeeLangSun: Nice post. Agree with all those points. I keep looking into Orion every so often and wanting to love it, but there are just some extremely irritating things that ruin the experience. Like, why is it so hard for Synapse to program patterns that can be expanded at record time? I don't like the "create a 999 length pattern" work-a-round. Also, multi-timbral plugins (layering midi channels on the piano roll is confusing) and a problem with eXT staying in sync when tempo was automated were the straws that broke the camel's back.

[BONES]

Its as I am about to say, sometimes it almost seems that Rich doesn't want ORION to be popular. For me those particular things are completely inconsequential but plenty of people have requested them often and loudly over the years to no avail [except the eXT one].

[BONES]

I could'nt care less for your music or the genre, but your ramble about Orion, quality, workflow, and 'getting things done' does not show in your music, and does not put your money where your mouth is to any regards of this.

Please elaborate. I am 100% happy with the way we sound but I'd welcome some constructive critique. Off forum if you'd prefer.

And clicking the X on the actual document is like clicking the X on Orion or Reason itself - it closes the document, not the windows to interact with it.

You say "Document", I say "Window" and tha tis the entire difference in our perspectives. Yours would only be valid if an ORION .sfs file opened in a window. In every app, the top-level window's "X" button closes the app, the second-level "X" closes that window permanently, flushing all its data from the app. Every single app I can think of with windows within windows. In fact, one of the things I always disliked about FL was its very non-Windoze standard way of doing things. But over the years some of that has been changed.

So why didn't Rich take them then?

You know, I often wonder if Rich doesn't want ORION to remain obscure, for whatever reason. His attitude is often mystifying.

You're welcome to send me a "BONES" demo file, organized in the way that you work. Send it by email. I'm sure I won't like it.

Its probably easier if I upload an image as it won't look right with the default skin. Unfortunately I cannot connect to my server at the moment so it will have to wait.
[/quote]...except that the first thing I did upon reinstall is change the resolution, turn off the themes, and the animations. And just for your info, Reason _does_ use a standard Windows GUI on Windows. I thought you actually tried the demo?[/quote]
On a Mac at work. Do people still do reinstalls? I can't remember the last time I needed to.

The reason for skins is that people have this absolute infatuation with things that look pretty. "Ooh, thats a pretty app, it must be good" "Wow, what lame colors, I'm sure that app sucks" (although it is justified for things like Babya Logic ).

That assumes that skinning only changes the look of an app. In ORION the main reason I make skins is to enhance the workflow as it is possible to reorganise parameters into a more sensible sequence. e.g. WaspXT - the default skin has the AMP Envelope before the Filter Envelope which makes no sense.

Also, what effects does Rebirth give you?

I dunno, I've never seen it. In fact I doubt I have even seen a screenshot. It has less than no appeal to me.

Apart from that, why use any synth plugins at all then? I can just post process it to sound however I want, right? So why do all soft studios and sequencers still include more than one synth if I can do it all with effects?

Well, its like this. I agree that it would be possible to use one synth for practically any sound, if it were a good enough synth, but a lot synths require a lot less work than others to do something in particular. i.e. You could almost make WaveFusion sound like WaspXT and so most of the same things, plus a whol elot more but I've always found it much easier to coax a good bass sound from WaspXT than from WaveFusion.

Oh, does Orion have the nice Layer Randomize feature? I didn't think so. And your reply? "Only morons use that, its just a toy".

Actually, I have no idea what it even is but, as my previous response indicated that I use sounds which don't require layering because they already sound good by themsleves, I think you must already have realised that I am gonna poop on it.

You are so full of yourself that I almost think you're acting it and being a troll.

Actually, it is the most effective [and possibly only way to get more than a "because it is" answer out of anyone, particularly FL users.

I've got this cool drum template that zips up the sampler channels and has layers in its own channel group. It works quite well, and my step sequencer never goes off my tiny screen.

But doesn't it bug the hell out of you when you wanna go back in and edit something that you zipped? That's why I never used it. I thought it would be a godsend but it turned out to be a PITA.

Cool. In FL Studio, I can be used with any automatable knob using the Peak controller. Why? How? Because it's the same exact damn thing.

No, its not. It purports to do something similar but if you listen to the results of sidechaining as opposed to using a Peak Controller as a mod source you will see what I mean. I played around with it when it first appeared and its results are lifeless by comparison. Seriously, I'm not just saying that to denigrate FL, its a verifable fact and you should check it out by using sidechaining on a Sampler and using the Peak Controller on something similar, say the same single-hit .wav [maybe a looped string], and see how different the results are.

In FL, I load up a few parametrics or posishofit and place them above each other when stuff is being muddy.

How do you remember from session to session which instruments are assigned to which track? Kind of makes it a little messy.

In Reason, I put an EQ for each instrument below the mixer.

You have to put it in!?! How many mouse-clicks is that?