Project 5 V3?

[whyterabbyt]

I liked Project 5 v2, but I haven't used it since I got a dual-core system since it's basically running at half speed compared to an identical project in Sonar 5.

Hmmm, thats a shame. I assume that'll be one change for v3. I wonder how it goes if you ReWire it into Sonar?

but with that paltry selection of drumkits, you pretty much need to immediately add another piece of software (e.g. Battery or Guru) to have a any kind of variety for percussion. Since the idea is to be something of a complete electronic-music-oriented inspiration tool (ala Reason), I'd call that a major shortcoming.

There's a drum sampler (Velocity), a drum synthesiser (nPulse), a loop player (Cyclone), a rompler with classic Roland drumkits (Groovesynth) and a sampler capable of playing back percussion and drum sounds (DS864)

What exactly 'lacks' there in 'variety of percussion'

BTW You'll find more premade sample sets et.c. at project5.com But if you want real 'variety' you could always try making your own...

[harmony gardens]

I like one Project 5 ver 2 features over all the others, the Groove Matrix. It's so cool to pick out some drum loops you like, and put them in a row. Then you can simply let it play out so many measures of one beat, and so many measures of a second, etc. The browser is really nice, and if you're a little organized,,, (which I'm trying to do now), you can make things easy to find. This makes creating drum tracks much easier.

One thing that annoys me is that you can't load aif files directly into P5. I have to convert my aif's to wav, to use them in P5.

If I work in Project 5, I always find some audio shortcoming, like those already mentioned here, to drive me to Rewire Project 5 into Sonar. I basically use it as a Drum machine inside of Sonar, as well, as an easy way to put sound snips, like sound effects ect into a project.

One little noted thing that I LOVE about Project 5, is that if you change the tempo of a project, the whole thing slows down in sync. There's none of this going out of sinc when you change tempo.

I also prefer the drop down menu for inserting softsynths over the Synth rack in Sonar. I like the midi channel strip, and the way everything is right there for your softsynths.

I have said this before, but I wish Cakewalk would make a program that had the midi implimentation of Project 5,with the best audio features in Sonar to create a Sonar Project 5 Edition, or a Project 5 Sonar Edition, or something like that.

[wrench45us]

like what?

referrring to what features got into Music Creator that P5 users have been asking for

include
the virtual mixing console (looks like something like Sonars)
staff notation including guitar tablature
'some' additional aduid editing to easily set loop points
mp3 ouput and cd burning built in

Music Creator is a really low end entry product $29 usd, so it's interesting to me how some of these things got in here. Sonar has most of these things implemented. I'm assuming Cakewalk is easily borrowing some of these and migratring them to other products.
I never understood why P5 v2 didn't get the audio editing capablility of Sonar. And a lot of people want the virtual mixing console. Some of the most exciting thinking about this from thge P5 forum is the idea of an 'accessory' view of the project from this console.

[headquest]

As an Ableton user, and more recently Sonar 5PE owner as well, I was naturally interested - even excited - when P5v2 came out. It could have been the best of both worlds... but I felt after running the demo that it lacked the appeal of either. I agree with the posts here that lament the obvious "missing" features, but beyond that I really felt that it was a mistake to try and cram everything into one window. Ableton seperates the "Session" and "Arrangement" windows, which equate to the groove matrix and playlist elements in P5. Having both side by side sounds like a good idea in principal, but I felt in practice it resulted in just too many compromisesin terms of presentational quality and lacking features.

I also though that some of the older instruments from P5v1 (the original sampler and the two drum things) were quite abysmal. But I've not seen too many others complain, so probably I just didn't spend enough time learning how to get the best out of them.

I'll certainly be keeping an eye out to see where they go with version 3.

[sgx]

You can totally close the sequencer or the groove matrix if you like. I'm not sure where your problem is.

I think the Velocity drum sampler is nicer than Live's Impulse (more features, more pads).

[headquest]

You can totally close the sequencer or the groove matrix if you like. I'm not sure where your problem is.

Possibly it just didn't fit for me . The lack of a gapless audio engine when using the groove matrix was a bit of a problem though - another thing which slightly spoilt the party.
Ultimately I just felt that Live was better and much more solid. At that time it was on version 4 and the beta test for 5 started (which I was a part of from the beginning) and it blew me away...

I think the Velocity drum sampler is nicer than Live's Impulse (more features, more pads).

Impulse could do with a few more pads, true, but it has many more features (all the knobs etc are context sensitive for every pad ).

The real problem was the sound though - Velocity sounded just terrible. Perhaps it was simply that the sample content they included in the demo was dodgy?

[wrench45us]

Velocity sounds as it does because there are no effects, esp compresion applied on any of those samples. When I picked up P5 I was unhappy about the drums sounds, so I picked up FLStudio which seemed to have some great drum sounds. After a few days of poking around, I found out most of those FLS 'templates' had compression applied on the master out. When i fiddled with Velocity and applied compression to its output I couldn't much tell the difference between FLS and P5.
FLS is very smart to have its drums sounding 'ready' right out of the box.

i've since moved on to Battery and microTonic
i readily absorbed and appreciate the workflow model of P5, but I have to admit I don't have any use for the synths included.

[headquest]

i readily absorbed and appreciate the workflow model of P5, but I have to admit I don't have any use for the synths included.

That's interesting given that P5 was originally billed as Cakewalk's answer to Reason. I wonder if they will seek to improve the instruments in version 3?

I'm surprised that you don't use Dimension, or perhaps PSYN II though. I have PSYN II in SOnar 5 of course, and it has some nice sounds (although some quite harsh presets too). Dimension impressed me in the P5 demo.

Although I do use Impulse a lot in Ableton, I still like Reason's ReDrum best of all for drums.

[sgx]

Me too. I love me some redrum. It's too bad P5 is awful for controlling Reason through rewire midi (as are all Cake apps ). I'm pretty sure I'm moving to either Live 5 or Acid 6.....waiting on that Acid demo...

This isn't saying P5 is bad - I think its really awesome for midi sequencing of plugin instruments, but some audio features, routing features, and specific Rewire features are a bit lacking. I'll probably be upgrading to V3 anyways though if Cakewalk continues the trend of keeping P5 upgrades really cheap.

[headquest]

Me too. I love me some redrum. It's too bad P5 is awful for controlling Reason through rewire midi (as are all Cake apps ). I'm pretty sure I'm moving to either Live 5 or Acid 6.....waiting on that Acid demo...

Yeah, that surprised me about Sonar 5 when I got it - a poor rewire host .

Regarding Live (can't speak for Acid) it is a very good rewire host for Reason. Not only is the sequencer great for controlling ReDrum, but you can also use Clip Envelopes to control/automate any of ReDrum's (or other Reason device) parameters. So you can fully automate Reason devices from within Live (which seems to be a bit unusual for Rewire applications). Nice!

[sgx]

Yeap. I've been demoing it a bunch. I like Live a lot. I've been jumping between Acid Pro 5 for bouncing audio and mangling it, P5 for vsti and dxi since Acid is awful at midi, and Reason because I love redrum and nnxt. All that running at once is a cpu killer and arranging a song between 3 sequencers is getting unweildy! I was about to buy Live but saw the Acid 6 pamphlet and it looks like it fixes almost everything I didn't like about acid (and I assume it retains the audio functions I LOVE). Upgrading Acid will be cheaper than buying Live, so I'm going to wait till I've demoed both to make a decision. Hopefully once I get one of those, I can do all of my sequencing in one window (Live or Acid) and bring down my number of running programs to 2 by dropping P5. It's a shame. I really want to use P5, it's just missing some things. I prefer its interface to pretty much every host I've used.

[mumpcake]

Velocity was contributed by fXpansion, and falls somewhere between DR-005 and DR-008 in the features it offers. I thought it sounded fine for what it was. The only complaint I had with it is when loading LM-4 files, the pads automatically detuned an octave or two (whatever the lowest value is).

[wrench45us]

I'm surprised that you don't use Dimension

i should have been clearer.
i don't have much use for the synths that originally shipped with P5. Dimension is a recent addition and has a lot of very usable sounds. I upgraded to Dim Pro -- a lot of great piano and guitar. Some of the other choices are a bit quirky, but it looks like Garritan and hopefully others will be rounding out the choices.

Based on the P5 forum, most people who use P5 with a 2nd host with the most satisfaction are using Live or Sonar. There are periodic discussions about whether or not Cakewalk would like to have all its P5 users rewiring into Sonar, but there's been more reason to believe that isn't the case.

P5 as its evolved has pulled in one stereo channel recording and the Groove Matrix that borrows considerably from the Live model. It always had the ability to loop acidized audio, but until recently was unable to acidize/groove clip its own audio. The other major set of complaints has to do with midi export and midi out control.
To me these all seem to be different modes of working. CW has proved to be responsive to requests, but has always seemsd to be a little behind the curve -- except for what I condider its exceptional midi pattern and track editing features. Fortunately for me that's what I do almost exclusively.
Otherwise it seems to be a matter of using multiple hosts that combine and complement their different strengths or wait and see how the different hosts at this level converge by borrowing from each other.
If Live has most of what you need and you can put up with the midi editing, or P5 has most of what you need and you can live without extnsive recording features and midi out and export, or the new Acid does most of what you want and provides enough as it expands out in other directions to keep you productive... that seems to be the way things are going in this market segment.

One obvious solution for P5 and perhaps other hosts as well is to go the FLStudio route and provide their hosts as vst/DXi 'instruments'. Wouldn't make Reason users very happy, but otherwise seesm a great way of filling in feature gaps for certain hosts in a less clunky way than Rewire. I've used FLStudio as an instrument in P5 and it works seamlessly. I could definitely see this as a big plus for the new Acid and P5 versions.