This reminds me of the XG Editor for the old XG Series Synths from Yamaha. God was that thing crappy. It looked good on paper and from the GUI, but usability? No chance.
You had to open it, edit your sound outside of your host and then save the preset, while loading it as sysex info (MIDI) in Cubase to get the sound you just dialed in. But beware if you had to tweak anything. Loopback devices? Pain in the butt.
Good times indeed - glad that they're over and stuff like MIDI Quest exists. Thing is, for several hundred bucks just to get the VSTi feature, this is definitely hard to choke.
Also I remember v10 existing since early 2007 now? At least this is since it's on my radar.
Midi Quest 10 - Is it worth it?
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- KVRAF
- 14739 posts since 19 Oct, 2003 from Berlin, Germany
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- KVRAF
- 3436 posts since 29 Jun, 2004 from Venezia - Italy
exactly, only feature that was slightly saving this total pain was the ability to load MIDI files and loop them from MIDIquest itself, that anyway, wasnt certainly helping things on a quick use for tweaking easily a sound then get back to sequencing...Compyfox wrote: You had to open it, edit your sound outside of your host and then save the preset, while loading it as sysex info (MIDI) in Cubase to get the sound you just dialed in. But beware if you had to tweak anything. Loopback devices? Pain in the butt.
i think youre right, its some more than a year that version 10 got released, make it even close to two years, as far as i remember...Also I remember v10 existing since early 2007 now? At least this is since it's on my radar.
dunno...but, again, the thing about demo containing bugs not present in the actual full version, seems pretty suicidal..particularly when you're trying to convince people to put a decent amount of money on a program that's already targeted towards a fraction of the market nowadays ..
Peace
Dubadelica - Electronic music since 1996 http://www.dubadelica.com/about.php
Radio Rebelde - Modern roots reggae with an electronic twist https://radiorebeldereggae.bandcamp.com/
Radio Rebelde - Modern roots reggae with an electronic twist https://radiorebeldereggae.bandcamp.com/
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- KVRian
- 1313 posts since 29 Mar, 2002 from Salt Lake City, Utah - U.S.A.
http://code.google.com/p/ctrlr/jupiter8 wrote:http://code.google.com/p/ctrlr/
Check out this. Dunno how good it is but it's free so all it takes is some time.
Interesting, not sure if I can figure it out though, or if it's reasonably simple to make layouts for other hardware.
Here's some examples of what they have. Maybe can explain more about it, if they find it useful and intuitive?
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- KVRist
- 61 posts since 28 Apr, 2004 from Glendale, Arizona, USA
I bought MQ8 (when it was the current version) a few years back based on a positive review in EM by a writer who now makes his living writing books about Sonar. I quickly realized that the review was either:
a) the results of an incompetent test strategy
b) industry propaganda
(As a result of the above experience, I do not trust product reviews in publications that have advertising and have cancelled my subscription to EM.)
Initial installation problems aside, I had problems with the following editors:
a) Matrix-1000
b) Emu Planet Earth
c) Wavestation A/D
d) Wavestation S/R
e) Korg M1/R
f) Korg EA-1
g) Korg ER-1
There were no editors that I used that had no problems.
At the end of 2 years of corresponding with Squest via email and migrating to MQ9 with the hope of seeing an improvement, I can state the following:
a) Matrix-1000 editor is working
b) Emu Planet Earth editor is unusable
c) Wavestation A/D is improved but buggy enough that I still use the front panel for programming
d) Wavestation S/R is improved but buggy enough that I do all programming on the A/D front
panel and transfer patches to the S/R
e) Korg M1/R editor is fixed
f) Korg EA-1 editor is actually great
g) Korg ER-1 editor is actually great
Here are some points I would like to make about the most frustrating software experience that I ever had:
1) SQ often would not respond to my technical support requests unless I eventually posted them on public forums.
2) I provided SQ with a copy of the Wavestation sysex specification so that they could fix the bugs.
3) SQ actually gave me attention and fixed many bugs for me; although they were ultimately unsuccessful in my estimation, they sometimes tried, so SQ deserves credit for attention that other larger SW vendors would not have provided.
4) SQ purchased a Wavestation S/R on ebay in an attempt to solve my issues, with the agrement that I would not speak publicly about my problems. That was a few years back, and I consider the "statute of limitations" to have expired, especially since many problems were not resolved, and I gave up a few years ago.
5) After some time, Psicraft/Vyzor promised a Wavestation editor to fix my problems (again, under a gentlemen's agreement of silence), but this never materialized. I understand this, however, since the KDLE made its appearance, severely reducing the sales potential of the hypothetical Vyzor Wavestation editor.
Bottom line: MQ8 and MQ9 were very poor quality (the poorest that I had ever experienced), but SQ put some effort into resolving my issues with partial success. I considered myself to have provided uncompensated part-time test engineering services for two years. Maybe they have improved in the past several years. Maybe MQ10 is greatly improved, and my experiences are not germain to this discussion, but I feel obligated as a consumer to inform other consumers of my experiences.
Keith
a) the results of an incompetent test strategy
b) industry propaganda
(As a result of the above experience, I do not trust product reviews in publications that have advertising and have cancelled my subscription to EM.)
Initial installation problems aside, I had problems with the following editors:
a) Matrix-1000
b) Emu Planet Earth
c) Wavestation A/D
d) Wavestation S/R
e) Korg M1/R
f) Korg EA-1
g) Korg ER-1
There were no editors that I used that had no problems.
At the end of 2 years of corresponding with Squest via email and migrating to MQ9 with the hope of seeing an improvement, I can state the following:
a) Matrix-1000 editor is working
b) Emu Planet Earth editor is unusable
c) Wavestation A/D is improved but buggy enough that I still use the front panel for programming
d) Wavestation S/R is improved but buggy enough that I do all programming on the A/D front
panel and transfer patches to the S/R
e) Korg M1/R editor is fixed
f) Korg EA-1 editor is actually great
g) Korg ER-1 editor is actually great
Here are some points I would like to make about the most frustrating software experience that I ever had:
1) SQ often would not respond to my technical support requests unless I eventually posted them on public forums.
2) I provided SQ with a copy of the Wavestation sysex specification so that they could fix the bugs.
3) SQ actually gave me attention and fixed many bugs for me; although they were ultimately unsuccessful in my estimation, they sometimes tried, so SQ deserves credit for attention that other larger SW vendors would not have provided.
4) SQ purchased a Wavestation S/R on ebay in an attempt to solve my issues, with the agrement that I would not speak publicly about my problems. That was a few years back, and I consider the "statute of limitations" to have expired, especially since many problems were not resolved, and I gave up a few years ago.
5) After some time, Psicraft/Vyzor promised a Wavestation editor to fix my problems (again, under a gentlemen's agreement of silence), but this never materialized. I understand this, however, since the KDLE made its appearance, severely reducing the sales potential of the hypothetical Vyzor Wavestation editor.
Bottom line: MQ8 and MQ9 were very poor quality (the poorest that I had ever experienced), but SQ put some effort into resolving my issues with partial success. I considered myself to have provided uncompensated part-time test engineering services for two years. Maybe they have improved in the past several years. Maybe MQ10 is greatly improved, and my experiences are not germain to this discussion, but I feel obligated as a consumer to inform other consumers of my experiences.
Keith
Keith
Glendale, AZ
Glendale, AZ
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- KVRist
- 157 posts since 13 Apr, 2007 from Northern Virginia
I bought MQ 10 last year and would love to report that it has been a great tool. I really could use a single editor that talks to all my equipment. However my results have been mixed. Older boxes like my Matrix-1000 and Casio VZ-10m required tweaking (I remember having to add timing delays, and some other things I can't remember now). It worked better with newer equipment. The challenge is trying to figure out why it won't work with a specific piece of equipment. So, don't expect a magic bullet that will work right with all your equipment as soon as you install it.
MQ is kind of the last man standing. Most of the other professional editors have stopped development (I don't think I would want to try to support every piece of hardware ever made!)
If you do get MQ:
Make sure you load any available updates and the latest instrument definitions before you spend a lot of time with it. Also try physically hooking up midi cables directly to a piece of equipment when you first try to control it. It will simplify troubleshooting. You won't have to worry about anything between your computer and your synth (or whatever). If it works, then try hooking it up back to how you normally do in your studio (midi interface, etc).
Would I buy it again?…I don't know.
MQ is kind of the last man standing. Most of the other professional editors have stopped development (I don't think I would want to try to support every piece of hardware ever made!)
If you do get MQ:
Make sure you load any available updates and the latest instrument definitions before you spend a lot of time with it. Also try physically hooking up midi cables directly to a piece of equipment when you first try to control it. It will simplify troubleshooting. You won't have to worry about anything between your computer and your synth (or whatever). If it works, then try hooking it up back to how you normally do in your studio (midi interface, etc).
Would I buy it again?…I don't know.
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- KVRAF
- 14739 posts since 19 Oct, 2003 from Berlin, Germany
Since there is a beta editor called "Prodatum" up and running stable from a 3rd Party developer and EMU Protues User, I'd try that one.mcdonalk wrote: b) Emu Planet Earth
According to the people who tried and used it, it has visual cables, and simple handling. Didn't try it yet with my E-MU romplers, and it's definitely not VSTi bound (but standalone), but since SoundDiver is kinda dead, and nobody really dived into the Proteus series in terms of MIDI maps, this is at least a promising starting point.
The developer is very responsive in the Yahoo Mailing List, so I'd call that a very good support.
Personally I wish MIDI QUest would be affordable. Cause it's a PITA to control my MU-15 and handprogram my Kurzweil K2000. And I do appreciate having total control over the sound (filter automation, etc).
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- KVRAF
- 3436 posts since 29 Jun, 2004 from Venezia - Italy
BTW does anyone know if the editor set for Juno106 can possibly work with an Alpha Juno 1? in other words are old Junos sysex msgs alike?toine6 wrote:
i agree with Compyfox on the price, i still think that heavily cutting their price tag would make them sell some more copies, even nowadays that most of the people are computer based when it comes for generation of sound..
i mean, the price today is totally nonsense IMO for
a) the resized market thats only a fraction of what it was
b) software prices, luckily for users, are generally getting a low lower than the past, on most fields, thanks to wild competition out there
c) the problems that seem to affect, still after many yrs of development, that app..
really i would love to err...love that app..i would have killed yrs ago to be able to use vst-wize my tweaks on external hw, and actually a substantial reduction of the price could even manage me to reconsider blowing off some dust from the old machines and incorporate again some outboard..but with such (high, IMO) price, lots of testified bugs and generally with the decline of the hw things as daily-abused soundmanglers, honestly i d rather shed out the bux for the Cubase 5 update or sth else..(and, really, i dont feel, actually, the urge to upgrade my cubase version AT ALL, so go figure..)
Peace
Dubadelica - Electronic music since 1996 http://www.dubadelica.com/about.php
Radio Rebelde - Modern roots reggae with an electronic twist https://radiorebeldereggae.bandcamp.com/
Radio Rebelde - Modern roots reggae with an electronic twist https://radiorebeldereggae.bandcamp.com/
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- KVRian
- 536 posts since 8 Dec, 2004
thats good to hear.. cause i cant make it work in Vsti form.kmonkey wrote:Well i don't know where is a problem. I use it daily inside FL Studio and Cubase. It is working as supposed. I can control my lexicon reverb, my hardware synths and everything is indeed working like a charm. It took me a while to learn how to set up everything(midi routing) but now when i know i can really say it is nice piece of software making my outboard gear to be controllable inside my favorite host.
IMHO useful software!
can you elaborate on how you set up the midi routing?
in my Vsti editor, when i press the settings button, i can't set the [Port in] to my midi interface, just the 10 virtual midiYoke ports...
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- KVRist
- 105 posts since 14 Apr, 2005
I have MQ10, I love it and hate it. I can use it and it works pretty well for me. One thig I can never get is my hardware settings never save. i always have to recheck what midi ports my instruments are set up to within the program.
Other wise I think they made some really great strides with version 10.
Other wise I think they made some really great strides with version 10.
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
The love-hate thing with these editors is common. I paid for SoundDiver upgrades year after year in the hope they'd finally get it right until Apple killed it.
So they never did. It works ok for some things and not for others.
But to be fair, this software has two major problems:
1. Synth manufacturers often update the original firmware several times during the course of a product's timeline, sometimes introducing new features, so you need to constantly update the sysex code for all these machines and your program has to detect the firmware version in use and adapt to its requirements. You have to do this for ALL the machines you support: you're aiming at constantly moving targets. Plus new machines are constantly being introduced and you have to cough up editors for most of them: your user base uses them all.
2. The number of people who actually need to have this level of interaction with their gear is typically small. Most people are preset hunters rather than programmers with the knowledge and creativity to get their hands dirty and really exploit their machines. So this makes the user base small.
So you have a program that has a small user base and requires a huge commitment of time and manpower. That's a formula for very expensive software and in that context $300 is a drop in the bucket. In the end it's likely that no company can dedicate the manpower required to do this properly at the prices that they can sell the software for; and that would explain why this kind of software is disappearing.
Michael Haydn at Emagic was the SoundDiver guru. He had great ideas but it was clear he had limited resources at his disposal. In fact they had worked out a way to get external programmers to take care of individual module families which I'm sure helped a lot, but must also have been quite a challenge to manage. He tried to instigate some reform with the manufacturers trying to get them to set up they sysex in ways that would make editor unification easier, but they didn't really care.
It's a shame Apple killed it, because it really felt that in a few more iterations, they might have gotten it right. Then again, that was a constant sentiment during the entire project's lifetime. And in the end, based on my earlier observations, I suspect they killed it because it just wasn't a profitable venture.
Rekon Audio has an interesting twist on the idea, making external synth editor VSTi's, which I think is brilliant but they're not introducing new models very quickly and are only offering synth specific solutions, which would be great if they had tons of them. I believe they're also hitting the volume limitations previously mentioned.
So they never did. It works ok for some things and not for others.
But to be fair, this software has two major problems:
1. Synth manufacturers often update the original firmware several times during the course of a product's timeline, sometimes introducing new features, so you need to constantly update the sysex code for all these machines and your program has to detect the firmware version in use and adapt to its requirements. You have to do this for ALL the machines you support: you're aiming at constantly moving targets. Plus new machines are constantly being introduced and you have to cough up editors for most of them: your user base uses them all.
2. The number of people who actually need to have this level of interaction with their gear is typically small. Most people are preset hunters rather than programmers with the knowledge and creativity to get their hands dirty and really exploit their machines. So this makes the user base small.
So you have a program that has a small user base and requires a huge commitment of time and manpower. That's a formula for very expensive software and in that context $300 is a drop in the bucket. In the end it's likely that no company can dedicate the manpower required to do this properly at the prices that they can sell the software for; and that would explain why this kind of software is disappearing.
Michael Haydn at Emagic was the SoundDiver guru. He had great ideas but it was clear he had limited resources at his disposal. In fact they had worked out a way to get external programmers to take care of individual module families which I'm sure helped a lot, but must also have been quite a challenge to manage. He tried to instigate some reform with the manufacturers trying to get them to set up they sysex in ways that would make editor unification easier, but they didn't really care.
It's a shame Apple killed it, because it really felt that in a few more iterations, they might have gotten it right. Then again, that was a constant sentiment during the entire project's lifetime. And in the end, based on my earlier observations, I suspect they killed it because it just wasn't a profitable venture.
Rekon Audio has an interesting twist on the idea, making external synth editor VSTi's, which I think is brilliant but they're not introducing new models very quickly and are only offering synth specific solutions, which would be great if they had tons of them. I believe they're also hitting the volume limitations previously mentioned.
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- KVRAF
- 3220 posts since 23 Dec, 2002
Rekon doesn't respond to e-mails. The virus editor which I own will not load the present banks as advertised. There is no documentation. You can tweaksthe virtual knobs and the synth reponds but no luck in loading banks and patches or recalling them. Wasn't working in SX 3 or 4 and the same in Cubase 5. $50.00 down the drain. Not recommended.
Breeze wrote: Rekon Audio has an interesting twist on the idea, making external synth editor VSTi's, which I think is brilliant but they're not introducing new models very quickly and are only offering synth specific solutions, which would be great if they had tons of them. I believe they're also hitting the volume limitations previously mentioned.
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
Proof => Pudding. It's sad, reallyScotty wrote:Rekon doesn't respond to e-mails. The virus editor which I own will not load the present banks as advertised. There is no documentation. You can tweaksthe virtual knobs and the synth reponds but no luck in loading banks and patches or recalling them. Wasn't working in SX 3 or 4 and the same in Cubase 5. $50.00 down the drain. Not recommended.
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- KVRAF
- 2427 posts since 13 Sep, 2004
http://www.jsynthlib.org/
Useful for quite a few synths
MIDIQuest is crud and the devs don't really have any interest in developing it further either
It is not so hard to create editors in SM if you take the time out to do it
Also somebody asked if a juno 106 and juno 1 are the same SYSEX i'm afraid not
Jsnyth isn't that hard to add templates too either but still a fair bit of work
NAS
Useful for quite a few synths
MIDIQuest is crud and the devs don't really have any interest in developing it further either
It is not so hard to create editors in SM if you take the time out to do it
Also somebody asked if a juno 106 and juno 1 are the same SYSEX i'm afraid not
Jsnyth isn't that hard to add templates too either but still a fair bit of work
NAS
Omerta
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
Very cool effort. Someone should make a VSTi version of this. The eternal problem is that we all want to do this kind of stuff from within our DAW.NAS wrote:http://www.jsynthlib.org/
Useful for quite a few synths
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- KVRist
- 36 posts since 18 Oct, 2006
The Alpha Juno has good midi implementation and can be controlled with a BCR 2000 or other midi controller.toine6 wrote:
BTW does anyone know if the editor set for Juno106 can possibly work with an Alpha Juno 1? in other words are old Junos sysex msgs alike?
In my experience, there are lots of problems with software solutions. Some hosts do not support Sysex to begin with. Ableton Live, my main work horse, does not seem to work with sysex editors. Also, many synths will not work with software editors unless you have a later operating system. The Pulse editor only works with later OS versions. This is a hardware upgrade: If you want to control the Pulse via software and have an older model, you'll have to spend money to have a new chip installed. The same goes for the Roland MKS 70 for example (latest chip).
Does anyone know if Max for Live will be able to do Sysex? I am hoping that this app can do the same as Cubase maps. With an active user community and an application that is easy program, I would hope that a pool of hardware templates could be created...