Best DAW for Windows that supports MPE.

[zerocrossing]

I’m done with Live. It’s served me well, but I’m really dependent on my Roli Rise and it’s pretty clear they just don’t care about supporting MPE controllers. Hell, they even filter out poly pressure. I had a little pact with myself, that if they didn’t add it in v10, I was out. So, I’m out.

The obvious choice seems to be Bitwig. I have Bitwig 8 Track, and it seems pretty good, but I’m wondering what others have found in the world of DAWs that they like more and why.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Bitwig is decent - works perfectly with it's own synths and equator and strobe, also with falcon in polyphonic mode. It has problems with multi-channel midi because, well it doesn't do that. I still use it with Omnisphere with copied instruments over the different parts, but you should make each copy mono in that case so that it cuts off previous notes on that channel in case of multiple notes getting sent over the same channel (which happens if notes don't overlap since bitwig rotates channels on the fly and doesn't store the channel received). And bitwig claims to use VST3 note expression but doesn't in any useful way. Steinberg don't know what they are talking about.

Cubase seems like it works well because of Note expression and multi-channel midi, which you can convert MPE messages coming in to note expression. And it saves the midi channel received, unlike bitwig.
By all accounts Reaper seems to work well with MPE/multi-channel midi as well and stores the midi channel info.

What about Tracktion Waveform? Comes with Roli products so it might work well. I was just about to email Roli to figure out how to get Waveform as I have a seaboard block but haven't seen a download for it.

[pdxindy]

Yeah... Bitwig, Cubase and Tracktion (Waveform) are the options I would look at

[VariKusBrainZ]

https://cycling74.com/feature/seaboardrise
https://cycling74.com/articles/get-the-rise-package

[zerocrossing]

Bitwig is decent - works perfectly with it's own synths and equator and strobe, also with falcon in polyphonic mode. It has problems with multi-channel midi because, well it doesn't do that. I still use it with Omnisphere with copied instruments over the different parts, but you should make each copy mono in that case so that it cuts off previous notes on that channel in case of multiple notes getting sent over the same channel (which happens if notes don't overlap since bitwig rotates channels on the fly and doesn't store the channel received). And bitwig claims to use VST3 note expression but doesn't in any useful way. Steinberg don't know what they are talking about.

Cubase seems like it works well because of Note expression and multi-channel midi, which you can convert MPE messages coming in to note expression. And it saves the midi channel received, unlike bitwig.
By all accounts Reaper seems to work well with MPE/multi-channel midi as well and stores the midi channel info.

What about Tracktion Waveform? Comes with Roli products so it might work well. I was just about to email Roli to figure out how to get Waveform as I have a seaboard block but haven't seen a download for it.

Hm. Bitwig not dealing with multi-channel MIDI is a bit of a bummer.

I may be forced into Reaper for the sole reason that because of Ableton’s upgrade policy from 9 to 10, my 9 license is about as appealing as a piece of poop and I don’t think I can scare up the funds for an outright buy of one of the more expensive DAWs. Bitwig 8 Track has proven to be pretty useless due to it’s pretty paltry feature set, but at least it shows me that I can continue to work in more or less the same way that I have been.

Not being able to easily use Omnisphere is a bit of a bummer, but I’ve kind of decided that the Rise is really just married to MPE compatible software and hardware. It’s not a big heartache. Between the software that’s available now, my Micromonsta (now just getting MPE support. Haven’t tried it yet) and maybe adding a Modor NF-1M this Christmas, that should give me a lot to work with. I do still find that for a lot of sounds, I still gravitate to using a standard MIDI controller anyway because the Rise’s inability to do real aftertouch makes it awkward. I wish Roli Control would let you filter out pressure unti after a specified threshold.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Why not try Ableton and M4L, the links I posted were a hint

[BobDog]

Why not try Ableton and M4L, the links I posted were a hint

Could you please tell us how we would use that to control plugins?

[BobDog]

I’m done with Live. It’s served me well, but I’m really dependent on my Roli Rise and it’s pretty clear they just don’t care about supporting MPE controllers. Hell, they even filter out poly pressure. I had a little pact with myself, that if they didn’t add it in v10, I was out. So, I’m out.

The obvious choice seems to be Bitwig. I have Bitwig 8 Track, and it seems pretty good, but I’m wondering what others have found in the world of DAWs that they like more and why.

Unfortunately bitwig is also not perfect with MPE, at least they tried though.

Logic and Cubase are your best bet.

[Terrafractyl]

Yep. I too found the cubase implementation waaaay easier to work with than Bitwig.
And b gave me so many headaches with its midi routing. Why o why did they make it like that!
Kinda though I was done with cubase when bitwig 1 came out and i fell in love with many aspects. When b2 and c9 came out simultaneously plus I bought a roli keyboard it quickly became very obvious which to use for actual music making.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Why not try Ableton and M4L, the links I posted were a hint

Could you please tell us how we would use that to control plugins?

M4L can load plugins

[pdxindy]

Why not try Ableton and M4L, the links I posted were a hint

Could you please tell us how we would use that to control plugins?

M4L can load plugins

and that is useful for MPE how?

[JonSolo]

Cubase.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Why not try Ableton and M4L, the links I posted were a hint

Could you please tell us how we would use that to control plugins?

M4L can load plugins

and that is useful for MPE how?

Did you check the links I posted above?

Working closely with ROLI, we at Cycling ’74 have released a huge content package focused on support for the Seaboard RISE as well as any other MIDI hardware that uses the MPE

[pdxindy]

Why not try Ableton and M4L, the links I posted were a hint

Could you please tell us how we would use that to control plugins?

M4L can load plugins

and that is useful for MPE how?

Did you check the links I posted above?

Working closely with ROLI, we at Cycling ’74 have released a huge content package focused on support for the Seaboard RISE as well as any other MIDI hardware that uses the MPE

I did... and I watched the videos, but there is little specific info there.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Why not try Ableton and M4L, the links I posted were a hint

Could you please tell us how we would use that to control plugins?

M4L can load plugins

and that is useful for MPE how?

Did you check the links I posted above?

Working closely with ROLI, we at Cycling ’74 have released a huge content package focused on support for the Seaboard RISE as well as any other MIDI hardware that uses the MPE

I did... and I watched the videos, but there is little specific info there.

https://support.roli.com/article/max-tutorial-1

Obviously everything in this tutorial can be used in M4L