Compare MIDI editors

[anli]

Hi! Would anybody be so kind (and experienced) to compare WF 12 Pro MIDI editor convenience and features with ones of other DAWs (Bitwig, Reaper, Ardour)?

[rickpress]

Mixbus as of V8 is more solid for midi but is only basic. Mixbus and Ardour as of V8 do have midi plugins that do interesting effects (strum plugin for example / note delays etc). Mixbus is a very solid daw and it seems midi and creative side of things are a development priority now as of V8 Mixbus / Ardour has the live looping / clip launching and much more solid midi.

Reaper with extensions (such as chordgun / midi strum / so many extensions) is as capable as Waveform but lacks the chord track unless you extend it with ReaTrak Studio ----- https://gearspace.com/board/cockos-reap ... eaper.html

Bitwigs midi is behind waveforms. It doesn't have as many of the features that V12 PRO brought with it at least not from my limited experience of using Bitwig (I may be wrong so correct me here if I am). When I say MIDI I mean the Piano roll but Bitwig has the notefx grid which is really intriguing and in many ways a lot more powerful than what youll find in other daws.

Main advantages of bitwig is the modular grid (copied idea from Mulab which has had it for years) and the live clip clip launching / modulation and sound design aspects of that daw.

All in all if you want the best piano roll - FL Studio followed behind by Waveform.

If you want the best MIDI as in terms of what you can do with MIDI - BItwig - as in the Note FX features as of V4 upwards or whenver it was introduced - Note Grid.

I think the strength of Waveform is the one screen workflow, having all actions in one panel and the compositional tools built in - fastest daw ive seen for composition bar FLstudio but even waveform superceeds that.

[anli]

Mixbus as of V8 is more solid for midi but is only basic. Mixbus and Ardour as of V8 do have midi plugins that do interesting effects (strum plugin for example / note delays etc). Mixbus is a very solid daw and it seems midi and creative side of things are a development priority now as of V8 Mixbus / Ardour has the live looping / clip launching and much more solid midi.

Reaper with extensions (such as chordgun / midi strum / so many extensions) is as capable as Waveform but lacks the chord track unless you extend it with ReaTrak Studio ----- https://gearspace.com/board/cockos-reap ... eaper.html

Bitwigs midi is behind waveforms. It doesn't have as many of the features that V12 PRO brought with it at least not from my limited experience of using Bitwig (I may be wrong so correct me here if I am). When I say MIDI I mean the Piano roll but Bitwig has the notefx grid which is really intriguing and in many ways a lot more powerful than what youll find in other daws.

Main advantages of bitwig is the modular grid (copied idea from Mulab which has had it for years) and the live clip clip launching / modulation and sound design aspects of that daw.

All in all if you want the best piano roll - FL Studio followed behind by Waveform.

If you want the best MIDI as in terms of what you can do with MIDI - BItwig - as in the Note FX features as of V4 upwards or whenver it was introduced - Note Grid.

I think the strength of Waveform is the one screen workflow, having all actions in one panel and the compositional tools built in - fastest daw ive seen for composition bar FLstudio but even waveform superceeds that.

Plenty of information, plenty of aspects, minimal bias - really helpful, sincere thanks.

[rickpress]

Another Tip - When using WINE and Yabridge / LINVST / Carla / Airwave (whichever vst bridge you use) understand that most if not all of the problems that inhibit some vsts from scaling and showing or hiding certain gui aspects properly on Linux can be overcome by running the vst in virtual desktop mode. This is a bit weird as you will get the blue background that Wine's virtual desktop brings but you can absolutely use plugins that do so. Amongst those that don't scale so well with Wine are things like Cherry Audio Dreamsynth and certain other vst synths. If you want to use synths you can easily open the gui and it will work but it will go fullscreen and you need to use the superkey to pull backout to the screen manager and back into waveform. A number of these synths will display properly also if you play with the screen manager settings in the graphics tab of wine but you may find closing a synths window will cause the vst to stop rather than just minimise. If you superkey out and then back into waveform it should avoid those problems.

I've managed to get Hyperion (I own the windows version) running on Ubuntu with wine 8.0 staging using winetricks - if you install to default wine it wont work at all you need some of the dll files that winetricks can install and you are good to go. Hyperion was quite strange as it runs at the same speed (almost) as Windows native using Carla and Wine.

Maybe someone / somewhere on linuxmusicians might one day make a vst equivalent to protondb for gaming (Steam) and provide assistance for getting each vst to work on linux. I've also tried the demo version of the new Tracktion synth from Daw.

Good workaround might be to just create the sound you need in the synth or vst you need and then sample it and make an old school style multisampler instrument from the synth. That way certain sounds you use are easier to recall in Waveform on Linux.

It's a bit of a pain getting everything going on Linux but with enough time it works and is pretty straightforward. And as for plugins the bottles app is key.

The feeling of being able to not use Windows though is worth it.

[anli]

Another Tip - When using WINE and Yabridge / LINVST / Carla / Airwave (whichever vst bridge you use) understand that most if not all of the problems that inhibit some vsts from scaling and showing or hiding certain gui aspects properly on Linux can be overcome by running the vst in virtual desktop mode. This is a bit weird as you will get the blue background that Wine's virtual desktop brings but you can absolutely use plugins that do so. Amongst those that don't scale so well with Wine are things like Cherry Audio Dreamsynth and certain other vst synths. If you want to use synths you can easily open the gui and it will work but it will go fullscreen and you need to use the superkey to pull backout to the screen manager and back into waveform. A number of these synths will display properly also if you play with the screen manager settings in the graphics tab of wine but you may find closing a synths window will cause the vst to stop rather than just minimise. If you superkey out and then back into waveform it should avoid those problems.

I've managed to get Hyperion (I own the windows version) running on Ubuntu with wine 8.0 staging using winetricks - if you install to default wine it wont work at all you need some of the dll files that winetricks can install and you are good to go. Hyperion was quite strange as it runs at the same speed (almost) as Windows native using Carla and Wine.

Maybe someone / somewhere on linuxmusicians might one day make a vst equivalent to protondb for gaming (Steam) and provide assistance for getting each vst to work on linux. I've also tried the demo version of the new Tracktion synth from Daw.

Good workaround might be to just create the sound you need in the synth or vst you need and then sample it and make an old school style multisampler instrument from the synth. That way certain sounds you use are easier to recall in Waveform on Linux.

It's a bit of a pain getting everything going on Linux but with enough time it works and is pretty straightforward. And as for plugins the bottles app is key.

The feeling of being able to not use Windows though is worth it.

Sorry, have not understood this post. It seems to be beyond the topic.

[Watchful]

Looks like it was posted in the wrong topic.

[mikoatkvr]

The things i like about Waveform's Piano roll is the ability to colourise keys which are in the scale of your edit and also the ability to have an audio waveform in the background, which is useful for reference to another track.

Screenshot from 2023-02-09 09-16-23.png

[imstre]

Can even play midi information together with audio in one track also like bitwig!
Wet and Dry 100% and the synth sounds together with the drums loop on one track

[exponent1]

The things i like about Waveform's Piano roll is the ability to colourise keys which are in the scale of your edit and also the ability to have an audio waveform in the background, which is useful for reference to another track.

Screenshot from 2023-02-09 09-16-23.png

How did you set this up? This is really useful!

[mikoatkvr]

Settings_Appearance_Midi_Note_colours.png

Goto >Settings >appearance > Midi Note Colour and set your in/out of keys and scales. You can also tick the box on to Highlight current key in Midi background, which shows the lighter colour background lanes in key.

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Click_This_Icon_to_show_midi_in_key.png

Click the multi-color Icon in the midi editor to show the midi note colours chosen in the above step.

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Click_this_icon_to_choose_whixh_audio_waveform_you_want_in _pianoroll_background.png

And click this icon to load any audio file which is in your project to use as the background in the midi editor.

[UnionS8]

Also if you use an MPE synth, you can make use of these special note qualities: