Which Daw has the tightest internal midi?

[JoseC.]

[Perhaps you just wern't reading and comprehending what you read Hint, check the thread title. I have to tell you, I have a hearing problem, I don't hear people who talk down to me as if I'm clueless thank you very much.

What I have a problem with are people who keep on supporting the silly idea that MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface, remember?) can be just "internal". I just think they are clueless.

Worst thing about these clueless people is that for some reason they refuse to accept that some of us want our MIDI tight all over, and even get to the point to declare this a "non issue"

[JoseC.]

I have no idea why this guy though it appropriate to respond to me with a comment like "maybe you weren't listening". Arrogance at it's finest

Because you wrote: "I have never heard of anyone complain of midi tightness."

I've heard people complain of midi tightness often, and in this very thread you have some examples. About arrogance, believing that what one have "never heard" does not exist gets first price in my book.

[JoseC.]

Except for early on with Cubase before learning about the "ignore port filter" thing I don't ever recall playing midi and thinking on playback that it ever sounded "off"... so I don't stress over midi timing.

And yes, Reaper's midi is (was) tied to audio buffer latency. I didn't like that either... there is (or was) no direct midi through. I say "was" since that may have changed since the last time I checked, they move kinda fast over there.

It struck me that in Cubase I could run max buffers and still have "0 latency" midi... e.g. direct thru to hardware. In Reaper I got the same latency as the audio system. That was not workable for me... hardware midi being subjected to latency like VSTI's.

Midi thru (I thought) was a hardware driver function like ASIO DM, where the midi thru stream is output from the hardware before the DAW. In Reaper it apparently goes through the DAW... like (and with) the audio buffers.

What bothers me is that the trend seems to be ignoring that many of us want to be able to sync our gear to the DAW. It would seem unacceptable that some developer said that you cannot get proper results recording guitars with a DAW unless you used a plugin. USB MIDI (which is asynchronous) was the first nail in the coffin, but it seems that for developers MIDI is just something you paint in a piano roll with your mouse to make a VSTi sound.

The most amazing thing is that MOTU came up with Volta, which is a plugin that can convert MIDI to CV from inside a DAW and route it through the AUDIO outs...something that could be seen in some ways as a step backwards. And this happens because this is a golden age of hardware synths, (modulars are sold more than ever) and in the meantime many software developers are looking the other way.

[Hink]

I have no idea why this guy though it appropriate to respond to me with a comment like "maybe you weren't listening". Arrogance at it's finest

Because you wrote: "I have never heard of anyone complain of midi tightness."

I've heard people complain of midi tightness often, and in this very thread you have some examples. About arrogance, believing that what one have "never heard" does not exist gets first price in my book.

I think it extremely obvious to anyone that my response was to the topic at hand, I surely didn't think I needed to explain that in my posy. However I have to wonder if my saying "I have never heard of it being said about inside the box" as you say it, if that would of been considered arrogant. Of course not, even what I said could not be considered arrogance, that's outright laughable. Why you went off on a tangent not pertaining to the topic and say something like "maybe you just weren't listening" is beyond me.

Yet you maintain the arrogance when obviously you erred in the reading of my post, unbelievable.

take care

edit: surely your first words were antogonistic towards me and based on you taking my post completely out of context. I know what most people would say after that.

[Hink]

[Perhaps you just wern't reading and comprehending what you read Hint, check the thread title. I have to tell you, I have a hearing problem, I don't hear people who talk down to me as if I'm clueless thank you very much.

What I have a problem with are people who keep on supporting the silly idea that MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface, remember?) can be just "internal". I just think they are clueless.

Worst thing about these clueless people is that for some reason they refuse to accept that some of us want our MIDI tight all over, and even get to the point to declare this a "non issue"

So just wondering, do you think I'm one of the so called cluesless who doesn't even know what midi stands for. Do you think I'm an in the box, out of the box or a little bit of each?

[Hink]

Except for early on with Cubase before learning about the "ignore port filter" thing I don't ever recall playing midi and thinking on playback that it ever sounded "off"... so I don't stress over midi timing.

And yes, Reaper's midi is (was) tied to audio buffer latency. I didn't like that either... there is (or was) no direct midi through. I say "was" since that may have changed since the last time I checked, they move kinda fast over there.

It struck me that in Cubase I could run max buffers and still have "0 latency" midi... e.g. direct thru to hardware. In Reaper I got the same latency as the audio system. That was not workable for me... hardware midi being subjected to latency like VSTI's.

Midi thru (I thought) was a hardware driver function like ASIO DM, where the midi thru stream is output from the hardware before the DAW. In Reaper it apparently goes through the DAW... like (and with) the audio buffers.

What bothers me is that the trend seems to be ignoring that many of us want to be able to sync our gear to the DAW. It would seem unacceptable that some developer said that you cannot get proper results recording guitars with a DAW unless you used a plugin. USB MIDI (which is asynchronous) was the first nail in the coffin, but it seems that for developers MIDI is just something you paint in a piano roll with your mouse to make a VSTi sound.

why does it bother you? As you said the trend "seems" but things go full circle on things like this. What's in will be out and what out's going to been many times over. I don't think it's being ignored but more companies are emphasizing on lower budget home enthusiasts and producers. It only makes sense with the state of the economy, but midi isn't dead. (I think some want it to be but it isn't).

FWIW I use a Presonus Firestudio and an Emu 1820 (the FS is my primary card, I send/return via adat guitar signals to the fx on the emu so I can monitor with fx but record without them). I primarily use a Roland A33 for my controller, I have a Roland xp-10 that is my daughter's now, and an Alesis QSR. To keep my midi organized I use a 360 systems 8x8 midi patcher, it has 99 programs so I can save routing and program changes sent to hardware or through my soundcards. Like you I also have a Line 6 PODxt live, but I also have several softsims so I can use the midi from the xt to control patches, wahs, etc

[LawrenceF]

The world at large does seem to be moving to VSTI's. We're dinosaurs...

I do remember running full productions with midi gear with an Atari computer with probably 2mb of ram or whatever and never even recording the midi to audio tracks at all... just mixing it first generation and printing it to the mix device.

Now you need an I7 with 4gb of ram and a quad processor to do something similar. Back then we made regular trips to the local second-hand music store for used sound modules... we had huge stacks of them.

I kinda miss those days... layering 4 real hardware modules for one fat piano or bass sound. Now I gotta pause the creative workflow and freeze tracks and worry about latency and all that other crap.

Also curious how lack of "sample accurate" timing never stopped anyone from making good music with midi back then.

I'm old and bitter... bah humbug.

[efluon]

most of the jitter you'll see only on live-playback when using a daw, i.e. playing a soft synth and listening. almost exactly as noticable as your audio latency. and almost the same thing. what gets recorded should be fine (if the daw of your choice is a good choice)

[robbie1234321]

if we could only mute the endless supply of silly threads started by some...

Theres nothing silly about this at all. timing, groove what ever you want to call it is crucial.

[IIRs]

Also curious how lack of "sample accurate" timing never stopped anyone from making good music with midi back then.

I remember back in those days there was a golden rule never to layer kick drums: the timing was too loose, so the layered kicks would have a different relative phase for each hit. The "correct" way to do it was to resample your kicks to make a single new kick sample.

AFAIK it was only the kick that was regarded as a problem... in other words, if you layered two snare samples using an Atari ST plus a hardware sampler, the resulting snare sound would be subtly different for every hit. Do the same thing inside a DAW, and every snare hit will be boringly identical.

[Goseba]

I do remember running full productions with midi gear with an Atari computer with probably 2mb of ram or whatever and never even recording the midi to audio tracks at all... just mixing it first generation and printing it to the mix device.

Those were the days

I keep thinking I might get my Atari STE out for a bit of fun and connect it up to my synths. 512kb of RAM running at 8Mhz and no hard drive.

[robbie1234321]

Also curious how lack of "sample accurate" timing never stopped anyone from making good music with midi back then.

I'm old and bitter... bah humbug.

It doesnt, but heres the thing and its what I've been thinking about for years. You can have all the sample accuracy in the world, but if the daw doesnt groove then its game over. Your atari grooved if you knew what you were doing, YET some soft sequencers while on paper are much tighter they just dont sound it...or I should say they do, but it doesn't feel good. During my researches in to this I have found that certain Daws just sound so much tighter/groovier/Together than others, although its really subtle. Perhaps its the way all that live VST midi stuff + plugins +_ all the rest running at the same time from one computer. Im not talking about cpu strain, just the amount of different processes going on.

How come some of those dedicated appregiator/sequencer plugins sound so much tighter? Grooves that are pleasing and locked in without having to surgically edit and move notes around. Its not my imagination I dont think..

[robbie1234321]

most of the jitter you'll see only on live-playback when using a daw, i.e. playing a soft synth and listening. almost exactly as noticable as your audio latency. and almost the same thing. what gets recorded should be fine (if the daw of your choice is a good choice)

Im not so sure about that. It would mean what your hearing (musically) cannot be trusted. Ive never noticed a different feel after rendering in any software.

[IIRs]

Jitter has nothing to do with your DAW and everything to do with your ADC / DAC. The concept of jitter is as meaningless in the context of an off-line render as it is in the context of a wav file stored on your hard drive: jitter occurs only when the signal is converted from analogue to digital and vice versa.

[amiga909]

about jitter:
found a very good article by RME: http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinfo/lola_latec.htm

some quotes:
- "Jitter means variation in the latency"
- "simple but convincing example: set the audio card to the highest latency (e. g. 46 ms.) Now play like a metronome on a MIDI keyboard (percussive sound, e. g. cowbell) at a constant rate of say 120 bpm. [..] corresponds to a tempo variation of 110 to 132 bpm and is definitely audible"
- "no latency jitter in Logic 4.2. Because the audio engine was completely redone for Logic 4.5, the jitter is there again. Without any doubt, updates from emagic and Steinberg (Cubase 5.0 jitters as well) will cure the problem in the near future."
for german readers: http://www.rme-audio.de/techinfo/lola_latec.htm

read it urself if u also think RME know what they're talking about and let me know what u think about it