Help my tortured, tortured soul (Host picking)

[Thoth93]

Okay, I've auditioned what seem like a billion music production hosts and have come to the following preliminary selections:

- Fruityloops
- Mackie Tracktion 2
- EnergyXT

Pros and cons of each, as I see them:

FL Studio (Did Toucan Sam finally threaten to sue?)
---
I'm somewhat familiar with it. I used to do some tracking back in the bad old days (nothing like a good old Amiga mod to make me tear up), so I understand the whole pattern sequence sort of thing. I like this program a lot. I've played around with it before, and it seems it "clicks" with me. I love the step sequencer.

Bad stuff? It's the priciest of all three if I go for the XXL edition, which everyone says I should if I'm going to buy FL. I'm not terribly impressed with the synths, with the possible exception of Sytrus. Is Sytrus worth the extra bucks? Or should I just get the producer edition?

I just bought a license for the Wusik VST plugin, the Big edition with all of the sounds and presets. It's an amazing synth, so I'm not totally sure that Sytrus is a necessity right now. But if I buy the Producer Edition and Sytrus, it ends up being more than if I just bought the XXL package outright. So it's spend $300 no matter what, it seems.

Another advantage: Free lifetime updates if I buy it online. Now that's an incentive.

Tracktion 2
---
This is my second-favorite. I like it. It's friendly, somewhat intuitive, and seems packed with features. Most of the synths it comes with are free, though, although I can pick it up online for $150 --- same as the FL Producer Edition. If I was going to assume a budget of $300 anyway, that gives me $150 to buy a nifty VSTI instrument or two.

It's not quite as intuitive as Fruity for me. And the step sequencing capabilities (at least from what I've been able to do with it) are not as friendly. Still, I like the interface overall and was able to easily make a quick little tune (which of course died as soon as I exited the demo).

EnergyXT
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Well, the price is certainly right. And the feature set seems to be powerful and growing. But I found it harder to immediately grasp than FL and Tracktion, and I get a lot of pop and fizzle for some reason when I'm playing, something that doesn't seem to really happen in Tracktion and FL. May need to play some with my buffer settings.

It's powerful, to be sure. An amazing piece of software for $50 roughly, but I just don't feel the friendliness here I would like. It has the same sort of issues with step sequencing that I felt Mackie has, but somehow more so.

Still, I can't discount it, and with the money I would save ... Well, there could be many plugins!

Your thoughts? Any further advice or votes for other software?

Thanks!

Brian

[kovacs]

IT does depend on your style of recording. Since you want step recording I recommend FL, but for more linear style audio work Tracktion might be it. I owned T1 but ended up selling it since I have actually moved to Live. I still use FLS though, it has a unique workflow and if you spend some time with the help files there is a ton of excellent features in there.

Also remember that with FL you get LIFETIME free upgrades - I bought it at 3.1 or whatever and today I have 5.02 and never paid a cent for upgrades, only for addons.

Pricewise, EnergyXT is the obvious choice.

You don't need to go XXL with FLS right away - you can always upgrade. They occasionally have XXL offers where you get a good discount. That's how I did it.

And from what I hear, FL + eXT is a killer combo. Oh, and Sytrus is a real killer. I would NOT however, buy it at full price, but if you get XXL I think you get 40% off Sytrus (or is it already in the XXL package? Not sure).

[dougsyo]

I don't know that I'd buy the FLStudio XXL (come to think of it, I didn't).

I'd suggest Fruityloops edition ($99 last I knew) if you're not doing audio (ASIO recording in the host), and get Sytrus with it if you want it. Other than sytrus, I have a few of included synths (dx10, simsynth and soundfont player) and I've concluded that none of them are essential. I don't like Sytrus' gui (too small, esp on my monitor). I got Rhino before Sytrus came out, and I would choose Rhino again.

Choose on the basis of workflow rather than $ as much as possible.

Doug

[rpc9943]

im a tracktion user, and its the best for me. i dont know what more to say i dislike FL, but then again i used it so long ago.

RonC

[jens]

I can't say much about step-sequencing as I rarely do this. But concearning most of the rest you could want from a sequencer eXT is imo the most easy to use you could imagine. For me in fact it is a dream come true.

Maybe it will take you a few days to become familiar with eXT but its workflow is simply fantastic.

E.g. its midi-editor is far easier to use than e.g. Sonar's midi-editor not to speak about Tracktion's...

Some things are still in development, please keep this in mind, but we, Jorgen and the beta-testers, care to make everything as easy to use as possible and things are getting better every day - development is progressing at an incredible pace.

[jens]

But I found it harder to immediately grasp than FL and Tracktion

please let me reply to this:

personally I find FL incredibly hard to grasp but I agree about Tracktion - but if a sequencer is initially not as easy to grasp as another one it doesn't mean neccessarily it is harder to use once you've become familiar with it - the opposite might be the case!

[D-Fusion]

I can't say much about step-sequencing as I rarely do this. But concearning most of the rest you could want from a sequencer eXT is imo the most easy to use you could imagine. For me in fact it is a dream come true.

Maybe it will take you a few days to become familiar with eXT but its workflow is simply fantastic.

E.g. its midi-editor is far easier to use than e.g. Sonar's midi-editor not to speak about Tracktion's...

Some things are still in development, please keep this in mind, but we, Jorgen and the beta-testers, care to make everything as easy to use as possible and things are getting better every day - development is progressing at an incredible pace.

I agree with Jens

[Thoth93]

A bit of clarification and one other thought:

I enjoy having a step-editor for parts that demand a certain degree of clockwork precision -- percussion, certain digital basslines, etc. But I also love being able to then add to those background tracks melody lines, chord progressions, etc. that I play myself using my midi controller.

So I want both worlds, which means I believe if I go FL I have to get Producer or above.

One further disadvantage about FL: No immediate support for effect/sustain pedals, as far as I can tell. I know this sounds like a woefully simple and small thing, but I tend to use a lot of piano and well, you need a sustain pedal. I know there are workarounds and FL6 is supposed to support sustain. But it seems a passingly simple thing to program inexplicably missing.

Both Tracktion and EnergyXT support my sustain pedal with no extra tweaking. I'm uncertain why it's taken FL so long (apparently) to realize that this is a small but important feature.

I can see how Energy XT and Fruity would work together beautifully. I will probably pick up EnergyXT eventually because it just seems like a program worthy of support.

How much is the upgrade offer usually from, say, FL Producer to XXL? If it's more overall, then again I don't know if I should just buy the whole thing or go with something else.

My thanks thus far,

Brian

[kovacs]

One further disadvantage about FL: No immediate support for effect/sustain pedals, as far as I can tell.

It's really easy to add it in FL, though - you create a MIDI OUT channel and rightclick on a button, choose "assign controller" and step on your pedal. Make sure the output port of the channel is the same as the midi in for your plugin, and voila you have sustain. Save this as a template and use it whenever needed.

[paulmerchant]

If you've ever used or thought of using a tracker, you might want to look at Aodix 4. It has an integrated sequencer/step sequencer that does a great job of combining free form sequencing with the step sequencing of a tracker. And it's really easy to grasp the whole workflow, setup, especially if you have a little bit of tracker experience. I haven't gone through all it's sequencing capabilities, yet, so I don't know if they are a little better than FL Studios right now.

[Thoth93]

I used to use FastTracker2 and had a lot of fun with it, which is why I grok the step sequencer thing. I also used to play around a lot with some basic MIDI recording software (really basic). So I get both input types, and I think the best solution is to combine both.

This is why Fruity appeals to me, mostly. Not familiar with Aodix 4. I'll look into it. It'll be a couple of weeks before I buy any software since my wife and I are going on vacation soon.

As an aside, I entered in "FastTracker 2" into Google and found something called SkaleTracker, which apparently aims to recreate FT2's look and feel with support for more modern conventions. I may download it and play around a bit, but I still want some good, commercial-quality software.

Keep the opinions coming, please.

[xylyx]

Why not buy the cheaper version of FL and use it as a VST in Tracktion 2? You'll get the best of both worlds (that you want), come under your budget and still have enough spare to buy EXT if you feel it will add something to your setup...why choose from your top 3 when you can have all 3?

[ModuLR]

Renoise... www.renoise.com - if you are an oldskool tracker... it's probably the most developed and uber stable, but retains that oldskool vibe. good vst support too

[Michael Allan Cumming]

One host that you should seriously consider is Podium.

Lots of the features of big boys like Cubase but only $90. Download the demo here...http://www.zynewave.com/

[Thoth93]

Why not buy the cheaper version of FL and use it as a VST in Tracktion 2? You'll get the best of both worlds (that you want), come under your budget and still have enough spare to buy EXT if you feel it will add something to your setup...why choose from your top 3 when you can have all 3?

Doesn't the basic FL version not support ASIO? I guess it might if you were using it as a plugin in another application, but I'm not sure.