My solution was to buy a Roland Fantom and a Cirklon. I wonder how tight it would be on macOS with their MIDI Express interfaces which were meant to timestamp? Literally never heard of anyone using DP for electronic music, only ever older guys who never switched. Wow, Digital Performer allows you to change the PPQ as well. And then all the scheduling of that computer. From what I gather that has to go via an internal USB MIDI interface anyway.
Quite how tight the embedded linux system is which I presume the Roland Fantom is using is another question. When you listen to the Cirklon firing off notes it's just so tight, it's almost like the rhythmic equivalent of the difference between equal temperament and pure tuning, things just become more peaceful. I even attempted to take the computer's USB out the equation with a Kenton MIDI host then going into the RME with MIDI DIN. Also one thing I think I was running into was the polling rate of the 3D MIDI Fighter midi controller I was using, I could tell it wasn't scanning for notes at a high enough rate.
I tried the Audiodesk software that came free with the MOTU interface but that was a non starter. Firing 16th notes out via the MOTU's midi out and recording them back in showed negligible jitter visually in Ableton from what I could discern but start playing the sequencer with audio clips going and attempt to have notes record where they should and it just wouldn't happen. Just could not do it, not with v9 or v10, with a Steinberg interface, a MOTU on USB or FW, a Presonus thunderbolt, an RME, a Roland midi interface, on Mac, on PC, changing all the monitoring/record enable settings, nothing. Hence stuff like the Cirklon having the DMUX trigger output setting.Ībleton was the absolute worst for me, was just impossible to record played MIDI in time with the audio output. If all this seems like nit picking you just have to listen for flamming on drum hits to realise that it very easily and noticeably can affect the sound of things.
Of course there's a corollary to all this stuff and that's the serial nature of MIDI itself so say for arguments sake you fired off two notes exactly on the beat to separate MIDI ports they still might be processed with a couple of ms delay sequentially. Wonder if DP with the audio engine off would circumvent such a thing? I read a deep thread somewhere that went through PPQN settings and how although the DAW was claiming to send out MIDI notes at particular ticks that due to the MIDI being tied to the audio engine it was actually off and subject to other timing vagaries. I prefer working with low PPQ values as I know where I stand with regard to moving notes. I seem to remember looking into how Cubase did it but there was a stumbling block, perhaps with how it displayed notes/ticks? Can't remember.
It won’t launch the audio engine if you select this.Wow, Digital Performer allows you to change the PPQ as well. I believe it was made by the guy who made Winamp which is cool.Digital Performer has the option to run as MIDI only. It actually has a great deal of features too, certainly capable.
Reaper is one that is basically free until you are actually earning a couple of thousand a year from using it I think, then they ask you to purchase a license which is actually really cheap anyway. People often use it in live performances. This is possibly due to it's great stability among some Ableton specific features.
Protools is another of the heavy hitters here and I believe nowadays it has a subscription model rather than buying outright, a lot of professionals use it from electronic music to film score to general audio manipulation.įL seems a pretty popular DAW and I think it is a little cheaper than those other two above, I hear decent things about it.Īnother popular one, particularly for electronic music scene, is Ableton. It has been around a very long time, has a ton of features, but fairly expensive. Personally I use Cubase which is super good, but some people find the DAW harder to pick up than a few of the other options out there.