Hi,
I'll follow on the Dan's initial post with a few reflection, thanking
him for taking the the time and effort to report his impressions,
keeping in mind I also read the various follow-ups.
On 10/09/12 21:47, Dan MacDonald wrote:
I've just posted my first impressions of MusE 2.0 here:
http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10012
I thought most everyone on this list would be interested and not
everyone reads or knows about that forum so..
First impressions of MusE 2.0
[...]
Rosegarden, the other
long-standing Linux/Qt FLOSS sequencer, predates MusE and as I've just
mentioned I'm not so keen on its GUI which is way too cluttered for my
liking so when they made the transition from QT3 to QT4 a few years
ago I had my fingers crossed it would bring with it a redesigned and
more slender UI but it was not to be. Thankfully MusE's transition
from QT3 to QT4 was much more fruitful as I now feel comfortable with
the MusE GUI which strikes a good balance between having no icons on
screen and the full-on icon overload of Rosegarden.
I think one of the best design strategies for available icons and their
placement is the one in the Mozilla software (Firefox, Thunderbird etc.)
where you can add/remove/move/drag icons and set up your own icon
'palette' based on your personal likings and workflow: this is very
subjective, for example in Rosegarden I only ever click on certain
icons, only ever use context menus or keyboard short cuts for only
certain functions.
If you can live with its interface Rosegarden is a powerful and
full-featured sequencer with most of the features familiar to users of
commercial sequencers and in this respect MusE fares just as well if
not better as it does so without the clutter. I really appreciate that
Muse lets you draw lines within its MIDI controller
True. Sadly controller drawing is broken in Rosegarden ever since and
Muse's seems to be the one of best working ones at the moment.
[...]
My Linux sequencer of choice at the moment is qtractor but I was keen
to see the state of MusE because, as I highlighted in my recent
qtractor review on KVR, qtractor lacks a couple of features I feel a
bit lost without. The worst of these for me is qtractors lack of
support for 'tempo ramps' as Rosegarden calls them or 'crescendos' as
they're referred to in MusE-speak.
Tempo ramps are really important when trying to achieve non-fixed-bpm midi.
[...]
One of the new features in MusE 2 is a score editor, something
entirely absent from Ardour and qtractor although personally I'm not
concerned with having a score editor integrated into my DAW as I
rarely notate music. MusE's current support for musical score appears
basic and doesn't compare with Rosegarden's integrated score support.
FLOSS score creation is being handled very well by MusE's sister
project so I'm not sure why they bother to be honest as I can't see it
catching up to musescore unless the two merge.
This feature has always been long debated. Thing is, for some people
score is not just typesetting, especially in certain context having a
decent score feature in the sequencer (and Rosegarden is still my
personal favourite)is part of the compositional/creative process, at
least for certain music. Not to forget that Roesegarden's score can be
exported to lilypond where one can really concentrate on hi quality
typesetting. and of course a solid the piano roll (or 'matrix' editor)
can be as important.
One oddity I've seen in Muse's piano roll (vs Rosegarden) is that it
won't play notes when you add them or edit them (esp. change their
pitch, thus not providing auditory feedback and having you rely only on
the visual clue), I think this is a shortcoming especially when using
the piano roll as an 'instrument' (imagine composing at the piano and
only being able to *see* the keys and not hearing the sound they produce...)
Enough about MIDI, what about audio? Reading the Ardour forums and
having spent much time in its irc channel, I know that one of the most
frequent feature requests is integrated wave editing and I'm sure Rui
has had more than a few requests for such a feature in qtractor too so
I'd say one of the biggest selling points of MusE is that it would
seem to be the only Linux DAW to offer integrated audio editing.
Again a debated and debatable feature. There are some cases (not sure
how much they are corner) when working in Ardour that I'd like to be
able to edit a clip individually, for example to do envelope stuff
without fear that moving the clip will totally disrupt the envelope.
That said contrary to what seems most popular consensus I would prefer
sequencers not to have audio and DAWs not to have midi. I do love jack
transport and the modularity jack offers. That probably also comes from
the fact I use Pure Data for many projects (and one couldn't thing to
have a mega-daw with daw + sequencer + effects + dataflow ...).
Just now, I am working on a video sonification project and at times I
have Rosegarden + Ardour + Pure Data with various patch windows open +
the video window (xjadeo) all talking via jack - I can test 'synthy'
stuff by sending MIDI to Pd see how it fits with the video, if I want
fire up a synth (say yuoshimi), another patch... This would clearly not
work in a single-window-windows-style application.
(Will go into detail about this once the project is done)
The
editor is basic but it has the most commonly used audio editing
features so chances are you won't have to use an external editor much,
which is something else MusE supports, should the internal editor not
cut it. At this point I'll mention that the only real bug I seem to
have found in MusE so far is the audio editor doesn't work for me
under 64 bit Deb Wheezy although it works fine under 32 bit Wheezy and
Robert says it works for him under 64 bit Kubuntu too.
I had trouble working out how to record audio into Muse at first as it
wasn't documented at the time but the docs have been updated to cover
this since I raised it as an issue. Just looking at this process,
compared to Ardour and qtractor Muse is the least user friendly when
trying to set up a track to record but once you know how its done its
not a prob and this was the only aspect of the program that had me
scratching my head. Otherwise I think MusE is the most user friendly
Linux DAW and I didn't have to inquire about or refer to the manual
for anything else. I was also disappointed that MusE 2.0 doesn't
currently support the creation of mono audio tracks although you can
change stereo to mono tracks and creating mono tracks is to be added
soon. MusE allows the easy drawing of automation curves for gain, pan
and LADSPA FX and apart from the two slight probs I've mentioned, it
looks like I should enjoy working with MusE for audio as well as MIDI.
Observant readers will have noticed that despite my praise for this
new MusE I said "My Linux sequencer of choice at the moment is
qtractor" because it supports native VST and LV2 plugins, it is more
stable and lightweight than A3 and it will likely remain my choice
until the big MusE showstopper gets resolved - plugin support. Like
Rosegarden, MusE currently only supports LADSPA and DSSI plugins which
is fine IF you don't use MIDI, you only use external MIDI sound
modules OR you are happy with MusE's integrated synths / the very few
DSSI plugins available / LASH sessions.
Aren't you missing external software synths etc. (fluidsynth,
linuxsampler etc.)?
You could use Windows VST
plugins via DSSI-VST with it but that isn't an option I'm interested
in nor would anyone else who is concerned about plugin performance and
stability care much for DSSI-VST.
brrrr :)
[...]
A final remark on sequencing and midi editing. One think I really don't
like about any sequencer out there, and which clearly has been copied by
Cubase, is the idea of 'clip' for midi. While the concept makes sense in
audio DAWs I always found it limiting... It might be because my first
sequencer was Cakewalk Apprentice for DOS and it is the way the
subsequent Cakewalk family handled it: but no clips just the possibility
of unlimited midi feels much 'spacious' and 'creatively cosy'...
Lorenzo.
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