Yay, found old win 98 laptop, cubase all setup, 2.8, super tight serial midi here i come. wanna hear an example of this tight ****:



This is ultra tight cubase 2.8 midi, this band uses it like this with serial midi, live into a soundcraft analog board, analogs re sampled into sampler sometime, but listen to the drum timing. all midi, all cubase 2.8, you cannot get this with hardware on modern daws. this just sounds so ****ing tight and i miss it, sure you can make software tight like this, but it dont sound like this, this is junos, mks50, xpander, ms20 all kicking ass on an analog board...
**** MODERN DAWS!!!!!!!!

Expert Sleepers hardware with most modern DAWs or Edirol UM880/Mac/Logic will get you there.

Just upgraded my DAW to Windows 10 last weekend. I have a couple of UM880s and a UM550. First test with midi-clock from SQ1 -> PC -> MPC1000 going trough a UM880: timing is all over the place. Truly terrible and unusable! I thought Win10 was supposed to have a much improved midi-stack. Very dissapointed! Timing in Win7 was much much much better!

Next weekend I'll do some more testing. First test was just using miudi-ox to pass through the clock to the MPC. Maybe things will improve when using cubase as clock master (or am I being naive?)

It is ironic to me that back in 1992 I had better timing performance from Cubase 1.0 on Windows 3.1 with a parallel port Midi/SMPTE interface locked to a R2R machine than anything my current modern computer is capable of. Bass akwards if you ask me.
We shouldn't have to need extra sync related equipment for ultra tight timing now when computers are running parallel processor cores with 64 bits at over 3ghz, I mean seriously? Progress?
Might as well go back to a 386...
Whatever, I'm 100% OTB now and very happy about it. MPC1000 all the way

Flame War - Begin!

Yeah, in 1994 I had Cubase 1 on a 486 PC with Windows 3.1. Timing was as tight as the MIDI protocol allowed.

I sometimes wish I had kept that setup. I guess I could never resist the temptation of ever faster computers and upgraded software with lots of new features ...until I bailed out and bought an MPC1000!

I heard they were going to improve timing but I don't know if those improvements have been implemented yet or not. I'm pretty sure it wasn't implemented at launch and I haven't heard anything more from Microsoft or any MIDI manufacturers. If any of you guys reading this have heard anything please let us know .


I think your being naive . I'm not sire if the improvements in Windows 10 are going to need new drivers or MIDI hardware or if existing hardware will see improved timing, or if the improvements are even implemented yet.


In the following link Jauuqq has kindly posted the results he gets from his UM880/Logic/Mac combo that seem quite a bit better than your results on PC.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11665996-post223.html


How reliable is clock form MIDIox ? I use it for a few things but never as a clock generator.

Add to that Live 9, Numerolgy and Renoise and anything else OSX based sending MIDI timestamps.

The Logic X results are amazing

No need to hunt down an Atari STE etc, ..... MIDI timing on OSX, with the CORRECT MIDI interfaces, DAW is tighter

USB MIDI can be excellent for timing

Using "downhill architecture" I can be satisfied with working on my computer most of the time in terms of plain performance - keeping in mind my PC is dual boot Ubuntu/Win XP Pro...

It is mainly the workflow that I like with OTB. I like using little dedicated machines that are not a PC. Makes me feel better, inspires me alot more. The MPC and my other samplers are like a physical DAW when need be. Otherwise it's all parallel realtime hardware instruments straight to a mixer.
I have recently obtained a Qu-32 digital mixer. It will be used in tandem with an analog mixer and it's Qu-Drive will be my 2 track recorder. I'm really hoping this setup will work out to my liking.

Best sequencing setup I ever had. No USB.

If you like Cubase 2.8, check out the Roland MV-8800, it is very similar but without the antique hardware hassles.

Curse Cubase Audio

Wait, is the OP part of Astral Projection?

EDIT: Location = Colorado. That'll be a no then.

[QUOTE=Acid Mitch;11779942How reliable is clock form MIDIox ? I use it for a few things but never as a clock generator.[/QUOTE]

I am not using Midi-Ox to generate the clock. I just use it to patch the SQ1(sequencer) to the MPC.

Not wishing to seem like I'm from another planet. Years ago I used an Atari ST for midi sequencing, seemed perfect timing. Later in years I moved to Windows, now on XP and have given up trying to get any good MIDI "tightness". For fun I tried a 68k Mac and that was similar to the Atari although using Cubase. Some people say good timing is possible on OSX? I have an old QS running Tiger, which program/sequencer would be the one to try in that? I am assuming the first thing to do is not to use USB MIDI adapters. I wonder if a PCI MIDI card in XP would offer tighter MIDI sequencing?

This is true.

Because modern DAWs are way tighter.

If you know how.

If you don't, then we end up with false sensation.

Try to get these figures out of serial midi on your laptop, and i salute you:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11634948-post211.html

You're free to build the cable and measure it all, if you don't believe us:
https://expressiveelectronicsformusi...tency-analyser

And if you use the UM880 without the Edirol drivers, but as a class compliant USB device within OSX, the results are even better !!!

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11665996-post223.html

Don't know it it's false sensation, but Cubase 16bit (2.83 or 3.05) on a decent 98SE machine with legacy ISA (Winman), serial (AMT-8) or PCI (Audiophile 2496) MIDI slots always felt tight and reactive, with a decent MIDI timing.

I used to use the Virus B special LFO LED mode to compare soft sequencers, and Cubase was among the best on this platform, along with Cakewalk (i.e. little or no LFO LED flickering). But the Steinberg UI is much more responsive.

Then, I took the plunge and tested this legacy music computer with the MidiGAL MidiClk firmware.
And got a disappointing ~2% jitter, and ~0.1% BPM inacurracy.
Even worse was Cakewalk 4.0E under DOS.

MidiGAL -- yet another MIDIpal inspired project - Mutable instruments' users community

It's not like it has not been evaluated scientifically by some clever people before:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/papers/icmc01-midiwave.pdf
http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/cou...s-CMJ-1988.pdf

To get to the point, the more abstract and layered the OS, the worse the MIDI compared to the perfect audio management. Hence the best way to get tight MIDI is to derivate it from the audio engine, or use time stamping to get rid of the realtime inacurracy.

just for fun I'm getting an atari mega ste with a scsi2sd hd, a log 3, and notator/kcs.

Wish me luck

If youre getting it for tight MIDI then you may be disappointed......

I also tested Notator on an Atari, together with Unitor2 and Log3 exapnders. MIDI data from the out ports on the expansion was running behind/had increased latency from the main ST out. Unitor Port F is about 2ms behind the main ST out and port I on the Log3 around 4ms behind with around 1.1 ms max jitter.

With Atari Logic 2.01, I found jitter of 0.15ms but this was only from one MIDI track + main Atari MIDI port. When using Unitor2 and Log3 with Logic 2.01 and sending MIDI to all expansion MIDI ports and Atari main MIDI out, jitter increases. As an example I recorded 2ms of max jitter from port G on the Log 3.

Its only the main Atari MIDI out port that provides tight MIDI timing, and from the expansion units Midex+, Unitor2, Log3 have increased latency and jitter.

well, ime.

old operating systems spoke directly to the i/o
modern operating systems have a kind of chinese whispers thing going on where the info gets passed around from pillar to post to get to the truth.

good tune.

No Atari ST love any more?

is there an equivalent to the "focus on background processes" switch on Win 10? maybe that's it.

Zen and the art of device driver coding

there's better food out there than KFC

Once Windows implemented a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) then performance went to crap.

Also, the amount of background thread processing going on in a modern Windows machine is not insignificant. That takes a serious toll on the OS's ability to quickly service buffers for hardware (audio, MIDI). Even an idle Windows 10 machine has to service thousands of background threads.

But I have a log 3 and that will serve as the key/dongle for notator.

It will also give some extra ports for less timing critical parts.

Everyone says your daw is tight,. it never records as tight as 2.8, or atari. it is tight until you start using plugins, and the buffers go up then timing is all over the ****ing place. what else made me go back to cubase 2.8 was the loop record "B" button undo, which they took out on sx, and never returns so i have to stop record, highlight then delete, its a joke.

Still serial midi is 10000000x better at recording you play, and playing back. I don't care what you say about modern daws, This do it all mentality is what has ruined everything.

But a multi track recorder, but a separate midi sequencer. don't bog down, you never get results with a do it all app, you get generic, corner cutting bad sound for cpu over head, and bad midi timing ... no thanks. usb sucks... serial 4 life.

Why spend so much on a new sequencer, its only tight when there is nothing else going on. like i said, add dmg equilibrium, uhe diva, some compressors or a uad.

boom buffers go up, midi jitter through the ****ing roof. The only way modern daws are tight is if you use them with nothing else going on with extremely low buffer settings. I have done all the stress tests, and trust me. Old serial midi kills USB midi, plus daws with audio card buffers.

Midi to the hardware with no buffers is the only way to fly, and if you buy cubase or logic the new versions, you end up using all the bells and whistles and your timing goes out the window.

My advice is this. If you want to record your hardware into cubase, but an old win 98 laptop, get cubase 2.8 and a serial midi, but an appollo or multi in interface, then record that into your modern daw after you write it all on cubase 2.8.

timing will be super tight, recording is super tight. everything rocks.

doing it all in one box is a nightmare i have been dealing with for far to long, never again. Never again...

and don't give me this BS that logic is better, ITS NOT. I tested it. cubase is bad, anything with buffers set high causes jitter on any DAW.

Do tests with high buffers. you will see what i mean.

On atari: I loved it but getting that hardware, a unitor, or a midex on the atari and multi out is too hard, i found cubase 2.8 tight on pcs with serial interfaces and the pc tuned, this is tight city just like the atari, but i can get any serial midi box and have lots of midi outs with good timing.

Atari notator is still king. ataris are old, the break, they crash. cant tell you how many times i would get the 3 bombs with one bad jiggle of the midi expander.

Cubase pc win 98 serial is the next best thing...

I read so many article and interviews about astral projection, that is how i know.