dexters lab said:
LA,my question is why the motif over the fantom?
LOL. Bro, I wanted that Fantom with all my heart and soul, but I got the Motif when they had their memorial day sale or whatever holiday that was, and, it was about 300 bucks cheaper than the Fantom. I told myself that since I was getting the Rack, I could pick up the Fantom later anyway. Probably much later, but I definately wanted that fantom, probably more than the Motif Rack Es. Really though, they have so many sounds that are similar that after spending an hour demoing both, I couldn't really say that one was hands down better than the other, soundwise. That was my main reason for going the hardware route. Better quality sounds than what I was generally getting from software. Either one of those fits that bill all day long.
dexters lab said:
you cant compare hypersonics sound quality to any of the 3 biog workstations.
hypersonics sound quality is crushed by sampletank alone,
We definately disagree on all of that. Sampletank ain't worth the disc space on my hard drives as far as I'm concerned. Hypersonic is the ONLY software sound module that I felt was giving the Motif Rack Es a run for it's money. For real. I was comparing similar sounds to similar sounds and as I went back and forth I eventually couldn't tell which one I was playing, the Motif or Hypersonic. Hypersonic is easily the very best there is in software in every way that's important. Better sounds, better workflow, and amazingly, patches load instantly regardless of the size of the patches. Sampletank routinely crashed while loading large patches and Hypersonic has no such problem. Sampletank has more sounds, but quality is far more important than sheer bulk of mediocre, characterless, sounds with awful FX.
dexters lab said:
btw do you feel that the sx3 upgrade is a huge step up from sx2,if your not using the yamaha features?
That's hard to say for someone else. A good amount of the new features aren't all that attractive to me. Like the "in place piano roll editor". I'm not really interested in that because I like working in a nice large piano roll, not one that is squeezed into a window full of other stuff. I haven't learned how to really use "Play Order Tracks" yet so I can't really say if I'm interested in that or not. The've made a few minor improvements to the piano roll which bring it to where it should have been years ago. Time Stretching and Pitch shifting is better in Fruity Loops believe it or not, and it's not a big interest for me either way. In FL I might have used it more, but not the minimal implementation in SX3. The Midi Device Panels might be something I'm gonna look into but so far I haven't. The better freeze and the ability to use external FX like plugins is all very interesting but there are supposed to be a lot more new stuff, plus 3.1, a free upgrade is coming in August according to Steinberg. It's supposed to have plenty more features added.
But if you get a hardware module like the Fantom, then Cubase, now owned by Yamaha, with Yamaha Studio Manager for Total Recall, is gonna be very attractive for that reason alone. Total Recall is not perfectly flawless, but it's almost flawless. I can set up a beat with 16 individual tracks from the Motif Rack Es, and various plugin Instruments and FX. Make all kinds of adjustments to those individual instruments, save it, and when I load that project up again, Studio Manager sends all the setup back out to the Motif Rack and it all comes back together like VST instruments and FX. Definately a good thing.
dexters lab said:
thats another debat im having again.
cubase sx3 vs PT m-powered.
then what pc interface should I get....
damn
Another tough choice. Both have strengths and weaknesses. For midi editing and handling, SX3 is as good as anything gets while PT is known to be very weak in this area. But PT is the industry standard. Cubase eats ridiculous system resources. Don't know about PT, but Sonar is nothing like that and neither was Logic on the PC. Good luck in your decision.