Don’t Go Away Mad, Disco Away

By Shamus Posted Monday Dec 26, 2016

Filed under: Music 22 comments

Last week I posted that I was frustrated with the DAWDigital Audio Workstation. I use to make music and that I was looking for something new. Thanks for all the suggestions. I downloaded a bunch of them and I’ve spent a few days staring at mysterious interfaces and seeing how far I could get with a program before I needed to look for tutorials. I’m stubborn like that. Also, it’s a pretty good test of a program’s design.

I’m not going to post the full DAW vs. DAW breakdown. For one, I didn’t spend enough time with any of them to really do them justice. Secondly, I get the distinct impression only about six of you would care. Instead let’s just cut to the chase: So far my favorite of the new programs is Studio One. They have a Hippie Freeloader Edition for $Zero, and their mid-range edition is just $100 USD. These are really great prices by the standards of DAWs.

As an experiment, I decided to take a track I’d already made in my old Magix Music Maker and re-make it in the free version of Studio OneWhich is called Studio One Prime for some unfathomable reason. “Prime” sounds like it should be the name of the top-tier version, not the freeware one. But whatever.. Then I’d post both versions so we could compare. I already had this song done in Magix Music Maker (MMM), so I spent Christmas Day making another version in Studio One (S1).

This was a little harder than it needed to be. There are open formats out there that these programs could use to exchange data if the developers chose to support them. If you lay down some notes with your keyboardOr, for a non-musician hack like me, painstakingly map them out on a grid note-by-note. then you can save that exact performance as MIDI data. This will just store the notes, when you hit them, and how hard you hit them. If I was using open source hacker-ethic LMMS, then this wouldn’t be a problem. LMMS can both import and export these files, which means I’d be able to exchange performances between LMMS and any other DAW that supported those files.

But MMM and S1 favor proprietary formats and don’t support this. Which means that after I was done making the song in MMM, I had to start completely over and rebuild it a note at a time in S1MMM can read MIDI files, but it can’t export them. This is the most calculated and self-interested policy for the developer. It makes it easy to migrate to their platform, but hard to switch to another one.. In the process I got bored and began re-working things, so the songs are no longer identical. They have bits in the middle that are completely different and have nothing to do with the comparison I’m trying to make. Sorry.

For the record, I’m not really a huge fan of disco and I have no idea why I decided to make a song in this genre. Sheepishly, I suspect that it was just so I could make the pun in the title.

Here is the original from MMM.

I uploaded this last night and was delighted to see I’d gotten a comment when I got up in the morning. But no. It was just a silly spammer. Also, I got several likes without anyone listening to the song, which is the work of like-bots. I don’t even know what those things are trying to accomplish, but if their goal is to boost my ego then they’re failing. This experience of having my hopes dashed by spam bots reminds me of the days of being a new blogger.

Anyway, here is the track map for the curious:

I have a system for colors, because I'm a programmer so OF COURSE I DO. Purples are bass. Lead is usually orange for mid-range sounds, or yellow for high-pitched stuff. Blue is background chords. Whites and grays are percussion.
I have a system for colors, because I'm a programmer so OF COURSE I DO. Purples are bass. Lead is usually orange for mid-range sounds, or yellow for high-pitched stuff. Blue is background chords. Whites and grays are percussion.

I’ve said before that the instruments that ship with MMM are generally very primitive. This makes sense. These instruments are basically programs in themselves, and the really good ones can cost hundreds of dollars. MMM is an entry-level DAW for newbs, so to keep it cheap they stick with cheap instruments.

If you’d like to see what a difference good instruments can make, check out this tutorial starting at the two-minute mark:


Link (YouTube)

The first samples you hear are generally what I have to work with. He only plays a couple of chords, but you can tell they sound… inoffensive at first. But if you took that same sound and used it throughout a song, it would become wearying. The repetition ruins the illusion that you’re listening to a real guitar.

But then he starts adding all these crazy effects to simulate the guitar player strumming up and down, adding fret noises, pick sounds, and stopping chords by simulating the player putting their hand over the strings mid-note, and suddenly it comes alive. Maybe if you’re a real guitar player you could tell it was synthesized, but to my untrained ear it sounds basically like the real thing. And even aside from the “realism”, the latter is just far more interesting to listen to.

S1 ships with a nice collection of mid-tier instruments.

Here is the track, re-built in S1.

Different program, same idea.
Different program, same idea.

The instruments in S1 aren’t as sophisticated as the ones in the KSHMR tutorial above, but they are good enough. They’re tolerable and don’t fall into the uncanny valley of synthesized instruments, which is a big problem in MMM and the reason why I’ve typically stuck to the explicitly synthesized stuff until nowAlthough for some reason the harp in MMM is amazing. Or maybe harps are easy to get right. I dunno.. On the other hand, S1 has no synthesizers whatsoever. You couldn’t use it to make chiptune music even if you wanted to.

I think the volume levels in the S1 version of the song are a bit wonky. Partly this is because mixing is hard and it takes time to learn to do it right in a new interface. Partly this is because S1 has a lot less hand-holding. MMM has basically a “Mixdown for Dummies” feature where it will automatically adjust the outgoing volume levels so that the song is as loud as possible without clippingIf the audio tries to make things too loud, it all mushes together and sounds like you’re playing the track on blown-out speakers.. S1 doesn’t do this. After you export the track, S1 just gives you a popup saying, “Warning! Some part of the song was 3.3dB too loud! Do you want to delete the track?” It’s up to the user to figure out what parts or too loud and fix it.

I imagine there’s a feature in one of the non-free versions that fixes this sort of thing for you, which brings me to my main complaint with S1. A bunch of features are removed or crippled, but the interface never tells you “You can’t do that in this version”. Following tutorials on YouTube, I’d often run into situations where the interface wouldn’t do what the tutorial showed. There’s no clue that you’re being limited by the edition you’re using, which means it feels like a bug, or like you’re perhaps missing a step. This sort of defeats the purpose of having a free version. Instead of the user thinking they should upgrade, they conclude the software is buggy or hard to use.

Also: S1 has a super-annoying thing where it locks your audio system into exclusive mode. So once you fire up the program, switching to another window – say, to watch a YouTube tutorial – will result in no audio anywhere else. There’s a checkbox for “Let go of my sodding sound equipment when you’re in the background” and another one for “stop locking my audio system you intolerable ass, just share it like a civilized program”. I activated both of these, and still found that my audio system was being locked. Again, maybe it’s a bug, or a limitation of the free version. But either way it’s really inexplicable and annoying.

Anyway. That was my musical experiment. I don’t know that one version of the song is better than the other (I’ll leave that for you to decide) but it was an interesting exercise.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Digital Audio Workstation.

[2] Which is called Studio One Prime for some unfathomable reason. “Prime” sounds like it should be the name of the top-tier version, not the freeware one. But whatever.

[3] Or, for a non-musician hack like me, painstakingly map them out on a grid note-by-note.

[4] MMM can read MIDI files, but it can’t export them. This is the most calculated and self-interested policy for the developer. It makes it easy to migrate to their platform, but hard to switch to another one.

[5] Although for some reason the harp in MMM is amazing. Or maybe harps are easy to get right. I dunno.

[6] If the audio tries to make things too loud, it all mushes together and sounds like you’re playing the track on blown-out speakers.



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22 thoughts on “Don’t Go Away Mad, Disco Away

  1. MrGuy says:

    Either footnote 4 is a typo or I really don’t get/disagree with your point.

    Apparently, MMM can create standard MIDI but not read them, and you cite this as self-serving lock in.

    I’d think it would be completely the opposite. The ability READ standard files would entice people in, but they don’t do that. The ability to WRITE standard files makes it easier to leave/switch platforms, and they DO do that.

    What you describe sounds to me like a setup that makes it hard to join, easy to leave. Which is the opposite of how you characterize it.

    1. Shamus says:

      Yeah. That was a comedy of errors. I originally had both CAN and CAN instead of CAN and CAN’T. Someone notified me. But then when I tried to fix it, I changed the wrong one, thus inverting my intention.

      I have fixed it. Again. There is a small chance it will be correct by this point.

  2. MichaelGC says:

    Blimey! I have not so much a tin ear as one fashioned from flerovium, but even I can tell that instrumentally the two versions are night & day. So for me the second version wins almost by default (although I wouldn’t want to harp on about it or make anyone fret).

    1. MrGuy says:

      (although I wouldn't want to harp on about it or make anyone fret).

      I can reed between the lines. You won’t snare me with your puns.

      1. Joe Informatico says:

        Just let it ride. Lot of treblemakers around here.

        1. Rayen says:

          These Bass-ic puns disgust me.

  3. Geebs says:

    By and large, it’s probably for the best that S1 is locking your audio, because if it didn’t you’d be at risk of all sorts of strange bugs and latency spikes. I use Logic on a Mac (which allegedly has better-implemented sound routing than Windows, or at least did back in 2010) and it doesn’t fail gracefully so much as just plain stop working if CoreAudio isn’t entirely happy.

    The “mastering for idiots” setting in MMM is probably a combination of a compressor and a limiter. I’m pretty sure you could find a free mastering tool to apply compression/limiting +/- EQ to your mixed track. Again, this stuff doesn’t fail gracefully; you just get distorted audio. At least S1 is giving you a pop up to warn you about it!

    1. Benjamin Hilton says:

      I think there are different definitions of “locking audio” going on here. If I’m reading it right, Shamus is saying that when S1 is running, it won’t let him open, for example, a youtube video, and listen to it. You seem to be talking about something else as I can’t see how that would cause bugs.

      EDIT: I realize you may be talking about audio from S1 playing while audio from youtube is playing making problems, but not being able to listen to other audio simply when the program is running is still silly.

      1. Cuthalion says:

        What I believe is being said is that S1 in effect mutes other audio. As an audio guy myself, I can attest that doing so is annoying, but not doing so can indeed mess up recordings, etc., if the audio program is able to read from the computer’s output. So, the program routes everything through itself so that you can control whether a sound from another program is supposed to show up in S1 or not.

        In Shamus’s case, it’s a nuisance rather than a help, because he’s not recording audio (where the last thing you’d want is for a youtube video to start playing in the middle of your recording). And it’s even worse, because the program’s options to stop “helping” him aren’t working! (Do you need to restart the program first so it redoes its audio hookups?)

        1. Geebs says:

          It’s not so long ago that audio drivers for production grade sound gear were plugged in at the level of the kernel, and the machines that get used as DAWs are often mind-bogglingly old.

          Even today, audio latency is an unsolved problem (i.e. monitoring latency is often long enough to be perceptible). The last thing a DAW really needs is for YouTube to “Hey! Listen!” the audio system in the middle of a time-critical operation.

    2. lethal_guitar says:

      The whole exclusive audio driver access thing is much less of a problem if you have a dedicated audio interface/sound card for music making. If you want to do audio recording, you pretty much want that because of better quality, improved latency etc.
      In my case, the DAW will exclusively access the audio interface, which goes to my monitor speakers, whereas the rest of the system uses the normal Windows audio drivers, which go to my stereo. That way, I can still listen to Youtube/music etc. while my DAW is running.

      All that being said, I would expect that you should be able to make the program run in non-exclusive mode. In Cubase and Ableton Live, you do that by selecting a specific audio driver. If the driver has ASIO in it’s name, it’s going to be exclusive, whereas something mentioning MME or DirectX should be non-exclusive. Maybe S1 has a similar option somewhere?

  4. So in a few days you’ll post about one of the other DAWs etc.? (aka, this is a mini-series of articles?)

    1. Gawain The Blind says:

      Yeah I would be interested in this too.

      Shamus’s programming and “fiddling around with new software” posts are my favorite posts.

      1. KingJosh says:

        Ditto.

        1. lethal_guitar says:

          Same here!

    2. Zak McKracken says:

      Would really like to know how LMMS compared to the others…

    3. djshire says:

      If they are available. Some only come with products (like Abelton Live Lite bundled with audio interfaces) so his choices may be limited. Reaper would be one that I can think of.

  5. Duoae says:

    I enjoy reading these, Shamus!

    Anyway, for a long time I never bothered with a DAW. My use case was just too basic to bother with one so Audacity was my go-to program for (non-simultaneous) multi track recordings.

    Then I bought a piece of equipment that came with a copy of the ‘free’ version of Avid’s Pro Tools which, after installing, I discovered was no longer offered or supported but which appears to be pretty powerful in comparison with the new free version.

    It took me a while to figure out the licensing process because it came with a dongle – which I prefer because the new licenses are locked to a ‘device’ rather than a user!!!

    I digress. I have really grown to like this dated software a lot as it’s very flexible and mostly easy to use. There’s a lot of documentation for various versions over the years (much like your opengl posts) which provide conflicting advice along with unsolved forum posts… with issues that result in the same problem but which have different causes. However, so far, no problem has been insurmountable. (Fingers crossed)

    I can’t speak to how it would be if I wasn’t using instruments and instead only editing the midi track but I can’t see myself migrating from this in the foreseeable future.

    The only big downside I have encountered with the software is that it lacks the ability to play back the track over the system it’s running on and instead the user must listen to it through the equipment that the software came with until it is converted into an exported format (e.g. wav).

    1. Zak McKracken says:

      I think most if not all tools Shamus talks about here are really for MIDI composition. You can of course feed that with recorded sounds, but that seems a bit bothersome to me. On the multitrack recording front you have software like Cubase, which exists in everything from couple-thousand dollar pro package to versions that come with audio interfaces. I’ve got one of the latter ones but just to use it you need to make an account and the number of tracks is very limited, so I didn’t even bother. At the time, Ardour was still completely free, now it costs money for the compiled versions (alright, even open-source programmers need food sometimes…) but I have not really taken any time whatsoever yet to look at it in any detail. It’s still on my long list of things I’d love to get into if I had the time. Right after figuring out Blender…

      1. Duoae says:

        Oh, yeah, I totally got that but it is an option in the tool set I’m using as well and that equipment that I mentioned plugged right into my audio recording setup (used to do a couple of podcasts but now I just record songs). Given that the equipment + license were less than €200 I think it’s on the lower end of the money scale.

        There’s also the free version! which just requires an account setup with Avid and which supports 16 simultaneous MIDI tracks, but it only allows three projects stored in their server farms… which makes it pretty useless (IMO) except as an evaluation tool.

        The proper programme (which I don’t quite have) is £550 for a perpetual license (without upgrades) or something like £40 for a year subscription (can’t look for $ amounts or € amounts as the website regionises you). I don’t personally like subscriptions for personal software but it’s quite cheap for the quality of the program and the ability to be able to integrate video and the audio you create…

        Never tried Cubase and Blender was just completely too much for me to figure out. Even the videos on youtube assume a certain level of base knowledge of the programme and I just wanted to load in a video I had created and was unable to do even that! It looks very powerful but for a non-power user it’s way too complex.

        [edit]

        I should also point out that the hardware also came with a copy of Ignite – which would be more relevant for Shamus’ use case. I never bothered to install it though! It’s apparently only $50 too…

  6. Alvuea says:

    Neat thing about Studio One, since you’re playing with it now – it has some really interesting instruments available. Like vocaloids.

  7. djshire says:

    I never used S1 Prime, but I got Artist with my Firestudio Mobile. The S1 3 version (the latest version) comes with a poly synth. I really should spend more time with it, since if I ever do move away from Apple and Logic (which seems more and more likely as Apple keeps doing what its doing) that S1 would be what I would go with.

    Most DAWs will not hold your hand like MMM. They expect you to know how to mix. They also don’t do what Prime apparently does, which tells you its too loud. I can make a track that is loud and flat and Logic will not say anything to me.

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