January 3, 200818 yr Finale and Sibelius, as you mentioned are notation programs which are rather far off sequencers such as Logic, Cubase, etc. You're looking for MIDI synth? I can't say I've heard such a thing before. MIDI is a "connection protocoll" if you will (with the bad spelling, yes!) and it doesn't contain any sounds. The sounds you listen on midi come from your sound card. If you use samplers (such as the EXS24, which is part of Logic) then you can add samples, but then the files will turn to WAV/ AIF and MP3s, instead of midi files. Finale and sibelius, as far as I know, don't have a piano roll, but I don't know if Logic has customisable colours in the projects. I would assume that it has, but can't be sure since I don't use it... Finally, I'm not exactly sure of your question... There is no question mark (?) in your post! :D If you are on a Mac, then the obvious choice is indeed Logic, or maybe Cubase, although I would assume that 90% of the Mac population are on Logic (and Pro Tools). If you are on a PC, you get Cubase, Sonar, or whatever else is out there. In general, if I understand you correctly, what you ask is very very low ended. You don't go spending 500$ (wasn't it 600$?) based on if you can change colours on the piano roll... There are many things to consider. If they are 64-bit ready (Sonar is, I don't think the rest are and on Mac Leopard is just out so there might be bugs, last I heard), how many tracks you can have, how midi works, how many synths it has (Logic Studio has TONS), What plug-ins it has, how many inserts, etc...PDF's can be useful to that end, I believe.
January 3, 200818 yr As Nikolas states, you do not just get Logic Studios because you want a piano roll. Logic Studio is extremely powerful; it is almost limitless in the amount of things you can do with sound.
January 3, 200818 yr If you're looking for a MIDI sequencer with a piano roll, you might be better off getting something like this as opposed to Logic: SONAR Home Studio This is PC only, however, not Mac. I'm not aware of cheaper options for Mac-based sequencers.
January 3, 200818 yr The only sequencers for Mac, that I know of is: •Logic •Cubase I do not know how much Cubase costs though.
January 3, 200818 yr Logic is definitely overkill if all you're looking for is a MIDI sequencer. That is, if you merely want to generate your music using General MIDI. It comes with a bunch of very powerful softsynths which, as Saiming said, lead to virtually limitless possibilities. Doesn't stop people adding new ones, though. :D
January 3, 200818 yr Having just purchased the thing, I would not recommend it by ANY stretch of the imagination if all you're looking for is a MIDI sequencer. Besides being ridiculously overkill, as Mike said, you're not likely to be making use of even half of the features that the suite comes with, since it's more geared towards professional mixing and recording of audio and software instruments rather than just a plain MIDI sequencer. I'm curious, what features are you actually missing in the software you're currently using? You said you're looking for a colourful piano roll editing view and then you said that what you're currently using has it...so I'm a little confused, especially since what you're using is freeware - why would you want to pay $500 to get what you already have? If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket then spend it on a decent sound library or a faster harddrive or more memory or something.
January 4, 200818 yr On a related note, I came across this piece of software and I think it can solve all your problems. Looks quite capable: ardour | the new digital audio workstation
January 4, 200818 yr I don't want to learn a complicated program that I'm not going to use for a long time So definitely don't buy Logic then, simple.
January 4, 200818 yr ...So you want to pay $500 to have something you can use later as opposed to getting it for free. This is indeed Logic at its finest. :rolleyes:
January 5, 200818 yr ...So you want to pay $500 to have something you can use later as opposed to getting it for free. This is indeed Logic at its finest. :rolleyes: Nice pun :P
January 9, 200818 yr dude, basically, all daw's do the exact same thing, cubase, logic, protools (poor midi though), sonar, whatever, whatever.. since you're on mac, go for logic, it's by far the most user-friendly daw i've used. it's easy to use, it's audio and midi handling are beyond good. oh, and logic has nice colors too..
January 18, 200818 yr I'm thinking of buying it since its cheap ($500) and has lotsa synths included in it, but all I really hear of here is Sibelius and Finale, which I believe are notation software with added MIDI. I'm mainly looking for a MIDI synthesizer though, not a music score program, preferably with a bright colorful piano roll editor (Bright colors = artish = creativity :thumbsup:).And I'm sorry for making a blatant spam topic like this, but I've done some research already, and I think some personal opinions would be more helpful than a bunch of feature comparison PDF's :whistling: Wow, since when is $500 is "cheap"? But hey, it's your money :P. Anyways, other than Cubase, the only other major DAW for Mac is MOTU Digital Performer. I think compared to Logic, it has a more traditional interface, but it works alright for the most part. Oh, and there's also Ableton Live 7, but I think it's more of a performer/composer oriented type of program. DP and Live are both around $500; I think Cubase 4 is around $700-800? I haven't had much experience with those software above (though I did use DP for about 2 semesters of coursework), being more of a PC user (I've been using Cakewalk for a number of years). Lately, I've gotten a MBPro to better integrate with my school's workflow, so I'm gonna try out Studio 8 and see how that goes (educational discount puts it to about $167 ;).
January 18, 200818 yr hans zimmer uses DP, so i'd definitely chose that over anything. nah, logic's probably the way to go for you.
January 18, 200818 yr :O My educational discount only got it to $450, how did you get it to $167? Donno, probably because my uni's comprised a bunch of mac hoe or something :P. Actually, it is a pretty big University, so I'm sure they could afford to subsidize more, though I'm not sure exactly how it works. I noticed that they have there own mac online store, and usually things are a few hundred dollars cheaper there. It might because the electronic music department here have decided to adopt Logic as it's main platform (from DP), and gave bigger discounts to give students the incentive to follow suit. But yeah, you can try ebay too. For example, here's one copy of an "Academic" edition starting at $250. Technically you are not allowed to resell these type of programs, but it's not like the internet police are gonna bust down your house if you buy 'em :P.
