MAC Pro or PC for a DAW?

[SubFunk]

Hey Tone .. I reckon we're all bloody lunatics.. but thats another thread *for the lunge maybe..

Anywayz .. does anyone think the OP had any idea of the 'can o worms' he was opening here!? hmmm sucked in me thinks.

Hd

amazing how this 'fight' will never rest...



bring it on!

na just kidding, computers always suck.

[3phase]

oh my god... now i know what i am missing out on as a stupid mac user... thnks lordi



"...While a few motherboards keep both clocks in perfect sync, on many systems these two clocks slowly drift apart, so if Cubase is following the TGT timer and your MIDI interface is timestamping data according to the QPC timer, your MIDI can get seriously out of kilter. The answer, which Steinberg first implemented in Nuendo 2 and Cubase SX 2.3, is a software switch labelled 'Use system timestamp' which, when ticked, instructs these sequencers to follow the QPC timer instead of the TGT one.

By the way, this is a Windows rather than a Cubase-specific issue. Cakewalk's Sonar, to give another sequencer example, has a parameter named 'IgnoreMidiInTimeStamps' in its TTSEQ.ini initialisation file, with a default value of zero that you can change to '1' if your MIDI data is being recorded at the wrong time or it is drifting.

Up until Cubase SE/SL/SX 3.0.1 and Nuendo 3.0.1, Steinberg's 'Use system timestamp' option only affected DirectMusic drivers, so if you suffered from strange timing anomalies when using Windows MIDI drivers, and your interface didn't provide bona fide DirectMusic drivers (few do even now), the only solution was to enable the emulated DirectMusic ports, by bypassing Steinberg's 'ignoreportfilter', and try those instead, with the timestamp box ticked.

However, from Cubase SE3, SL and SX 3.1 and Nuendo 3.1 onwards, a separate 'Use system timestamp' option has been available in the Windows MIDI page, so even in multi-interface systems using both DirectMusic and Windows MIDI drivers you can cure timing problems individually. You can find these timestamp tick-boxes by opening the Device Setup window from the Devices menu — there's one in the DirectMusic page and a second in the Windows MIDI page of the MIDI section.

You can also find out which clock is used by a MIDI interface that has non-DIrectMusic drivers (the majority), by running Jay Levitt's handy MIDITime utility (www.jay.fm/miditime/). You connect your chosen interface In and Out via a MIDI loopback cable and then run the utility, which simply sends MIDI data round the loop, compares its timestamping against both system clocks, and tells you whether your system needs to have the 'Use system timestamp' box ticked.

[leedsquietman]

The thing is though 3phase, I've seen a Steinberg MIDEX with it's LTB protocol working in conjunction with an RME Hammerfall audio card and produce performance as good as and jitter as low as any Mac system. However, there are more variables. I don't deny that on average a Mac system with CoreMIDI is typically more accurate and with less jitter than many PC based systems, but there are some combinations out there which work well.

It definately helps having a timestamp which is switchable too - In Cubase I need the timestamp switched on with my Alesis interface, but on an older Echo MiaMIDI it worked better set to off. Live doesn't give you that option.

At the end of the day, it often becomes a moot point anyway because many people just quantize the hell out of their music, totally destroying any subtleties of jitter or timing errors along with the essence of musicality in some cases..

I say for most users, with some tweaks, windows MIDI is for the most part useable. I say if you need super tight MIDI timing to sync a bunch of devices, then it is less useable. I have also expressed disappointment that Microsoft did nothing for MIDI in windows XP, Vista or windows 7, while Apple have introduced CoreMIDI and enhanced it a couple of times since.

[Hermanus]

give peace a chance

[3phase]

The thing is though 3phase, I've seen a Steinberg MIDEX with it's LTB protocol working in conjunction with an RME Hammerfall audio card and produce performance as good as and jitter as low as any Mac system.

that sounds great..and i really would like to belife that.. i really do..
could you please do a measurement? or record the plain clock output to an audiofile and send it to me? a few seconds is enough..

recording of clock events is a bit problematic thou because you need an adapter from midi to audio input.. something not everybody has at hand :-/


and in case soembody wants to do that,, no mp´3s..they sometimes do funny tghings to the micro timing..5 seconds aif or wav 16 bit 44,1k or 48 k...

[leedsquietman]

It's not possible at this time for me to measure this, as the system is not my own and I lost contact with the person who moved back to Britain.

The Midex was a great interface, one of the best ever, so long as the other products you used supported it. There are many Cubase users upset with Steinberg because these interfaces were not cheap ($899 for a MIDEX and they dropped support for it 5 years ago, so no Vista or win 7 support.

This is an extract from the Sound On Sound review
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may01/a ... midex8.asp

I had no problems at all using the Midex 8, and the timing certainly sounded very tight -- but is it actually better than a standard MIDI interface? To check this out I used the test described in my March 2000 PC Musician article, by first creating a MIDI containing continuous hi-hats on every 16th note (ie. four to each beat), copying this part to 16 other MIDI tracks, and then allocating the first part to a VST Instrument drum synth (I used Steinberg's LM9), and the other 16 to each and every channel simultaneously of various MIDI ports. Next I panned the VST Instrument hard left on my hardware mixer, and the output of my various MIDI synths hard right, and played the song back at 120bpm. Each beat of the VST Instrument is sample-accurate, and will emerge every 125mS or 5513 samples apart, so if you record the two audio signals into a stereo audio track, any MIDI timing discrepancy can be measured by examining the relative positions of the sample-accurate VST Instrument in the left channel and the MIDI drum source in the right channel of the waveform.


The timing between adjacent MIDI beats using the Midex 8 proved to be considerably tighter than several standard MIDI interfaces I tried for comparison purposes. With the standard interfaces, timing varied by up to 2.4mS (105 samples at 44.1kHz), but by only 0.3mS (just 13 samples) with the Midex 8. The Midex 8's timing also seemed fairly consistent as I loaded the other ports with MIDI data, while that of standard multi-port devices tended to get worse as more and more data was sent to them.

I presently use the MIDI in my Alesis IO14 under Direct MIDI with timestamping on and while I accept it's not a top of the line solution and can be susceptible to some jitter and latency issues (firewire and USB midi often is), it's usable for playing softsynth parts without too much trouble, occasionally I will edit the MIDI data. I haven't tried syncing it to anything except once to a Boss Drum machine, it worked well at that, although I only was sampling from the drum machine in 16 bars.

[3phase]

o,3ms can be considred as good enough... but question is if that applies only to midi events or also to the realtime clock messages ...

however.. would be nice to find a interface for pc that can do the job.. best one that is still in production...