This is so frustrating...

Peter, I don’t want to sound angry or bitter, but sometimes this stuff really does my head in. (In a confused, scratching head kinda way not an angry, clenched fist kinda way)

It’s just that it seems every time any idea is mooted that will significantly broaden Vegas’s horizons it gets shot down in flames.

I don’t understand where Vegas is supposed to be going.

We can’t have ACID style loop tracks.

We can’t have MIDI and VSTI’s.

We can’t have anything beyond very basic import/export.

And now we can’t have Rewire.

(With the possible exception of Rewire) I can see solutions that could incorporate all of the above into Vegas without compromising the interface or workflow.

My god, we have this behemoth, mother of all video editors constantly hanging over the top of all of us. I never see anyone -ever- complaining that it interferes with their workflow...

I adore Vegas and will defend it to the death. It does what it does so beautifully and elegantly. But as I’ve said before; I make music in a real world situation, not in a bubble. The compromises I have to make every day to break out of that bubble are slowly driving me round the bend.

...Sorry for the rant...I just don’t understand where all this is leading.

yeah drumagog isnt working well in vegas at all. 2.0 does, but 3 wont

Arnar, You are correct about the delay. The way I use it is to "open copy in sound forge" the track to be drumagoged and then apply it there, sometimes manually normalizing or muting certain sections. Its a pain to be sure

In drumagog 2 you could run it in vegas and use envelopes and such wherever problems were.

I have made a LOT of drumagog ready samples, pretty much anytime someone brings a good drumset in. You can find them on the web under the name "AES_24_96" or "AES_24_192". There were a few places carrying them on FTP but Im not sure where now. I wish we had a nice central place to swap samples

But that is speculation webpuppy. I do believe SF could develop this app (vegas is acid, acid is vegas)....but marketing won't let this happen (if you know what I mean).

I'm sorry but the "concern for bugs" isn't justifiable at this point. I think it would be SF's best seller to date personally.
Opening two apps (possibly more?)...how is that a better route?

Doesn't matter, it's about $...I know it, SF knows it, but the argument will never follow it.

Oh well (right?)

JoeD

JoeD, maybe you're right. I'm sure it would be a hell of a big seller, but critically... I'll be happy as long as I can use VSTi's in a Vegas project. Rewire will certainly do that.

Turning them both into one monster application at this point would be a hell of a step in R&D in comparison to a rewire link. I do see where their going with this, and I'm quite pleased it seems to be moving somewhere at least!

Weevil: I can answer all those questions in one sentence:

Vegas is not a sequencer.

The verbose explanation is that all those things you mention are tools for *creating* music, not *recording* it. There's a huge difference that I'm sure you can appreciate if you just see it from that perspective.

...And what do you mean by very basic import / export? I'm not flame baiting here, just curious, since Vegas can import and export to a LOT of sample formats!

Now. The Rewire issue is a borderline case, since it does in fact comply with the multitracker recording paradigm. Instead of recording a number of sound sources using physical cables through a multi-channel soundcard, you record a virtual multi-channel sound source through virtual cables. The problem seems to be that you need to raise the "musical" awareness of Vegas tenfold, and that sends it reeling into that dark mist of half-multitracker, half-sequencer limbo that Nuendo seems to be in.

>>And now we can’t have Rewire.
Never said that. I am merely discussing the options. I am always open to debate on any feature issue of Vegas or ACID.

>>Arnar, if rewire MUST still use an audio buss in Acid, then we are going to have some nasty problems when Acid and Vegas try to open the same devices at the same time. I try this already ( I have 52 physical I/O's in my PC) and it is sketchy
<<
IFF ACID were to be a ReWire Device, when it was in that "mode" it would NEVER access audio hardware. That would break the ReWire "model" where the "ReWire Mixer" is the "audio hardware" for the ReWire Device.
>Peter, I think it is time for us to be able to change the tempo in vegas, even if only for display purposes
<
This I agree with.
>Also, due to bands getting crappier and crappier, and knowing less and less about how to hit their drums, or even tune them, triggers are becomming more and more necessary lately. We really are ging to need a way to record midi somehow. Im a HUGE Drumagog freak, but many of these performances are getting so bad, that just audio triggereing wont be enough
<
MIDI in Vegas scares me. We added a little MIDI to ACID 3 and were crucified. We added more to ACID 4 and were bitched at even louder.

I absolutely agree. Midi in Vegas would be a big mistake, the same way midi in your Studer would be. But since Vegas IS your Studer AND your console, Rewire solves the problem by basically being just one more step in connectivity, a sophisticated patchbay as it were. Midi is, at this point, a slippery slope wearing teflon shoes.

"MIDI is a nightmare in its technical issue. Most MIDI sequencers of merit have been around for YEARS. Most DAWs started out a MIDI sequencers. They have had YEARS to get it right."

Hey Peter, tell the new Sony Management to give Gibson a call. I'm sure the rights to Studio Vision is just dead weight at this point to them. Opcode, did it for years, got it right......and then came along Gibson.......and I still can't buy a Les Paul with a Midi pickup bundled with a sequencer.

red

I have no desire to have MIDI in Vegas. My impression is that it would mess up a great product.

rewire gives me ACID's midi - which I'm very happy with!

as long as rewire works and vegas and acid can run on the same machine ( including being able to record in sync with vegas starting playback, )then cool!

>>And now we can’t have Rewire.

Cool, good to hear.

I’d love to discuss a couple of features. I’ll put them up now...then you shoot them down. ;-)

Track import/export:

Drag and drop an entire track (or tracks) from the track list straight onto the explorer window to export them (and vice versa).

ACID style looping:

The application gains a new track class: loop tracks. Just like in ACID, each loop track can only contain a single file.

Internally loop tracks would use exactly the same slicing techniques as ACID. The only difference being that in Vegas the display rules would be swapped over...When you adjust the tempo in Acid, one-shot audio and the time ruler become elastic while loops and the beat ruler remain rigid. In Vegas this would be the exact opposite. ‘One-shot’ audio and the time ruler would remain rigid while loop tracks and the beat ruler would become elastic.

They seem like pretty clean, integrated solutions to me...You get all that extra power and they don’t compromise the interface or workflow do they?

...Okay, big fella, go ahead, smash them to pieces.

I have no desire to have MIDI in Vegas. My impression is that it would mess up a great product.

Vegas already has video editing which is about 100,000 times more complex, and resource hungry than MIDI. Yet unless you actually start inserting video tracks, you don’t even notice any of the video stuff is there. No reason why MIDI couldn’t be exactly the same.

"MIDI is a nightmare in its technical issue. Most MIDI sequencers of merit have been around for YEARS. Most DAWs started out a MIDI sequencers. They have had YEARS to get it right. "

It's nice that the people of Sonic Foundry have such high moral standards: the competition seems to have no qualms about taking your ideas and integrating them into their DAWs. I believe much can be learned from the successes and mistakes of the "other" sequencers, particularly with regards to MIDI.

As much as SF would like MIDI to go away, it isn't going to disappear anytime soon. There are still areas where MIDI makes sense. One such area is game music development where efforts are being made to make scores interact with game-play. Because of transfer limitations, streaming alone does not allow the massive interactivity possible with MIDI triggering. And compositional tools that handle MIDI will continue to be used for this purpose, as well as traditional composition; it's still not possible to transfer audio directly to a score (this may take a while yet!). There are still many musicians who read and write music ;).

I was a Logic user for over 10 years till Apple shut the door on that on the PC. But I've been using Acid and Vegas since they came out because of the great UI and functionality. I've also regularly been adding my voice to the chorus of integration, at least to allow Vegas-like recording and audio editing in Acid, if not a total merge (difficult now because of video aspect of Vegas).

I had to tabulate a tight budget for my sound department recently and as much as I wanted to upgrade to Vegas 4, I couldn't do so in good conscience because of its lack of MIDI recording and editing. I had to go with Cubase SX because it handles softsynths, MIDI, audio and surround very well. But frankly, I'm still a SF router, and I still hope you'll finally make Acid the complete audio application that so many people seem to agree it could be. I think your UI is great. I also think you've milked this cow long enough.

Angels

Funny, I'm also a game developer and I regularly celebrate the fact that Logic and Vegas don't overlap more than they do; I make music (and sometimes sound effects!) in the former and mixes in the latter. I'd hate to have to stick to one of them through the entire workflow of all different classes of game sound (music, character efforts, dialogue, weapons, GUI, cut scenes, event sound, ambiences, entities etc) since each of the areas have their unique demands on the software I use.

Personally, I'd hate to see Vegas get bloated by implementing features that makes it more than a multitrack recorder and editor. I always think of it as a catalyst, not a creation tool, and there's simply no place in my mind for anything else.

This, of course, is just my personal opinion. I'm very aware that other people use Vegas in a complete different way, and I fully respect that. I just wanted to add my side of it.

>>Track import/export:

Drag and drop an entire track (or tracks) from the track list straight onto the explorer window to export them (and vice versa).
<<
No problem with this one. Just taking the "Render to new track" and provide an alternate UI.

>>ACID style looping:

The application gains a new track class: loop tracks. Just like in ACID, each loop track can only contain a single file.

Internally loop tracks would use exactly the same slicing techniques as ACID. The only difference being that in Vegas the display rules would be swapped over...When you adjust the tempo in Acid, one-shot audio and the time ruler become elastic while loops and the beat ruler remain rigid. In Vegas this would be the exact opposite. ‘One-shot’ audio and the time ruler would remain rigid while loop tracks and the beat ruler would become elastic.
<<
Again, no real argument here. And this directly addresses my concern with two different apps / two different time line views via ReWire.

>I'm sure the rights to Studio Vision is just dead weight at this point to them. Opcode, did it for years, got it right......and then came along Gibson.......and I still can't buy a Les Paul with a Midi pickup bundled with a sequencer.
<<
Q: Does Vision run on XP, or are you limited to Win9X with it?

>>It's nice that the people of Sonic Foundry have such high moral standards: the competition seems to have no qualms about taking your ideas and integrating them into their DAWs. I believe much can be learned from the successes and mistakes of the "other" sequencers, particularly with regards to MIDI.
<<
This is not about a high moral standard, but one of practicality. My only point was MIDI is a beast. It can take a lot of code and lot of work to get it right. It would be no different than for a MIDI only sequencer to now attempt to add PC-DAW type features today. The level of expectation is high for a DAW today.
>>As much as SF would like MIDI to go away, it isn't going to disappear anytime soon. There are still areas where MIDI makes sense.
....
There are still many musicians who read and write music ;).
<<
We don't want MIDI to go away. We are spend a great deal of time and effort into the MIDI engine of ACID. We are taking a lot of heat because of the approach we did adopt in ACID. It is not a traditional sequencer and we get blasted by many who when they hear "It has MIDI" they are disappointed when it can't do the things that SONAR, Logic, etc can do.

>>Track import/export:

Sorry, I actually mean exporting the entire track state, not just the events on the track. Hence the vice versa (sic?) part...

Being able to drag and drop or copy/paste entire track states between two instances of the program would also be brilliant.




Hmmm, now that is starting to make me feel a whole lot better...I certainly hope my old friends at Sony send a dollar or two in your direction Sir.

>>Having said all of this, I can assure you that the debate of the uber app (or simply MIDI in Vegas) will be discussed here very soon. We are not ignoring user requests, we are just being realistic about doing things right.
Peter<<

I very much appreciate your detailed explanation of these issues Peter. Thanks!

drbam

"Q: Does Vision run on XP, or are you limited to Win9X with it?"

Still not sure at this point. I tried it once on Win2K. It installed fine, but I had trouble with the "OMS" setup, but there where several other factors at that time, that I couldn't point the problem at Vision. Those being that MOTU where dragging their feet on Win2k midi interface drivers, and the midi issues with Win2k. As you know I run Vision on a seperate PC than Vegas. That PC is currently a 200Mhz Pentium running win98se. So there's no point in trying to install WinXP on that system. It will have a hard enough time running the OS. Hopefully, within the next few months I'm planning on building a new DAW, so that means my old DAW with WinXP on it steps down and becomes my new midi machine.