Feature suggestions

I think that there are many thoughtful and useful suggestions here.

I do agree on everything, however I have some consideration to make about the first point.

Synfire is not a DAW, IMO it should remain like this..in my opinion separating the musical aspect and the technical one(mixing) is really important for my workflow and for the quality of mixing.

Daws are years ahead Synfire with all respect for Synfire of course. Synfire should behave like a Daw for the editing possibilities but not for the rest.

If you start inserting bus, routing, sidechain, audio then I'm almost sure it will buggy and unusable like others.

Stability nowdays is a big issue. Semplicity also.

DAWS will never be like Synfire, Synfire will never be like Daws so IMO there should not be a problem to use the best tools for the job.  One for music one for mixing, probably the integration between these two should be easier and faster.

Of course, if we look ahead in time Synfire could incorporate all features of a DAW..but we talk about some years.

just a consideration, a personal one

G

 Yes..

IV.  Display

1. Articulations (non-default) should be visible by markings in or above the relevant figures/segments.

Could i play more sax :-)
By the way.. i added also modest... a jazz guitar to this arrangement

http://soundcloud.com/janamdo/jazz-light

I have to agree with Gianpiero.

imo Synfire devs should not spend development hours on trying to make Synfire a DAW and add hybrid DAW features, there's already tons of choises for DAWs that are lightyears ahead in the DAW department for things like advanced "one to many", "many to one" or sidechain routing and bussing, but also lightyears behind Synfire what Synfire does best, even the few DAWs that have something like a chord track are child like in comparison.

It's trivial to hook up a DAW to receive audio/midi from Synfire; drones, rewire or vitual midi using something simple like LoopBE30, MolCP etc.. and if you have a decent system the cpu hit is negligible.

 Yes i agree with Gianpiero, if you want add audio elements to your arrangement in Synfire than you have to go to a DAW

One for music one for mixing, probably the integration between these two should be easier and faster.

Those audio editing possibilities are sophisticated in Cubase 6.5 ( to name some DAW, by accident i own this one ) ... so i don't see this replaced by Synfire.

So, for some  music directions ..Synfire is not the the right candidate, but that is no problem.
Imagine to have the ultimate music studio program what can compose what ever you like :) ..that is too much asked from Cognitone
I am satisfied with Synfire Express.  

I think this specification is for the HALion 4 plug in ..now it is possible to relocate (export) this plugin to a DAW

A bit more audio routing/effects versatility within Synfire (Engine) is IMO therefore essential.

I totally agree with you and it was planned too by Cognitone to improve this.

bye

In my view ... expressed before and now repeated, audio in Synfire is a dead end and not very useful.

The only thing it really makes sense for is 'live' performance. However, as audio complexity and capabilities are increased, so will be audio latency to the effect that it will become less and less useful 'live.'

For production I have no use for it. Why would I want to duplicate all the functions in my DAW? Maybe someday it would be possible for Synfire audio to catch up with Logic, Cubase, Pro Tools, etc ... but not only do I doubt it, I wouldn't want to spend the time relearning something I already know: how to route my DAW.

I find Synfire most valuable and intuitive as a pure midi program. I uninstall the audio engine, set up virtual midi cables to my DAW, filter out the GM program messages and use exactly the VSTi or hardware voices I want for each and every channel. Plust I can use midi plugins in my DAW to create arps on the fly or any other of the amazing things that can be done with midi.

Don't misunderstand me, please. I'm happy to see others get more audio features if that is what they wish. I just don't see any benefit as I can do so much more with my DAW and that is where the Synfire output will end up anyway.

As far as the other suggestions go, they seem fine. I think many of the 'display' issues, which I agree are a serious shortcoming, have been broached in the past. Did you read through the 'Feature Suggestions' thread or Andre's request for input on the coming update?

There is a lot of anticipation and hopefulness regarding the coming major revision. Hopefully many of these issues will be addressed.

Prado

To clarify..

I was mostly agreing with leaving DAW features to a DAW and letting Synfire concentrate on being the fantastic composition tool it is.

There's already a plethora of DAWs to pick from, and today they all work pretty much seamlessly together so why try to cram DAW features into Synfire when it's not needed?

Remember the saying: "Jack of all trades, master of none "

Personal  opinion of course, I could never see myself using only Synfire for everything, my standard template is 192 audio tracks and 192 midi tracks = 384 tracks total spread across 3 Vienna Ensemple slaves with eq's, compression, various fx and god knows what.

Handling something like this would  take some serious DAW features to not be a total mess, one to many, many to one routing, busses, folder tracks, sends, etc.. and my DAW already handles that flawlessly.

The way I work is compose in Synfire, render raw stems from Ableton Live (which I use to host my composition template), mix in and master in Sequoia

hey JimSynfire

of course I have no problem with having more routing option in synfire, my concern is about stability and semplicity and separation of responsability.  

Because as we have pointed out already Synfire is a toy when  we see it as a daw, for me having sidechain compression or being able to  group tracks togheter is a joke. Do you make a mixdown from synfire?do you mix inside synfire?just courius..

I'll repeat it..I have no problem to have more routing option but this feature will bring some more other features  which I think are useless just beause there are DAWS years ahead and you will mix outside synfire anyway so..

but at the end whatever cognitone will give us it's fine but what I really WANT is stability.

+1 Stability!

... closely followed by Simplicity and  with Documentation taking up the rear.

BTW JimSynfire, here's a link to a pretty thorough list of recent 'feature suggestions,' if you or anyone else hasn't seen it.

I want to add that while I'm not in agreement about the audio, I greatly appreciate that you've taken the time to share your thoughts about how to refine this fantastic software.

(https://users.cognitone.com/content/your-input-wanted)

Prado

Sometimes less is more though...

Quite true, I'm not actually using everything, I just have it hooked up and ready to go when I need it so I can just add an instrument track in Synfire, pick a sound and I'm off making music..

A long time ago I finally got fed up with always getting sidetracked picking a new instrument, "hmm it needs a bit more reverb, needs a bit more low end, and tweak tweak" and before you know it you've used up your daily amount of "go juice" messing with some technical stuff instead of getting music done.

So now I just have this huge monstrosity template, all setup and a general good sounding mix and it's "verboten" to tweak anything but expression parameters in the composition process :D

I use SFP in a midi only situation.. I then import into Logic, add parts, hand play, add voices etc.. Sometimes I'll want to create a part beyond my technical ability.. I go back to original SFP project and create it there, then import into Logic..

Sometimes I export Logic track as multi channel midi and import static into SFP  again.. and work on parts there again. Then back into Logic..Since I'm using mostly midi hardware in Logic, I can't make use of 'drones'.. I prefer to work with the actual instrument I'm going to use, so substituting a Motif XS layerd patch with a Drone AU, doesn't quite cut it for me.. Just as those of you out there making use of articulations and Kontakt 'scripting', are probably not happy campers either. 

However it is possible to work with two different sets of instruments, in the different programs, I do that sometimes, just to save headaches..  It requires a different mindset. since SFP is so different from a DAW

The last thing one would want is more complication, and the situation for timing issues, or just issues in general, because the software is too complicated or connections to other software/hardware makes for instability. 

Point in example.. I just bought an RME Fireface 800.. Amazingly clean A/D converters, Definetly a step up from Apogee Duet. However between, Logic, RME. Tyros 4, Motif XS rack, and some virtual instruments.. I get some weird issues, where I stop Logic, but some buffer is full and and a virtual or audio track is still playing.. I know I'll work it out.  But in this day and age, especially as one gets older, it's too frustrating to waste your time trying to figure out why some great new piece of software/hardware is giving you a headache. 

Plain and simple - you want to plug it in and have it play properly - without going thru contortions, or wrapping your head around some completely new foreign idea that goes against everything you've learnt so far. 

 I'm sure with Andre's new update, a lot of annoying issues will disappear..

I think Cognitone has already made it clear that this is a MIDI manipulation program.. If they venture too far out trying to satisfy everyone,  They always have more 'exceptions' when it doesn't work well with another piece of software, hardware.

For instance I use mostly MIDI hardware presently (been back/forth several years - right now I'm digging the process of moving knobs and feeling and hearing a difference), Staring at a 2500 dpi screen trying to get the mouse exactly 1/32 of an inch to latch on to the right parameter to change sosmethingis not my idea of fun anymore. And since Logic's AU's and everyone elses VSTs are different, then you have PC's with VSTI's..  it's a wonder there aren't more problem situations arising. 

Of course we are all different and have different needs/wants in our software.. So far Andre has been great at finding the right balance.