Reply To: Bottom Line

Alex wrote:

1030 views – 6 responses. I really don’t believe this!

Well, there’s just no accounting for taste, is there? I often attempt to work into my thread posts some cheeky, secondary entertainment value. Failing that, I can sometimes seem agitated and annoying, This, I suspect has been some of the reason for massive hit counts — They come seeking what it is everyone else has their knickers all in a bunch about, but then flee in near terror, seeing that certain ones such as myself are ‘at it again’. Of course, we could speculate all day long, so I won’t.

I’ve mentioned it, yet unsure if anyone has noticed, but my own Feature Requests have dwindled considerably. There are various causes for this, but it is not as some will suggest, because I’ve ‘learned to put up with it’ — being Podium’s lack of several features. I’ve gone about ‘fixing things’ in several ways, not the least of which being the purchase of a couple of smashing keyboard controllers, eliminating my peronal need for a virtual one in Podium.

Skipping ahead now, there have been a couple of items I’ve pushed for, more as a PR goal as much as badly needed, dithering falling squarely among them, although it saves trouble having one, and I will point out again that even freeware Audacity has its own professional quality dither and has for almost 4 years now. And any self-respecting DAW such too.

I have no hesitation to admit that there have been some features I’ve dutifully listed each time because I know their importance for Podium’s image sake and even more because I’ve known for a very long time how much dedicated Podium owners want them. More good PR in the end if implemented!

I’ll now skip right to my last point, comments of shock and awe (that entertainment value) regarding the large and most difficult feature of all — Time Stretching. And here you will be shocked to know the following; first, yes, even Audacity and Wavosaur have a bit of this. More importantly, many, many DAWs today have it, too. But here’s the shocker — it is a near-disaster in function on many or most of them. Here goes:

Studio One 2 was perhaps smartest of all and comes with Melodyne’s cheaper package bundled to it. I’d buy Studio One just to have the Melodyne, except that Studio One is butt-ugly, the colour I call ‘corpse gray’, their terminogy of engineering is half whacked, and I don’t care for any of the other plugins or other helps. Both Ableton and Bitwig cannot seem to get their respective acts together for long enough to release their next editions, so just forget them.

FL Studio (the people too embarrassed to refer to their DAW as ‘Fruit Loops’) has stretching, but sync’ed or no, look out!!! If you happen to insert or perhaps already have placed a tempo change within any region that is being stretched, your project will proceed to go haywire and come unravelled, and its almost certain you will never be able to pull it back together again.

Now, it matters none to me and many others what Reason has, because Reason is the DAW and Propellerhead the system that makes you buy all your plugins twice and won’t accept any freeware, since it will only take plugins that fit into Reason’s stupid ‘rack’ system. So forget them as well.

And who cares what Pro Tools uses. You can’t afford it anyway.

Now, some, including REAPER, have turned to using one or more types of elastique, which is licensed from Vielklang, the company that has become the very poor man’s answer to some Melodyne abilities and at roughly half the price. In my whole last year of owning REAPER alongside Podium have yet to use it even once. I tend to think about Time Stretching only when I’m reading about yet another REAPER owner who is having some kind of troubles with it. And the story carries on from about there.

Would I use it if it worked well in Podium? Why not? Do I want it in Podium? Who knows? Do I know how much more maths, coding, compiling, testing, and time and money this one feature would need to create it? You guessed correctly. Yet I will continue to list it on FR lists, because several want it badly, technically it could be done, and it is almost standard issue as of 2013. Personally, it is not within my recording style. I have other ways of ‘fixing things’ and creating bizarre sound events that relate back to songs such as “I Am the Walrus”. I would rather purchase a Melodyne Assistant or Editor package if I were to use those capabilities very much.

Sorry for such great length!
Cheers!
Tele