Levendis.
The TelenatorUp until recently, I’ve spent most of my time at this forum reviewing the wants and needs of all of us users together, meanwhile trying to keep track of the problems and issues that arise and are posted from time to time. I notice that the majority of problems seem to be coming from the attempted use of plugins in Podium, and while some of these can be quickly dismissed by the fact that some plugins are simply badly designed — and sometimes it is merely a new and inexperienced user having the problem — yet it appears to me that it is often Podium that is the compatibility problem.
It’s a standing joke among Ableton users about how quickly Live 8 will crash when it is ‘unhappy’ with some third party plugin, and now possessing Ableton Live 8 myself to tinker with I can affirm this. Users seem somewhat forgiving, often pointing to the many plugins with which Live 8 comes installed and never present a trouble. Thankfully Podium is better by far. Yet I have seen enough trouble on these pages and noted before several missing features in regard to plugin use that it seems time to comment specifically.
First, though, I want to say how much I appreciate the recent upgrades to Podium’s MIDI editor. I came here already knowing that this editor was one of the best — the excellent graphics of both piano and drum editors alone greatly contribute to this (one of REAPER’s biggest shortcomings, by the way). But now that we are able to take bits of sequences and flip them upside down, reverse them, upside down and backwards I suppose, and otherwise fiddle about with them, and I’m sure I’ll start doing this all the time. Seriously, and all joking aside, I come to a DAW looking for ‘working’ features, not games and fooling about. For example, I want to be able to throw any controller function down at bottom where velocity sits and be able to edit it. But for now, I’ll say that the MIDI editor has enough function and control to keep me content and leave it at that.
Instead, I think it’s time for a real overhaul of how plugins interact with Podium. I think it’s easy to forgive Podium with rejecting a plugin on mass load, if it has ‘tired’ with scanning a complex one that came just before, as long as users are fully made aware of this common and likely occurrence. I’m much more interested in more important things when it comes to using plugins on tracks.
Even though I truly do understand what a load of work this is going to be, I’m going to offer my only two real needs when it comes to Podium and how plugins are connected and employed here. I NEED routing and I NEED MIDI mapping for plugins. I’m lately acquiring all these wonderful plugins, finally buying a few, and Podium just can’t cope with them. I have plugins now that offer Audio Outs in addition to MIDI Outs for tracking, but Podium doesn’t accept the audio. Why? I have some that will take my guitar input and turn it into a MIDI track, but Podium will have nothing to do with it, won’t record it. I have plugins with 8, 12 or 16 MIDI Outs, but I can’t map them. I can’t hardly rout anything anywhere. You know, when you have to constantly bring in helpful bits, like MidiYoke or other cable, just to try to make something half work (and even then it likely won’t!), well then, you know you have a half-baked setup already. In other words, there are all these wonderful, modern plugins that are greatly limited by Podium’s lack.
Look, I want to be able to RECORD and TRACK anything that I either hear or that I happen to know comes out of a perfectly good plugin, and I am thoroughly sick of the silence and stonewalling on this issue. I didn’t invent this Feature Request, this need, and it didn’t just pop up yesterday. Can we please come up to the year 2012 now? Can we put aside the fiddling with all these lessor issues and fix the main working parts of this very pretty DAW? I feel like I’m dating the most beautiful blonde whom I suddenly have discovered has an IQ of only 49 and clubbed feet as well.
I mean, what IS the problem here? Is this just too hard? I’ve seen these and closely related requests a dozen or more times in this forum. Every other DAW now either has all of the above or is working hard to add these things as I write, yet we’re all off turning MIDI phrases upside down and fiddling about. Really. What gives here?
kim_otcjIt seems to me that Podium’s midi capabilities are aimed squarely at putting midi notes on a track to play a VST instrument loaded to that same track. That’s the way I use midi in Podium, and I’ve never had any problem doing just that.
I don’t use Podium because it has all the latest advanced features (it hasn’t). I use it because it does what it does very well.
MLSPersonally, I think that the satisfaction to use Podium is follow the updates and improvements step by step and produce music with the limitations of the software, despite everything. All for free.
It’s not my intention to be controversial, but the developer is only one and in my opinion, he has done much! Other software houses have a lot of developers and spend much money in advertisement and events to promote their products.
Anyway, to compensate for lack of features in Podium, I use it together with another software (also free), waiting for future updates.
TrancitI know, this will not satisfy all the requested needs, but there is a very very good VST/i, which fits many needs:
It´s called MUX from the company MuTools ( http://www.mutools.com ) and offers besides a fantastic internal soundengine for creating Synth/Sampler and FX a very flexible modular area, which can subhost any kind of VST…
It offers many many routing possibilities for midi too, even if this would not affect the lack of internal midi routing in Podium, but it is very suitable as a workaround…
Once I loved energyXT for this features, but sadly it is nearly dead with a very unfinished V2…
MUX has the same approach (lacking of the sequencing possibility though), but:
1. much more powerful (think of a mixture between Reaktor and energyXT)
2. it is very alive…Jo the developer is a very kind and gentle guy, but more important he is very engaged to make MUX perfect solution…
Bugfixes happens very very fast, often 1-2 days after reporting and it has tons of lovely features even for midi Fx and routing…
Next important part: as it acts as a subhost, it might often be possible to use buggy plugins, which lead to crash Podium, into the MUX in a working way…
MUX is still on sale till the 31st of august and believe me, it is worth every penny…
The TelenatorWell, I almost didn’t bother to start this thread, because I just knew how this was going to go.
So, we have a free user of Podium saying he doesn’t want to complain or ask for more features. I wouldn’t, either, if I was using someone else’s software without paying for it.
And of course, I believe kim_otcj represents the more basic of DAW users, such as I once was. When I began doing my own music digitally I was delighted just to have some freeware plugin on a track that would make any noise or output any MIDI whatsoever. And my own work was often so sloppy that I would have tossed it all, had there not been a decent MIDI editor to fix my mess. Note here that I have no issue with the current state of the Piano Roll or Drum editors; in fact, since REAPER allows users to go immediately to external editors with one quick click, I have it set so that Podium’s MIDI editors are my primary external editors. Any MIDI track I’m using in REAPER will open instantly on Podium’s editors.
As for the “One-Man Show” argument, I have always acknowledged that and did state that I know what a bit of work it would be to overhaul the plugin use on tracks; however, there are hundreds of other One-Man Shows/creations out there, producing some of finest software at any price — Ichiro Toda with his Synth1, Fuzzpile’s Oatmeal, Bootsy with his impressive collection of top-rated FX . . . The list is almost endless. I’ve never heard any of them or their users fall back on this excuse, and we’re talking about completely free products in these cases. Why is this excuse constantly brought up when discussing Podium?
Since it has come up, and since there is a free version of Podium, how about charging a decent price reflecting more what this DAW is actually worth, then perhaps staff can be added as needed? Or at the very least Frits might be able to justify spending more time improving Podium? We users have no control over these sorts of personal decisions, so always falling back on the ‘one man’ argument doesn’t carry any weight. You make your own bed in this world, and it’s for you to lie in it. If that were applied to Toda or Fuzzpile I suppose we wouldn’t have the same top-rated stuff from them, either. Yes, we might only have some shadow of the great Synth1 or Oatmeal synth we are offered totally free today. And I certainly didn’t come here to tell anyone how to run their business, but this whole situation seems to defy all good business sense. But so be it.
I believe great products ‘sell’ themselves. So, it’s a choice to make. A lot of good products started out very small, with only one or two designers, but they then expanded to meet user demand. Do you want your users having to fall back on using one or two other DAWs or products to get their work done, as Me le suono states? Merely for example, do we have to resort to using the volunteer-made Audacity to render to 16 bits because Podium has no dither yet Audacity and everyone else have very nice ones? What is the point of asking for Feature Requests from users at all, if they are going to be largely ignored?
I now see Podium for what it is, the pretty blonde in my first post here. I’m also beginning to see that there is no point in suggesting any improvements anymore, just as I also note there is very very little user retention here. People come into Podium and this forum and are soon gone for other places. They talk it up big, then quickly disappear. Many seem to hit these imposed limitations, these walls, much faster than I did. I’m also beginning to understand why Podium doesn’t even receive a mention anymore in the many publications’ and websites’ lists of current best recording software. Those of us here who have taken the time to renew and discuss Feature Requests are often met with no response at all from Zynewave when a simple, ‘yes, I will add that’ or ‘no, I can’t fix that’ would have been plenty and appropriate.
I believe, like the blonde I mentioned, I was deceived by Podium’s good looks and didn’t see it for what it actually is — a poor man’s DAW. Also, I was indeed first attracted by the very low price, yet at the same time I’m not hesitant to pay for quality or features. And I know I’m not alone in stating this.
kingtubbyoh look kids – another wall of text…sorry, I had to say it.
The TelenatorSorry I didn’t respond in the short grunts and phrases that is more common on the internet today. I realise how painful it is to have to use your brain and read something. I suggest if you can’t cope with it there are lots of cartoons and such on the net that will entertain you without having to invest so much as one brain cell.
ZynewaveThose of us here who have taken the time to renew and discuss Feature Requests are often met with no response at all from Zynewave when a simple, ‘yes, I will add that’ or ‘no, I can’t fix that’ would have been plenty and appropriate.
Yes, I intend to improve plugin support in the future. The plugin MIDI out routing was first discussed years ago on this forum, and back then I also said that I plan to support it. If it was a simple thing, I would have implemented it already. The problem is that I have received feature requests to keep me occupied for the next twenty years. Each user has his own idea of what essential features are missing.
Trancit@The Telenator wrote:
Note here that I have no issue with the current state of the Piano Roll or Drum editors; in fact, since REAPER allows users to go immediately to external editors with one quick click, I have it set so that Podium’s MIDI editors are my primary external editors. Any MIDI track I’m using in REAPER will open instantly on Podium’s editors.
Never tried this external editor thingie… does this really work???
@The Telenator wrote:
As for the “One-Man Show” argument, I have always acknowledged that and did state that I know what a bit of work it would be to overhaul the plugin use on tracks; however, there are hundreds of other One-Man Shows/creations out there, producing some of finest software at any price — Ichiro Toda with his Synth1, Fuzzpile’s Oatmeal, Bootsy with his impressive collection of top-rated FX . . . The list is almost endless. I’ve never heard any of them or their users fall back on this excuse, and we’re talking about completely free products in these cases. Why is this excuse constantly brought up when discussing Podium?
1. Honestly you are talking here about the apple and orange topic…
Synths and FX like you mentioned are nothing compared to a whole Sequencer/DAW/Host…talking about the work to be invested here…
2. There is a big difference between a student, releasing some plugins during his study times and a selfemployed, who has to live from it´s income…
3. What you got here is not only a one man show, it´s since more than a year a part time one man show…which has slowed down development by I don´t know, about 500%…
4. I sadly agree completely with you, that the development is far far too slow… but this is what you got here, which is a real pity…
Podium is a really good sequencer, it´s features are very well implemented, but it falls more and more behind his competitors, which means (just guessing here) it will sooner or later mutate from a part time job to a hobby and perhaps after this even less than this, even if Frits will disagree here…
@The Telenator wrote:
Since it has come up, and since there is a free version of Podium, how about charging a decent price reflecting more what this DAW is actually worth, then perhaps staff can be added as needed? Or at the very least Frits might be able to justify spending more time improving Podium?
The problem is, that this will not work… Even newcomer on the Host market offer minimum ten times more features on their release… Podium is too far behind, you cannot charge more (of course you can, but who´ll pay it)…
It would work only other way round, which is just dreaming…
First Frits would have to bring Podium “up to date” and then he could charge more…
I really have thought about my posting before I started my thread about “This is how Podium dies…”
Again, I would love to see it further growing, but the truth is, that Frits would have to spend a lot time into Podium now and this by increasing his update speed by min. 3-4 times…
If I take a look at the last update… the stuff, which took him 3 months… such stuff is implemented by i.e. Cockos/Reaper in 1-2 days….
An update list of these other daws (released every max 3month) is longer than the update list of Podium of the last 5 years….
It is/was a good product, but… too many shortcomings…
If I just count the most important ones:
-Midi routing
-Audio timestretch
-Plugin implementation
-Improvement of CPU load
I throw in a little guess here: If you come back in 4-5 years here, it will partly still not be implemented, if Zynewave even still exists then…
And this is i.e. why I am/was quite angry about wasting development time into “future toys” like touch pads/iPads/phones, all the shit, one, who makes music seriously will never need, like tons of other products already have shown…these are toys and will be toys forever…
You want to bring Podium into the year 2013/14 technologywise…
Please bring it first into the year 2005/06…
But I am a silly person and hope dies last, so I come back here regulary and I hope I am wrong with my guesses, but till now…
The TelenatorThanks, Frits. Personally, I appreciate any response at the moment. I’m very aware that the Feature Requests are numerous and all over the spectrum; you see this on every DAW forum. Even over at Cockos REAPER, where they are improving things at the speed of light, updates coming almost faster than I can install them, still users there whine on endlessly about needing more, more. It’s crazy to read, and suffice it to say they couldn’t cope for more than 15 minutes over here.
However, the point I have kept trying to drive home here is that Podium has enough of its own virtues and unique features, starting with its unsurpassed UI (which I happen to know is your specialty), that I seriously don’t believe you need to add every common feature found in every other DAW in order to achieve top ranking status and full professional use. Some will disagree, but I’m not even sure if you would need to implement much more than half of what are currently considered standard features. I’m not even pushing for time stretching abilities but have gone along with it because other users here seem to want it so badly. I’m not 100% sure it is a core need, so that should give some idea of where I stand on features. I won’t offer any list right now, but it truly only involves a relatively small handful of core features. Also, I think it is intuitive. Some of the most recent feature additions on other DAWs can basically considered ‘puff’ — interesting, perhaps attractive, but really not necessary for daily use.
I understand how much work it will be to allow greater flexibility for plugins, but I’ve focused on this as being so ‘core’ to full use of Podium and many plugins that I just don’t think you can put it off much longer. I see it as the one major handicap in Podium. As much as I have grown to like REAPER, I would still prefer to use Podium for almost all my work. I’ve become hesitant lately to purchase plugins that I can only use in REAPER if I want their full deployment.
One good ‘fix’ that would hold for quite some time is if Podium could be made ‘friendlier’ to accepting readily a handful of ‘subhosts’ — tested, approved, and listed by you and perhaps users. If we could combine multiple plugins there and also have the sort of flexibility I’m talking about it would go a long way. Up to now, though, I’ve had Podium reject practically everything I’ve tried, and I’ve read similar posts of other users. Additionally, Podium often has trouble accepting processes that need to be routed in from outside via cables and such. On one instance it nearly uninstalled MidiYoke to where I had to do a reinstall/repair on MidiYoke later. Back then I devoted a solid couple of weeks some months ago attempting several workarounds with virtually no success.
The TelenatorTrancit, I’ll keep this one shorter — mustn’t be posting too many “walls of text” that might force one to engage in what was once called ‘reading’!
But to answer your first question: REAPER’s MIDI editing UI and normally somewhat buggy assortment of features within it makes it hard to use. I can barely see the notes on full zoom. Not too long ago, they began offering the ability to link outside, external editors. Yes, it works once you’ve set it up. I have Podium as my primary and currently have Audacity as my secondary (for certain audio use). Further, REAPER, using ReWire, can be used as a slave to Podium. This works, too, and I need to explore this more to accomplish some of what I posted about Podium’s missing features, namely the routing and plugin implementation. It has been a struggle to keep Podium as my main recorder, but options such as these keep the situation from becoming hopeless.
As for the rest, I have to agree with most of the points you made — the Host Market, the greater complexities of a DAW to even a complex plugin design, and so on. REAPER, the other DAW which I currently know best, is an anomaly as far as design and feature improvements right now, and I avoid suggesting that Podium could or should be able to achieve similar. But you are correct — the software coming out nowadays is so far advanced, even in a version 1, that it is almost mind-boggling to comprehend and even harder to keep pace. Therefore, part of this discussion is about how users and its designer struggle to keep Podium relevant in this rapidly changing state of the art.
kim_otcjI do find that, aside from routing, Podium gives me a decent amount of control over VSTs.
Any parameter a VST makes visible can be assigned to an automation track and controlled with an automation curve. With some synths (the HG Fortune ones come immediately to mind), Podium will automatically create the automation lanes for some parameters.
If the VST assigns control change numbers to its parameters, then I can assign those to a knob on my controller and write the automation curve in real time. So I may be a “basic” user, but there is no shortage of sophisticated things I can do with Podium in my studio set-up.
Another example is Podium’s hierarchical routing — and that’s the thing that drew me to Podium in the first place. You can put tracks in groups, and nest groups within groups, and at every stage the direction of your signal flow remains visible and obvious right there in the track window.
Say I’ve got a guitar part that I’ve set up with an effects stack — an EQ curve, a compressor, a send to a reverb bus, and so on. But for the solo parts I want to add a univibe plugin, an extra distortion, and a second aux bus set up with a delay plugin. I don’t want that to be a separate effects stack, I want that stuff added on top of the first lot of effects. Well, in Podium I can convert the guitar track to a group and add a child track, on which I put that second set of effects. Then I’d just slice up the guitar soundclip and put the solo parts on the child track.
Easy! I’ve added effects to just the solos without having to set up multiple automation lanes. Now I’m sure you could do the same in Reaper — because Reaper has very flexible routing — but only Podium has the hierarchical nesting thing that lets you actually see how your signal is being routed through the project. I think this feature of Podium has a lot of possibilities, but because it’s not a feature that other DAWs have, it kind of gets overlooked.
Now imagine the possibilities when you combine those group tracks and hierarchies with Podium’s offline render bouncing. This is what makes me think Podium would be an excellent DAW for doing very large projects, with oodles of effects, VST instruments, and audio tracks. You could nest the whole lot in groups of tracks, and then groups of groups. You can then bounce groups to create sub-mixes, all the way up the hierarchy, so you need never run out of memory or processing power during the project. You could do projects with hundreds of tracks this way.
So, in short, I don’t feel like I’m the least bit limited by Podium. I don’t think I’ve even begun to exhaust its possibilities.
Trancit@kim_otcj wrote:
Say I’ve got a guitar part that I’ve set up with an effects stack — an EQ curve, a compressor, a send to a reverb bus, and so on. But for the solo parts I want to add a univibe plugin, an extra distortion, and a second aux bus set up with a delay plugin. I don’t want that to be a separate effects stack, I want that stuff added on top of the first lot of effects. Well, in Podium I can convert the guitar track to a group and add a child track, on which I put that second set of effects. Then I’d just slice up the guitar soundclip and put the solo parts on the child track.
Easy! I’ve added effects to just the solos without having to set up multiple automation lanes. Now I’m sure you could do the same in Reaper — because Reaper has very flexible routing — but only Podium has the hierarchical nesting thing that lets you actually see how your signal is being routed through the project. I think this feature of Podium has a lot of possibilities, but because it’s not a feature that other DAWs have, it kind of gets overlooked.
No they didn´t overlook that, that made it far easier…
In Reaper just cut the audio, where you want to put a seperate effect on and use the effect directly on and only for this clip…
No need to create seperate tracks, grouping, child tracks and so on…
It takes a minute in Podium… it takes five seconds in Reaper…
And about visibilty…
I don´t think it´s better for a general overview to have the needs of more and more tracks instead of simply renaming a single clip to know, what happens there…
Samplitude i.e. offers this clip based working since ages…
kim_otcjThat was just one example. I’m sure there are plenty of ways to exploit the nested group thing.
In a way, it’s kind of like object oriented programming in a DAW, complete with inheritance.
kingtubby@The Telenator wrote:
Sorry I didn’t respond in the short grunts and phrases that is more common on the internet today. I realise how painful it is to have to use your brain and read something. I suggest if you can’t cope with it there are lots of cartoons and such on the net that will entertain you without having to invest so much as one brain cell.
Well done. Four lines is an improvement.
To quote George Burns:
“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.”
Brevity, dear boy, brevity…