Topic: Review and suggestions by a proffessional musician

PODIUM , A review by a professional musician

I downloaded version 0.91 beta of podium and i
decided to review it and suggest some enchanchments.

The first thing i noticed was the size of the zip file.
It is the smallest zip among all sequencers i have tried.

The gui of PODIUM, although custom made, is very slow. (on
my 1GHz processor, matrox video adapter)

The environment of PODIUM is somehow complicated for the
novice user. The wizard is very helpfull at the first
minutes of work. PODIUM uses a complex mapping scheme
for the devices, the inputs and outputs, and the mixing.
This scheme becomes very powerfull as soon as you
understand it. 20 minutes after the installation i
managed to load a VST plugin, create an audio output
parent track and produce sound output.

The MME driver fails on my old ISA sound card.
ASIO multimedia driver works OK.

I used “Battery” VST plugin to test the host capabilities.
All the presets and programs of battery are accessible from
the track menu. What i did not manage to find was the
controllers (parameters). Podium showed to me only 2
controllers while there are more than 100 in battery.

Although PODIUM supports automation, you cannot edit the
automation parameters while ,at the same time, viewing the
piano roll. That of course is a drawback.

In piano roll view the name of the note (like C1,D1) is not
displayed at all. So you don’t know which octave you are on.

Other sequencers can switch the view of the piano keys to
a view with the names of the notes, even to a view with the
names of the samples which are loaded in battery.

The bounce tracks are something new to me and i think they will
be very helpfull as long as more new VST plugins consume the
proccessing power.

Apart from the criticism i have made to PODIUM, i would like
to describe some key characteristics of the next generation
sequencers which we (the professional musicians) would like
to see implemented.

1) scripting events.

Say i have just bought my new state of the art sampler that
supports 50 parameters and allows me to define exactly the
final sound. After hard work i managed to program 20 of those
parameters and make a transition between 2 notes that makes
me happy.

The transition could be saved as a script with its own parameters.
That down mapping allows me to program the specific transition
by altering its own few parameters, without wondering how in
the heck the sampler works. That would also could simplify
the vst plugins.

2) preproccesing sequences

Several tools like style enchancers need to be feed with the whole
data in a sequence in order to decide which style enchanchments they
will make. So what we need is preproccessing filters for the sequences
of notes and events (and controllers).

3) custom editing rolls

Say a new quitar plugin has been released. The plugin allows me,
instead of writing the notes in piano roll, to define the position of
the fingers on the quitar and which string is hit (on the time line)

So what we need is the ability to edit the midi data in custom ways.

I believe that a new generation lightweight VST host with these capabilities
would be a must.

Thanks for your attention,
proffessor