The Atari STe is mono chrome in 640×480 max res, 8mhz, yes, 8mhz motorola 68000 processor, with 720k floppy drive and no hard drive, external mouse and monitor, a space hog. Doesn’t make noise though. Cubase 2.0 is a dream. If you don’t have a lot of gear daisy chained this is a great sequencer. It’s tight, records midi in very well, it’s midi only. The timing is super tight with drums, if you put the drums on midi channel 1 and bass on midi 2, and put the hardware for the drums and bass 1 and 2 on the midi out chain, the drums and bass will be super tight. You can throw 170 bpm 32nd and 64th notes at it and doesn’t choke. It’s amazing. If you are doing aggressive electronic, high temp, or glitchy stuff with hardware, these are the best sequencers. No PC or modern MAC can match it.

I got this Atari STE off ebay for 160 plus shipping, so around 200 bucks. It’s a 4 mb expanded version. I had to buy a cable off ebay from the UK to let me use a standard vga flat screen monitor that does 640×480 mono. That cable was about 30 bucks plus shipping. I looked and looked for an Atari ST of any kind with cubase with midex output expander to give me more midi outs. I seem to be able to find Notator with Unitor more often on EBAY, but no matter how hard i have tried to use it, I hate notator, I hate the interface. I prefer cubase in every way. When a midex does pop up for the atari, it is always in europe :(. I have not tested the midi with a unitor or midiex on the atari st. So I am not sure it is as tight. One of the things that really matters when you have a lot of gear is having more than one midi out. Buy any more than 4 outs is pushing it, 5 to 8 midi outs on the 8 midi out boxes usually have sloppy timing. The first 4 are solid midi timing wise. It is not good to choke up one midi out with tons of notes, this will screw up your drums and bass timing. The midex on the atari would be good because its 4 total outs i think. I have not tested them so I am not sure.

My midi timing test with cubase 2.0 yielded 2ms max and 1ms average with my high hat test at 16th notes. So this is as tight as the ASQ-10, and a Little Tighter than Cubase 2.8 with a serial interface on the high hat 16th note test. Cubase 2.8 seems to have quite a few more options than 2.0. 2.0 is really stripped down compared to 2.8. Who cares though because the timing and recording is so damn good. This thing records me playing drums better than cubase 2.8 on the PC, but just a little bit. Still, the ASQ-10 is better than both at recording. One thing that I prefer on my ASQ10 for sure is the ability in loop mode to delete the keys played in to the recorded out, with out deleting anything else when recording in loop mode. Like if i record the bass kick, snare and high hats, and i want to change the snare, i hold erase and then hold do the key or pad for the snare i want to delete, and it only deletes the snare. This is so cool. On Cubase, you hit the B key while in record loop, and it deletes everything since you hit record and starts over with out having to stop and delete it manually. This is great, and was lacking on the new cubase SX and beyond, but I prefer the ASQ10 way of deleting while in real time record loop mode. Although there is no way on the asq10 to delete all unless you hold down all the keys you played. Cubase 2.0 has a phrase synth, and midi FX like echo. I never used them though. I prefer to just write my own arps and phrases. If you like to run outboard gear, and only have like 3 synths. This is all you need. If you run hardware and have 8 to 10 synths, you need something with more outputs, either a midex for the atari ST (which I cannot find), or an ASQ10, OR Cubase or Logic on an older windows 95 setup with a serial interface. For slim downed gear set ups, Atari ST is perfect. Records great, and is tight as hell on playback. I Give this a 10 out 10 if it meets your needs.

Cubase 2.8 with serial on win 98 is tight(you have to put the comptuer in 256 colors, and tweak the os a little), but not this tight. Atari is slightly tighter than the ASQ10, but by a hair. These three sequencers kick the crap out of any modern software on the market today. So if you want tight timing on your hardware like I do. This is the only solution.

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Now I have a hard choice to make. So I bought an atari STE, a Dell Pentium 2 laptop with windows 98, and an ASQ10. I used Cubase 2.8 on fun with knives and remember it being tight. I remember decypher having fast arpeggios that sound tight. I remember moments of that lp being really tight. This is why it sold well, this is why it got the club play, it was the midi I am sure of it. I used cubase 2.8 with a pentium 1 processor first. Even on the 486 dx 66 mhz, and it was tight. I used a motu micro express that had a printer port interface that was serial. I tweaked windows 98 for optimum performance. This is the midi only version of this application back then. Using this again brought back memories, it’s just like the atari version I used way back in the day. Has so much more midi control and features than any modern sequencer you can buy for the MAC and PC. Was it tight? Does it deliver like I remember it?

I swore to hate microsoft to the end of time. Now that I have this old laptop that I bought off ebay for 50 dollars plus shipping I am having fond memories, it is all coming back to me, all the old games I played when I first got my pc back in the day, like magic carpet, fall out, adventure games like space quest and leisure suit larry, doom, quake, what fond memories. A lot of the games then ran in dos and were a pain in the ass to set up your autoexec.bat and config.sys files. Still I remember how much I loved my PC back in the day. Those were the days of BBS systems(personal computers in homes set up to accept modem calls, with a database of file downloads, message boards and online text networked games, a totally different time in computer history that most young people know nothing about), the internet was a baby then. Piracy was not the big issue it is today then. I realize what a magical time it was then to own a PC. PCs were more of a pain in the ass back then, but the rewards were very high.

So did this deliver on my new set up, my p2 dell laptop with amt8 via serial port set to max baud, no flow control, with a tweaked windows 98? IN SPADES! OMG it is close to how the atari was but I have 8 ins and outs instead. My new test with this set up on this pc was 3MS max 2MS average of midi jitter(my 16th note test of hi hats or bass line, mono). I am so damn happy. I have a hard drive, usb memory sticks, cd, self contained unit with display and mouse. I have p2 233mhz processor, 80mb of memory, 2 gb hard drive, and 13 inch display and 800×600 resolution.

Does Cubase 2.8 record what I play in accurately? YES, close to how the atari does. Doesn’t drop notes, and is really manageable. I think the ASQ10 is a little better though. The asq10 only has 2ms of jitter max on my test. So it is a tad bit tighter and a lot harder to use. In some ways I do prefer the asq10, it has the swing. Cubase 2.8 isn’t as funky. It’s still really musical though. I am now leaning towards Cubase 2.8 on this laptop. The interface is just so much better. So many edit modes, List(like grid), Score, Piano roll and a ton of midi things that other seqs don’t have. One thing though, notator on the Atari ST is like 1MS of jitter on this test. It is the tightest seq ever. Don’t believe me, go listen to the “virus ep” by front line assembly, or caustic grip. That is all done on notator and it is tight as hell.

So what happened? I remember it well, it was on TTG, I upgraded to cubase vst 5, this was when they introduced “AUDIO” into the application. This is when cubase started to suck, not record midi right and have really sloppy timing. It got even worse when they release Cubase SX. This is when usb took over, and they stripped most of the midi functions out of the application, it was more like another program than cubase at this point and basically remains the same to this day. It doesn’t record midi right, especially with USB midi interfaces and controllers, its a joke. The combination of windows XP and its background services(much of that didn’t exist in win 98) really made midi timing even worse on top of USB. USB writes and reads in bursts, not a steady stream like serial or DMA or pci does. Still, I even bought an rme fireface 800, and hdsp9652 and used the midi on that, and it was still sloppy, so it was not just USB. It was windows, and OSX that have so many background tasks running in the os, that midi is thrown to the dogs. This has ruined my interest in making electronic music over the last few years, because I could never get my hardware to sound right with the sloppy midi on playback and record. Seriously, making aggressive music with lousy timing does not work. In speed metal it is timing and speed that makes it so mean, its the same for industrial to the 9th degree, without real hardware and good timing, the aggression is lost. You can hear that in the last 3 VAC records. I bitched and moaned so hard on the cubase forums, and so many other echo’d my girpes and showed the midi to be faulty as I did. On cubase sx, it was 5 to 10 ms on the best days, on the worst sometimes up to 20 to 32 ms of jitter, horrid. If you put a big system load on modern pcs, get tons of audio running, tons of midi, tons of plugin fx, and plug in instruments, the external midi timing goes to hell, and it records midi in really bad. If you think I am crazy or the only one who freaks out about midi timing, just look up what BT and Vince Clark have to say about MIDI on google.

Most people think they suck at playing when they write with logic and cubase and all the modern daws of today. I think if they got this version of cubase, or an ASQ10, or and atari, they would see the difference and understand what a lot of people like me are complaining about. Timing is crucial in music. These jack of all trade and master of none music applications fall short on sound quality, external midi timing, and midi recording. I am over expecting software to do it all. These do it all devices suck. The dedicated devices and software, were they do one thing, and do it really well tend to sound the best and record and sequence the best. When we were making lust for blood, we constantly had to edit our midi recordings, it would stop the flow of work, this is how it was on hex angel, this is how it was on the art of breaking apart. It made things take longer, it made us uninspired after a while. Always having to fix the poorly recorded midi. NO MORE. I refuse to put up with it ever again. I went to the mac thinking it would be better with logic, and it was, until i started recording the audio, and the tracks would not line up and everything was slightly out of sync. My conclusion, pre audio cubase is way better at midi than new cubase. Win95, win98 with cubase 2.8 is great for live midi seq and composing. I cannot say that about anything I have used since on modern computers. Oh, and I think this is what Astral projection, the super tight trance band uses still. I give this a 10 out of 10.

I loved you so much. I will miss you every day of my life.

Zyden, rest in peace, you were the best dog in the world.

2005 – 2010.

To young to die. I wish i could of moved long ago, these neighbors are bastards. He was given decon or something maybe, he acted and bled out like it. But, maybe he had a genetic disorder too the doctors told me. I cannot believe he could go from fine to horrid in 3 days. The transfusion and vit k shots didn’t work, he started bleeding out last night. Nothing could be done, he was pissing blood and shitting blood. I don’t feel like doing anything. I miss him so much. I planned on running with him this summer like we used to when I was raw. He was my walk running buddie. I really miss him. He was so cute. He made me happy.

My heart is crushed. I’m devastated.

My poor dog, is so ill, i just had to spend money on a blood transfusion. 1500 for un insured dog care :( i don’t know what it is, his blood is only 6%, hardly any Tcells, like he was poisoned.

But at this level, the doctors are saying it might be bone cancer. he is only 5, i cried my heart out today, one of the worst days of my life. i am so sad its breaking my heart. I don’t know how i can afford to feed him a barf diet. a raw dog diet. its so expensive, i am hoping we can heal him, but i doubt it, i’m so scared of losing him, this is the worst i have felt in my life i think. I’ve lost most of my friends over the last 4 years, and now this, i am so morbid right now. He got sick out of no where. falling down, pissing himself, crying.. i am so pissed. I hate to sound so emo, but honestly. My heart is breaking. We get him back tomorrow, but who knows how long the blood transfusion will hold for. I am going to try raw food on him, get him to drink veggie juice if possible. I don’t have the money. it sucks. if you want to donate and help out, please do it on my web page on the donate button.

Please help zyden. He is such a good dog. He wants to live, when I took him to the vet, even though he is so sick, he acted just like we were going on a walk, i walk him all the time. One of the best moments in my life is at 2am on a summer night walking him in the park by my house while i was listening to the b52s on my raw vegan high, it is one of my most warmest memories of all time for me. When the doctors explained to me how sick he was, my jaw dropped, i thought i took good care of him feeding him healthier food. Maybe its his genetics. I didn’t feed him raw though. :( They said that other dogs in his shape come in could not even move. He is standing, walking, and acting like he wants to live. I’m so sad.