Sequencing: Atari ST Cubase 2.0 :) |

Sequencing: Atari ST Cubase 2.0 :)

March 8th, 2010 by Hexfix93

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.

I am now adding new articles weekly on the media blog, Reviews, and shining the spotlight on things I like. VAC writes all of these reviews and articles..
NEW ARTICLES: Games: PS3: Heavy Rain. Hexfix93’s take. , Music: Kmfdm: Extort. Hexfix93’s take. , Model: Precious Little …….

Click the image below to buy the new VAC LP

Add me on Facebook, Click Here.

[?]

14 Responses

deadzombie Says:
March 8th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
nice gear.
so i assume this type of gear from atari isn’t produced anymore but only in software form on pc? keep up the great work!
FIN Says:
March 8th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
It’s a shame something that old, wipes its contemporaries.
kungfupanda255 Says:
March 9th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Your reviews are interesting and informative!!.. look forward to it every week. Curious.. how are you testing the midi timing and getting the latency numbers?
Hexfix93 Says:
March 9th, 2010 at 12:50 am
it’s easy.

seq something at 16ths, play it out to something like a short hat sound, record it into a wav file, load it up in wavlab or something, truncate to the first sample, then write down the numbers where the sounds start, then subtract from each, and write down the number, they should be consistent, on mine, i get any where from 124 to 126, so that is 2 ms.
COOLOUTMUSIC.COM Says:
March 10th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
It’s easy to understand why the Atari has such great midi timing. Midi hardware is built-in directly on the computer as part of the OS, not added in as an expansion through some type of bus. It basically functions as a hardware sequencer. Be glad you found a working STe. Mine always gets errors from old age. Luckily my sequencer (Hybrid Arts) didn’t use any form of dongle, so I was able to use emulation software to fire up all my old Atari sequences in XP. I wonder how the timing compares to the real thing. Also, what about other hardware sequencers like the Alesis MMT8, Roland, or Yamahas?
Vladtra Says:
March 12th, 2010 at 12:42 am
Howdy

I wrote out a music sheet, the other day. And man I was putting in 16th, and writing the next sixteenth, but, didn’t know you tune the landscape in music form, and write like Diary of dreams. BTW, why did you mix your music reviews, with a games section. You should make a movie, and music site mixed. Make a seperate game site. Anyways every 16th, and a half ,I was writing out 24 notes, and within those contain the infinite, infastructure, of this wild beast, strung up in fours. I even wrote down the 3, 6, 12, 40, the 20’s don’t exist high note pattern. Anyways back to this hairy beast. It was made up of pure division I don’t know maybe that’s what I liked about it. But how do you write live music in these things. There’s infinite back, and forth, and long notes. do you got them all. Anyways I’m working on film production now. I would love to produce music soon like you do in your studio and movies the same way. Anyways I’m living, in a very remote location now, I am very relaxed, I even listen to the soundscapes channel now. More remote than you. So how you go about your sixteenths is cool, I just don’t know, what kind of music you want to make. I want you to tighten and wravel this bungy cord and submerge it in water. I suggest trance. There is also male and female vocal trance it just so happens your one of my favorite musicians and we go way back. Get a female vocalist in there and go in for the dance. i want to teach my newborn daughter music and knowledge. Anyways I expect much from you. and know you from the inside out. You have to learn to not be surprised. And I’m guessing your probably part native american just guessing. Also try to get into being a director of film and do real life djing. trust me it catches women.
msepsis Says:
March 12th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
interesting article.. with the cubase 2/2.8 comparisons drawn I felt like i stepped into a time machine here.. but really do you find that much benefit considering you’re stuck at 640×480?

I have to say gimmie renoise w/ even just one 1920×1280 display on AV Linux ANY day.. yes i’m mostly kb driven here but those few hundred thousand pixels tend to relentlessly add to my efficiency.. may be subjective?

still.. I do recall my hayday with fasttracker 2, a pentium-120, sb16, RAP-10 and JP 8080 (i see yours!!). Of course the RAP didn’t play well with FT but it sure did in cakewalk. never did midi tracking with amiga but even protracker had killer timing. kinda hard not to with only four tracks of mono 8 bit samples :)

ahhh fun with old toys.. can’t deny it.
magnus Says:
April 17th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Why did you write that one should put drums on midi channel 1 and bass on channel 2? Is there some kind of priority between the midi channels (when two notes fall on the same beat)? I’ve usually put drums on midi channel 10 because it seems to be a default on many sound modules. Should I change to midi channel 1?
Hexfix93 Says:
April 19th, 2010 at 12:57 am
1 is better for drums on the atari, this is what i read years ago in music magazines.
mutron3k Says:
July 12th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
I’m trying to source a video cable to use a vga flat screen with my S-760 (and S-770). What eBay search keywords? And what is that vga flat screen you have?
magnus Says:
August 21st, 2010 at 11:13 pm
This Midex+ is for sale in Sweden. Maybe he can send it to you:

http://www.abc-annons.se/Steinberg-Midex-for-ATARI_196489.htm
magnus Says:
August 22nd, 2010 at 8:29 am
800 swedish crowns is about $108 btw
Rab Says:
August 26th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Hey, is an atari STE required for running cubase or would an stock ST be ok?

cheers!
Credo Says:
August 30th, 2010 at 1:26 am
Cubase runs fine on the regular ST. Best with at least 1meg of memory…

Hexfix, if recording resolution is very important to you, Creator/Notator is probably far tighter than Cubase. SL pretty much replaces much of the buggy TOS stuff to max out the machine’s capabilities for midi. The pattern style user interface takes a bit to get used to…but it’s pretty cool over all, and was done that way to avoid using GEM, which slows things down a bit.

Hexfix, I have some sort of Steinberg midi expander that goes on the parallel/printer port that I’d part with. Maybe it’s an SMP2? It’s a plastic box with something like 2ins and 4 outs.

I forget what it’s called…
This is NOT the full SMP24 that has SMPTE controller and also works as an independent 2/4 mini patch bay. (I have one of those too but it’s not for trade/sale).

I’m looking for Cubase 2.8 for PC and SMP24 drivers for Win95/98.