Sequencing: Atari ST Cubase 2.0 :)
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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