[LAU] First impressions of MusE 2.0

I've just posted my first impressions of MusE 2.0 here:

http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10012

I thought most everyone on this list would be interested and not
everyone reads or knows about that forum so..

First impressions of MusE 2.0

MusE, dating back to '99, is one of the most mature MIDI sequencers
available for Linux. After over a decades development we have seen it
evolve into a fully featured DAW and the project finally made its big
2.0 release at the end of June although you're unlikely to have heard
anything about it unless you monitor the Linux audio scene closely.
This is a shame as with version 2 MusE deserves a lot more attention
than it seems to be getting so I'm hoping to rectify that slightly by
explaining why I think this is the dark horse of FLOSS DAWs and one of
the most promising Linux audio projects going.

I'm a subscriber of the Linux Audio mailing lists so I heard about
MusE 2.0 as soon as it was released and I promised the project member
who made the announcement, Robert Jonsson, I'd be taking a look soon.
Sadly it took over 2 months before my curiosity got the better of me
and I regretted waiting so long after trying it. Muse 2's feature set
sounded good and it looked promising in the screenshots but there were
two main reasons I didn't hurry to try the new release. The first and
main reason was that I had tried previous 1.x releases of MusE and I
had been underwhelmed. I wasn't a fan of Rosegarden's QT 3 era UI but
Muse 1 made RG look nice. Rosegarden is also partly to blame for me
taking my time in trying the new MusE. Rosegarden, the other
long-standing Linux/Qt FLOSS sequencer, predates MusE and as I've just
mentioned I'm not so keen on its GUI which is way too cluttered for my
liking so when they made the transition from QT3 to QT4 a few years
ago I had my fingers crossed it would bring with it a redesigned and
more slender UI but it was not to be. Thankfully MusE's transition
from QT3 to QT4 was much more fruitful as I now feel comfortable with
the MusE GUI which strikes a good balance between having no icons on
screen and the full-on icon overload of Rosegarden.

If you can live with its interface Rosegarden is a powerful and
full-featured sequencer with most of the features familiar to users of
commercial sequencers and in this respect MusE fares just as well if
not better as it does so without the clutter. I really appreciate that
Muse lets you draw lines within its MIDI controller lanes to quickly
define fades as this is a feature I have long wanted in qtractor and
is also missing from Rosegarden. qtractor lets you draw MIDI
automation curves but these are treated separately from any MIDI
controller data you record. You can draw 'freehand' on qtractor MIDI
controller tracks and it has a resize tool for MIDI events that lets
you select a range of controllers then enter its start and end values
but this isn't as intuitive or as easy as being able to draw straight
lines to define controllers like in MusE. In this respect its only
equal in Linux land right now is Ardour 3.

My Linux sequencer of choice at the moment is qtractor but I was keen
to see the state of MusE because, as I highlighted in my recent
qtractor review on KVR, qtractor lacks a couple of features I feel a
bit lost without. The worst of these for me is qtractors lack of
support for 'tempo ramps' as Rosegarden calls them or 'crescendos' as
they're referred to in MusE-speak. A3 also currently lacks the ability
to set gradual changes in tempo and this is a shame as they're quite
common. My other big irk with the current state of Rui's DAW is the
inability to copy automation but there is no such problem under MusE
or A3.

One of the new features in MusE 2 is a score editor, something
entirely absent from Ardour and qtractor although personally I'm not
concerned with having a score editor integrated into my DAW as I
rarely notate music. MusE's current support for musical score appears
basic and doesn't compare with Rosegarden's integrated score support.
FLOSS score creation is being handled very well by MusE's sister
project so I'm not sure why they bother to be honest as I can't see it
catching up to musescore unless the two merge.

Enough about MIDI, what about audio? Reading the Ardour forums and
having spent much time in its irc channel, I know that one of the most
frequent feature requests is integrated wave editing and I'm sure Rui
has had more than a few requests for such a feature in qtractor too so
I'd say one of the biggest selling points of MusE is that it would
seem to be the only Linux DAW to offer integrated audio editing. The
editor is basic but it has the most commonly used audio editing
features so chances are you won't have to use an external editor much,
which is something else MusE supports, should the internal editor not
cut it. At this point I'll mention that the only real bug I seem to
have found in MusE so far is the audio editor doesn't work for me
under 64 bit Deb Wheezy although it works fine under 32 bit Wheezy and
Robert says it works for him under 64 bit Kubuntu too.

I had trouble working out how to record audio into Muse at first as it
wasn't documented at the time but the docs have been updated to cover
this since I raised it as an issue. Just looking at this process,
compared to Ardour and qtractor Muse is the least user friendly when
trying to set up a track to record but once you know how its done its
not a prob and this was the only aspect of the program that had me
scratching my head. Otherwise I think MusE is the most user friendly
Linux DAW and I didn't have to inquire about or refer to the manual
for anything else. I was also disappointed that MusE 2.0 doesn't
currently support the creation of mono audio tracks although you can
change stereo to mono tracks and creating mono tracks is to be added
soon. MusE allows the easy drawing of automation curves for gain, pan
and LADSPA FX and apart from the two slight probs I've mentioned, it
looks like I should enjoy working with MusE for audio as well as MIDI.

Observant readers will have noticed that despite my praise for this
new MusE I said "My Linux sequencer of choice at the moment is
qtractor" because it supports native VST and LV2 plugins, it is more
stable and lightweight than A3 and it will likely remain my choice
until the big MusE showstopper gets resolved - plugin support. Like
Rosegarden, MusE currently only supports LADSPA and DSSI plugins which
is fine IF you don't use MIDI, you only use external MIDI sound
modules OR you are happy with MusE's integrated synths / the very few
DSSI plugins available / LASH sessions. You could use Windows VST
plugins via DSSI-VST with it but that isn't an option I'm interested
in nor would anyone else who is concerned about plugin performance and
stability care much for DSSI-VST.

Although native VST and LV2 support is planned, no-one is working on
it yet which is a great shame as without such support this very
promising DAW isn't usable for me yet. When MusE does gain such
functionality I think there's a very real chance it will become my DAW
of choice and I highly recommend others give it a go especially if
you're looking for a Linux sequencer for MIDI hardware.
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Received on Tue Sep 11 00:15:03 2012