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- Review of SDA's "ProMidi" hardware/software MIDI system for IBM PCs and
- compatibles.
-
- Review period: February 15 -- March 15, 1987
-
- Reviewer: Chris A. Bosshardt
- Sysop, Washington MIDI Users' Group BBS
- (301) 881-6323
-
-
- I received an evaluation copy of ProMidi to test for a month.
- Here are what I see as the system's primary claims to fame:
-
- 1) It stores tracks on disk as they're being recorded, rather than
- demanding that they fit into available RAM (all other IBM-oriented
- sequencing programs I've seen require that your entire song fit into
- RAM. This means that there is a limit--albeit a large one--to the
- number and length of tracks you can have in each song). Theoretically,
- storing and reading them directly to/from disk means that your song size
- is limited only by the amount of disk space you have...a potential boon
- to hard-disk owners.
-
- 2) It can merge tracks and/or split them by pitch range.
-
- 3) It claims to be able to handle a much higher density of MIDI information
- through its proprietary MIDI interface card. I did not test this claim
- (32nd-note chords at a tempo of 200 aren't my musical style).
-
- 4) It can do various automatic changes to your MIDI track, such as raise
- the volume of all notes between a certain pitch range that have a volume
- setting of nn through nn.
-
- These are some substantial benefits...benefits that weren't on any other
- IBM-oriented sequencer I knew of at the time of the review (features 2 and
- 4 have since appeared on at least one other IBM sequencer: Voyetra's
- Sequencer Plus Mark III).
-
-
- USER INTERFACE
- The screens and commands a sequencer uses has a strong effect on how
- comfortable the program is to use...and everyone has their own taste.
- Other sequencers range from no on-screen assistance at all and no help
- system (Jim Miller's Personal Composer) to an on-screen list of function
- keys (Roland's MPS) to a Lotus-like mnemonic menu system and a full help
- system that produces screens related to your position in the program
- anytime you press a pre-defined "Help" key (Voyetra's Sequencer Plus).
- ProMidi fits in the middle of this range. It uses function keys for almost
- all of its commands, and those functions those keys perform are usually
- shown on the screen. The command performed by each key changes, however,
- as you move from, say, the recording screen to the note-editing screen (and
- there are several such screens, each with its own set of commands attached
- to those function keys. You can usually find the proper function key to do
- what you want, but memorizing the keystroke sequence required to produce a
- particular operation is likely to take more time than the mnemonic-based
- products such as Personal Composer and Sequencer Plus.
- In addition to the function keys, there are about three commands in the
- program which you get by pressing a letter related to the command. When
- this is the case, ProMidi only informs you about it on some screens...for
- instance, the command to exit from the program is not shown on any of its
- main screens.
- Personally, I do not like programs that use this function-key-shuffling
- approach as much as I do those that use mnemonic commands (such as "R" for
- Record, "F" for File, etc.) They take longer to learn, and if you happen
- to be a decent typist you might that taking your hands out of their main
- typing position over the keyboard to get a command from a function key is
- distracting. However, I am certainly willing to use such programs if
- their performance warrants it.
-
-
- PERFORMANCE
- ProMidi does, in fact, record and play back music sequences accurately.
- That should be considered a "given" for a sequencing program. Beyond that,
- I found numerous things that made the program more difficult to use than it
- needs to be.
-
- 1) You currently cannot access SideKick while in ProMidi. A ProMidi dealer
- told me that SDA's programmers "disabled SideKick compatibility" to keep
- users from screwing up their sequence recordings by going into SideKick
- while recording. In my view, being incompatible with this highly useful
- and VERY popular memory-resident program is ridiculous. Subtract 10
- points.
-
- 2) The program's step-editing is MUCH too exclusive in the notes that it
- shows...it's very difficult when looking at a note to get a sense
- of its relationship to the rest of the song.
-
- 3) The HELP screens are not well synchronized to the user's position in the
- program, and they contain numerous misspellings. (The lack of logical
- syncing to user's position is particularly true in the Playback screen.)
-
- 4) If you want to insert MIDI events (such as program changes, sustain
- pedal, etc.) into an existing song, you apparently must do it by getting
- into the MIDI-event screen and then typing in the MIDI event's
- HEXADECIMAL code! Since the MIDI protocol has standard codes for common
- things like program changes, the various pedals, etc., having to type in
- the "hex" value of the event you want to much more cumbersome than it
- needs to be. Quick, what's the MIDI hex value for a sustain-pedal-off?
- Do you want to have to keep track of that sort of thing when you're
- working with your music?
-
- 5) I never did find a way to remove sustain-pedal MIDI events from a track.
- If it's possible to remove these messages, the procedure certainly isn't
- well-documented in the manual. If removing such messages isn't
- possible, the program's usefulness as a musical tool is practically
- zero.
-
- 6) According to the vendor I received the evaluation copy from, there's
- supposed to be a MIDI dump utility somewhere in the program. I found no
- trace of such a utility in either the program itself or the
- documentation.
-
-
- ERROR HANDLING AND BUGS
- The above category, Performance, deals with the design of a program.
- This category, Error Handling and Bugs, deals with things that out-and-out
- don't work like the manual says they're supposed to. ProMidi has several
- items which fit into this category.
-
- 1) When I exited from ProMidi and immediately re-entered the program to
- play a song, I got the message "Midicard not operational" on the screen
- numerous times. When this happened, ProMidi would not play a song. I
- had to turn the computer off and back on again to clear the problem.
- This problem is not due to the ProMidi card having trouble getting along
- with a who-knows-how-compatible-it-really-is clone...I tested it on a
- true-blue IBM AT.
-
- 3) The program's step editor hung regularly when I used the keyboard's
- arrow keys to move around. This happened primarily when I held down an
- arrow key to move rapidly from note to note. When a computer's
- keystroke buffer is full, beeping at the user is an acceptable response
- on the part of the program...locking up completely is not. When this
- happened, the standard "Control-Alt-Delete" key sequence for rebooting
- had no effect...I had to turn the computer off.
-
- 2) When you edit a track, ProMidi has a built-in system for naming your
- edited versions sequentially: for instance, TRACK.V01, TRACK.V02, etc.
- I tried to step-edit a file named 022687.V03, and ProMidi refused to
- load the file from the disk. I tried this repeatedly, with the same
- results every time. When ProMidi refused to load the file, it did not
- give me an accurate error message explaining what the problem was...it
- said "NOT ENOUGH MEMORY TO STEP EDIT". Since I had successfully step-
- edited other files, and the file I was attempting to load was very
- small, the message made no sense at all. On a hunch, I renamed the file
- from 022687.V03 to TEST--and ProMidi loaded it without a complaint. In
- my view, there's something wrong with a program that won't edit files
- using the naming system the program itself provides.
-
- 3) ProMidi's manual claims that you can tell the program to record a series
- of keystrokes and then play them back automatically each time the
- program boots up (which is a useful feature, given that you can't save
- to disk configuration changes such as which MIDI channels have their
- MIDI Thru activated). According to the manual, this capability depends
- on the user issuing a ^K (Control-K) command. In several tries, I never
- got this feature to work. If it's actually in the program at all, it
- does not work in the manner described in the ProMidi manual.
-
- I reported to the dealer from whom I'd gotten the package the
- shortcomings I was experiencing, and a couple of days later I got a message
- on my answering machine from a person at SDA (Dan Cody). I returned his
- call twice, leaving messages for him each time because he wasn't available.
- Several days have passed, and I have yet to hear back from SDA.
-
- As I said at the beginning of this review, ProMidi offers some features
- that are very attractive. However, its over-abundance of inconveniences
- and bugs caused me to send the evaluation copy back (I had been considering
- purchasing it).
-
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