Sound Sensations!/sound_sensations.iso/miditool/pro_cab/promidi.cab

Text File | 1987-03-27 | 9KB | 169 lines

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
          [phone]


   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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