Metro 6 Released And Online, Why don't they *tell* us these things... Options

[Levon River]

Topic title sez it all:

http://www.sagantech.biz/acart/agora.cgi

Click on "Software."

And they din't even wait for that damn NAMM, thank-you-ma'am.

There's a non-G4 version, a G4 version (both at $319.99 [Why don't people just charge $320.00 and save the lives of some 9s?]), plus a surprise "SE" version for just $59.99.

Get 'em while they're hot.

This post has been edited by Levon River: Fri 10 Jan 2003, 00:27

[Levon River]

My, my, it's quiet in this thread. So I decided to make some noise.

Pursuant to that, I got Metro 6, and want to make the brief intitial observation that anyone selling this little beast short has probably tried to read the manual.

Okay, I'll 'splain: Metro is simply a weapons-grade powerhouse of audio and MIDI creation tools and capability. It supports every flavor and mutation of VST (OS 9.x and OS X versions). It supports Audio Units, Soundfonts, and Downloadable Sounds (DLS). It provides extremely powerful and complete ways of importing, inputting, and manipulating MIDI. It has useful bells and whistles like tempo mangling (my term), where you can virtually "move" bars around the hits of an audio file, e.g., and have MIDI parts follow like duckys in a row behind the tempo changes it creates. It gives you 64 tracks of audio, with as many audio effects as yer processor and memory can shoulder, and intelligent bus-routing options so you can set up, e.g. a single reverb and put it on various audio tracks with sends and returns (to conserve processor use).

In short, it's a MIDI-capable DAW, and has a full complement of what you'd expect.

So *why* have I seen and heard this thing described as an "entry-level" sequencer or DAW, I wondered. Because *that* is about as 180-degrees far from the fact as you can get. And I scratched me head and wondered some more. And as I'm exploring it, I'm beginning to believe that people who have said that about it simply couldn't get past first base with the program, and that was just their way of explaining it away. And I'm also beginning to suspect that the "documentation" might be the primary culprit and villain. That, coupled with the fact that Metro dances a bit to a different drummer: it doesn't necessarily address certain things in exactly the same and utterly predictable manner that some other DAWs do. So that adds its own level of learning curve.

But some sections of that on-line manual!

Man, that is a labyrinth. That is a house o' mirrors. That is Wonderland with a Mobius twist. At least parts of it, but some of those are important parts. Those parts, at least, look like the documentation must be something of a Frankenstein monster cobbled together by various people/companies as Metro evolved from MIDI-only sequencer to DAW+MIDI, then from OS 9.x to OS X. If "too many cooks spoil the stew," there must have been a marching army of manic cooks working on that recipe overtime. Hoooooowee!

All that's a bit compounded by the fact that aspects of Metro aren't exactly in the mode of one of those "intuit it all" programs; access to necessary features/setting/capabilities ain't necessarily apparent right on its face where you can poke at it. Some things you'd expect to be in Preferences are in a "Setup" menu, and some things you'd expect to be in "Setup" are in a "Special" menu, and... Well, you get the idea. So the manual is needed to understand even some of the basic set-up steps, but a trip to parts of that manual... . Well, a smoking caterpillar starts to sound downright logical.

This ain't intended to put anybody off, even a beginner, and in fact, quite the opposite. Because right now I don't see any other DAW+sequencer anywhere on the OS X market that offers anything *near* Metro's power and functionality and flexibility at anywhere *near* its price-point. That's called "value" in these parts, and I think it's a damn good value. But I also ain't gonna' lie and say it's all easy as pie, fall-down-easy, 'cause to me it ain't. There are likely going to be a few hurdles to jump over, and, unfortunately, some of those hurdles--to me, mind you--appear to be in the early going, in the fundamentals, in the basic set-up to get the motor cranked.

Once you do, though, it sure seems to hum and purr, and in my brief and limited usage of and familiarity with it, it has got some *horses* straining under the hood, waiting to be unleashed. So somebody ought to give any "entry level" urban myth a decent burial.

There's also the "SE" version for only about 50 bucks U.S., which is an awfully low-risk way to get yer feet wet and see how it works into your own line-up, especially if your needs are more MIDI-oriented and less audio-intense.

There are my initial thoughts on it. Love to hear yours.

This post has been edited by Levon River: Wed 15 Jan 2003, 18:11