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[Web] New Digibooster Professional homepage is onlineANN.lu
Posted on 11-Jan-2004 18:08 GMT by Andreas Magerl36 comments
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Now is it so far. After a longer duration the new official homepage of DBPro is finally online. There you can find in future all informations, downloads, goodies ... around the Program. We would like to refer also again to the forum, where Useres can place their questions. A new demoversion of Digibooster Professional will be soon availble for AmigaOS and MorphOS.

DBPro is a so called tracker program. It´s possible to produce your own music by using samples.

http://www.digiboosterpro.de

New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 1 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by hooligan/dcs on 11-Jan-2004 17:26 GMT
Excellent. Cant wait to test this one.. never been a fan of Digibooster but I guess now it's time to start :)
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 2 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by takemehomegrandma on 11-Jan-2004 18:06 GMT
Very good! I'm looking forward to the new demoversion! :-)
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 3 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Repoman on 11-Jan-2004 19:26 GMT
Very good work! I´ll check it out!
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 4 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by spotUP on 11-Jan-2004 21:21 GMT
coudln't find much new stuff on the homepage, anyway, what new feats will there be in the new version? i was SO close to buying it, but then development stopped... good to see that it has started again! i might buy it, if it turns out nice enough!
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 5 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 11-Jan-2004 21:52 GMT
I'd like to see the GUI freshened up a little... That would be nice!
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 6 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Neko on 12-Jan-2004 04:40 GMT
You're right: DigiBooster is very much a "so-called" tracker program.

Someone should take a leaf from Apple's book, with GarageBand.

Sure, they are using a basic ProTracker-style music program, but with a few
simple minor differences that professional applications have managed to exploit
for years, over the fixed-size skinned-up ProTracker apps we are used to..

FACT: screens are wider than they are high, especially so now we're getting
16:9 televisions, monitors and tablet displays. Why does the entire crop of
Amiga trackers, then, display the channel data vertically?

FACT: A bunch of numbers in a list are only good for programmers who are able
to memorise what "00 G-5 10 0010101" means in a list. Why aren't we using real
BPM markers or

FACT: having all your buttons taking up 70% of the screen real-estate is a bad
idea, when people want to create music, not find actions to click.

Just a few thoughts. For all the stupid prettiness of GarageBand, it certainly
did fill a hole in the market with very little innovation and effort, merely by
being damned easy to use, and accessible to ordinary people (i.e. people who
grew up not knowing how to hack the SID chip to beep in odd ways)

=Neko=
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 7 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by hooligan/dcs on 12-Jan-2004 05:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
You mean we should use horizontally scrolling notes? I'd never touch one :)
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 8 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by JoannaK on 12-Jan-2004 05:25 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
What I have been using on PC is Orion Platinum.
http://www.synapse-audio.com

It's also block structure for music making, but it has a lot more adwanced GUI and it has a lot features no tracker had.. Soft-synths, Virtual mixer with good EQ.s, high qualilty effects, graphical song composition, etc etc.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 9 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by gavin on 12-Jan-2004 11:14 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
do you remember a music program called quartet on the amiga.
it was horizontally scrolling, and was easy to use and great
fun i remember. is that the kind of music program you'd prefer?
I've never seen the Apple one you mention.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 10 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Robert on 12-Jan-2004 11:38 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
@Matt:

"FACT: screens are wider than they are high, especially so now we're getting
16:9 televisions, monitors and tablet displays. Why does the entire crop of
Amiga trackers, then, display the channel data vertically? "

I use OctaMED, PSA, Bars & Pipes and MusicX and the vertical scrolling in OctaMED works well for me.
Often, lots of trcks are used. It's easier to see what's playing at the same time, if it's all on screen at once.
With wider screens, vertical scrolling will work even better.

Also, I haven't used digibooster but found OctaMED, in the main, extremely intuitive, although
it was quite daunting at first. An hour or two playing around and you're away.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 11 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Olegil on 12-Jan-2004 12:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Robert):
I've played around with Digibooster in the past, and I can't really say there's anything wrong with the GUI.

No, it's not the most cluebie friendly there is, but why does all applications have to be cluebie friendly? A lot more important to ME is how good it is for ME to use it. I'm not entirely certain a cluebie-friendly program would be good for me ;-)

It basically boils down to this:
Was it created because the programmer needed a better program, or was it created because the programmer needed more money?
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 12 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by graviel slate on 12-Jan-2004 12:40 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
I've seen one screenshot of this Garage Band, and it looks like a Sonic Foundry acid clone. acid lets you arrange prerecorded drum loops and guitar riffs, and poof, instant uninteresting song! Why else would Apple brag about their "Apple Loops" library...

Me, I'd rather use Protracker...

There was at least one module editor that worked horizontally. "ModEdit" by Norman Lin, but like most every PC tracker before Screamtracker 3, it extremely sucked.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 13 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by graviel slate on 12-Jan-2004 12:50 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
Funny, most of the people that were most successful at using the programs derived from or inspired by Obarski's Soundtracker or its derivatives were not programmers...
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 14 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Olegil on 12-Jan-2004 13:32 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (graviel slate):
But neither were they cluebies. They knew how to take an unknown application and get to know it.

Today it seems people are afraid of using something new, which is interesting, since one would think the human ability to adapt would be more evolved by now. It's looking more and more like the more technology progresses, human adaptation abilities go down the drain.

I woke up in a strange bedroom, and couldn't get up, because I didn't know how to work that type of slipper. We'll talk again when you're 50 years old, see how much you understand then. Etc.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 15 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Olegil on 12-Jan-2004 13:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Olegil):
Oh, and I have one more:

You know that Readers Digest had articles about "how to build an AM radio" back in the fifties?

Seriously, the human race is going down the drain, bigtime...
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 16 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by spot on 12-Jan-2004 13:43 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
it is quite clear that you dont want to use digibooster.
digibooster is supposed to be like it is, if you want another
type of music app, why not have a look at the alternatives?
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 17 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by breed on 12-Jan-2004 14:03 GMT
Nice to see the new web page!

Dont change the GUI :)
I love this old school GUI, Trackers must keep their style!

:)
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 18 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by graviel slate on 12-Jan-2004 15:01 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (graviel slate):
On the other hand, http://kebby.org/articles/fr08snd1.html may have some relevance to this discussion.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 19 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by T1k on 12-Jan-2004 15:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
Take cover ;]

"Why does the entire crop of Amiga trackers, then, display the channel data vertically?"

When looking into space, if enough light bends in certain directions astronomers are pretty sure there's some sort of massive body around, forcing the light to bend. Hint taken?

"FACT: A bunch of numbers in a list are only good for programmers who are able
to memorise what "00 G-5 10 0010101" means in a list. Why aren't we using real
BPM markers or"

.....or? Or what? :)
About the "numbers in a list" have you ever even bothered to try to learn it? I don't think so. And if you did try but didn't get it, maybe you should get one of these. Do not mix up facts with your own opinion.

"FACT: having all your buttons taking up 70% of the screen real-estate is a bad
idea, when people want to create music, not find actions to click."

Do NOT mix up facts with your own opinion!

"Just a few thoughts." Oh...I thought you called them FACTS?


DigiBooster is a fine piece of software (which I am a proud owner of a license to :) and I will follow this closely.
Thank you Piasta bros ;]
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 20 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Kolbjørn Barmen on 12-Jan-2004 16:43 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Neko):
Wider displays - more channels.Most 17" TFT-monitors are 5:4 btw. That is, almost square.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 21 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Clownface on 12-Jan-2004 18:28 GMT
As long as the authors don't write any software for OS4 and expect to make money on that platform. The only platform to code for now is the Pegasos!

If you write trackers for OS4, the OS4 clowns expect you to pay them $20 or more to have the priviledge of you writing software for them! :-)
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 22 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Neko on 12-Jan-2004 18:47 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (spot):
Because DigiBooster is the best one available, the alternatives are, for
MorphOS .. uhh.. the new version Protracker. Which is even WORSE :)

I am actually quite into music production, and my Dad and brother are in
bands (I mean ones that produce albums etc..).

My brother used to love OctaMED (before Soundstudio), but he always hated the
interface. Way too complicated just to lay down some quick guitar riffs etc.
The newer one with floaty windows was better, in his opinion, but it didn't
change the actual channel layout problems.

Basically what he did was use my Aura sampler to record straight from his
guitar amp - play OctaMed stuff beside it to lay down the tracks. When he
liked what he heard, he actually sampled it and put it in the effects he wanted
via the sampler software (no need for peddles when the software will do
flanging, reverb, etc.) and then lay it into the tracks.

Repeat for bass, rhythm, and acoustic guitar.

The only thing he liked OctaMED for was the ability to do drum stuff - because
it was so ordered and contrived that it was easy to lay down a drum track that
wasn't out of time ;)

Watch the iLife movie, and you'll see Sheryl Crow do exactly the same thing.
This is why I think Apple aren't very innovative, my brother beat Sheryl to it
by about 8 years.

As it stands, he's using CuBase to do the work, now.

http://www.arbitermt.co.uk/steinberg/products/cubasesl_images/screenshot2_project.jpg

As for my Dad - well, he has a catalogue of songs going back years, and he's
also an accomplished clarinet player, so he is quite enamoured by applications
like Sebalius that do real musical notation.

http://www.sibelius.com/products/sibelius/features/look_and_feel.html

You're basically talking real musical notation for people who can read music.

GarageBand is basically for musicians who can't read music ;)

But with a couple of tweaks, couldn't you quite easily turn GarageBand's
horizontal display into simple musical notation? See.. the flexibility is
there!

If screen estate is your qualm, and you don't like the horizontal bars, realise
that on a 1280x1024 screen you could fit a something like 12 channels there
without appreciable loss of information. Shrink the channels further (do away
with GarageBand's useless waveform display.. just show note, time, instrument
picture) and you can expand further.

Given that we read horizontally, adding channels as displayed vertically means
we are restricted by how much information we can squeeze in - you still need a
horizontal "note, time, instrument" record even if it's (66 G-5 1000) which
probably restricts it to the same number on the same sized screen (we're
worrying about readability of text here)

And you lose the flexibility of different, more musical-notation-friendly
layouts. All of GarageBand, CuBase and Sebelius take advantage of solutions
and intuitiveness that ProTracker-style layouts simply do not afford.

=Neko=
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 23 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by graviel slate on 12-Jan-2004 18:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 21 (Clownface):
No, I don't think that's true.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 24 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Neko on 12-Jan-2004 19:39 GMT
Oh.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
http://www.apple.com/ilife/video/

Just for reference ;)

=Neko=
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 25 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Rafo on 12-Jan-2004 21:08 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Neko):
AARGH !!! I was sure of it. If you want such a program, just take a
look at ProStationAudio, but it's no tracker and its use is WAY
different. Here we are talking about making music from simple samples
mostly (with just one note you can get many notes, several octaves),
not using entires pieces of music copied/pasted together to make a
(usually crappy) mix.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 26 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Neko on 12-Jan-2004 22:27 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Rafo):
GarageBand isn't like that. It's not just adding loops and pre-arranged
tunes - you tell it what notes you want to play, with a keyboard or
guitar interface, or if you don't have those, with the mouse (ugh!!) or
ordinary keyboard (UGH!!!)

Look at CuBase, look at Sibelius, look at GarageBand, then look at

http://www.digiboosterpro.de/dbp6.php

Personally I like CuBase, but it's really complicated to use. GarageBand is
an over-simplified CuBase. I used Sibelius to demonstrate the flexibility of
a display that isn't 70% buttons and 4 rows of 8-note blocks.

=Neko=
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 27 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Ville Sarell on 12-Jan-2004 23:03 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (Neko):
Sebalius, Sebelius... double typo ;) Sibelius, that is.. famous finnish composer (from the past).
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 28 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by breed on 13-Jan-2004 07:53 GMT
Well, i love DBPro GUI, a tracker is only a tracker, dont compare with Cubase or any softs like it! The way to use is very different.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 29 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 13-Jan-2004 09:55 GMT
I was not talking about remodelling the GUI of digibooster, merely
the "Skin".
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 30 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Olegil on 13-Jan-2004 12:11 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (Neko):
Some simple mouse-overs would make a world of difference when learning to use DB, but there's nothing in that GUI that makes it unusable for the experienced user.

I agree that we most probably need some easy to use music applications, and that GarageBand doesn't seem too bad, but it's not necessarily the ONLY type of music application anyone should be allowed to make.

If the people behind DB want to do it like this then they are allowed to do so, so please get off their backs :-)
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 31 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Kolbjørn Barmen on 13-Jan-2004 14:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (Neko):
Neko, I dont get your arguments.. if those programs are what you want, then what prevents you from using them already? Why do you want yet another program that is just like that? Isnt it good that programs are different so that you can have a choice?

And if the answer is "because they dont run on my pegasos" then perhaps you should approach those software houses that develop them and argue for a MOS version.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 32 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 13-Jan-2004 17:04 GMT
"I think Trackers suck because I cant operate its easy interface and
my brother (in law) also think it suck because he cannot tell the difference
between a tracker and a sequencer. And it looks ugly. it must suck."

From a future WrongPlanet:

-We dont need trackers, they arent compatible with todays
monitors. nobody uses trackers anyway, except ugly people.

-Hexadicimal singlewindow editing is way passed by now, REAL apps uses
one million windows instead, and really cool Wizards. Just choose
some parameters (from a million windows) then press go, no need to
reinvent old music again.
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 33 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 14-Jan-2004 10:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 32 (Leif):
Amiga+sampler+digibooster is my music instrument. prostationaudio, HD-Rec. or Soundprobe is the mixer.........
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 34 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Neko on 15-Jan-2004 07:16 GMT
In reply to Comment 31 (Kolbjørn Barmen):
If I want to use those apps, I run them on Mac or PC - I have plenty of them.

I am just disappointed that every developer is making rehashes of old Amiga
software, which is geared at.. gearheads. And not the average computer user
which is the larger market.

You could all do well to take a leaf out of Apple's book when it comes to
making things easy and accessible. All you have to do then, is out-perform
and out-featureset them.

DigiBooster is obviously much more advanced than GarageBand - the only problem
is the GUI. Change the GUI - the underlying mixing and editing would be the
same, why change that? - and you change the target market and appeal of the
application (and perhaps increase it's usability many-fold).

=Neko=
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 35 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Neko on 15-Jan-2004 07:26 GMT
In reply to Comment 32 (Leif):
Leif, there is NO difference at the fundamental level between DigiBooster,
Protracker and things like CuBase or GarageBand.

You place instruments on a time scale. The software mixes them together to
produce finished audio.

The difference between trackers and "sequencers" (although I think you mean
"professional-grade commercial software") is that trackers use obtuse
hexadecimal timelines, do not visibly link instruments except by index in a
sample bank (what an archaic concept!) and in general present an obscure and
unintuitive interface.

I can use trackers perfectly well. My brother (as in, biological brother, what
did you put "in law" for?) can use them perfectly well, too. But given the
choice between OctaMED and CuBase, he picks CuBase.

Actually both of my father and brother between them would rather play real
instruments and hate digital music production, and are perfectly at home with
an "analogue" mixing desk or PortaStudio.. but the ability to lay down tracks
makes songwriting easier, be it in a soundproofed booth with DAT tapes, or on
your home PC.

Since we're discussing computer software here, and not the merits of vinyl vs.
CD or valves vs. transistors, and the fact (FACT!) that tracker software is
archaic, outdated and definitely doesn't appeal to real musicians, compared
to alternatives on other platforms.

If you want to go around selling software to more than a handful of Amiga
geeks, you have to think of this.

=Neko=
New Digibooster Professional homepage is online : Comment 36 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 15-Jan-2004 23:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 35 (Neko):
Neko wrote:

Leif, there is NO difference at the fundamental level between DigiBooster,
Protracker and things like CuBase or GarageBand.

->--------------------------------

Well, enough difference for a complete rewrite.
The way the music is stored and handled internally is completely different.

->-----------------------------

You place instruments on a time scale. The software mixes them together to
produce finished audio.

The difference between trackers and "sequencers" (although I think you mean
"professional-grade commercial software") is that trackers use obtuse
hexadecimal timelines, do not visibly link instruments except by index in a
sample bank (what an archaic concept!) and in general present an obscure and
unintuitive interface.

->------

Sure, I have not looked at the souce of any sequencer, but they all are
pretty much geared towards MIDI, and MIDI differs completely to
tracking-style timings, storage etc.

->--------

I can use trackers perfectly well. My brother (as in, biological brother, what
did you put "in law" for?) can use them perfectly well, too. But given the
choice between OctaMED and CuBase, he picks CuBase.

->--------

Blame fleecy and wrongplanet for that "brother in law" ;)

->--------

Actually both of my father and brother between them would rather play real
instruments and hate digital music production, and are perfectly at home with
an "analogue" mixing desk or PortaStudio.. but the ability to lay down tracks
makes songwriting easier, be it in a soundproofed booth with DAT tapes, or on
your home PC.

Since we're discussing computer software here, and not the merits of vinyl vs.
CD or valves vs. transistors, and the fact (FACT!) that tracker software is
archaic, outdated and definitely doesn't appeal to real musicians, compared
to alternatives on other platforms.

If you want to go around selling software to more than a handful of Amiga
geeks, you have to think of this.

->-----------

Sure, Trackers ARE a thing of the past. For those who didnt come to
love them when they came that is. A small audience.
Anonymous, there are 36 items in your selection
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