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Symphonic Evolution Vs. Notion?
Can anyone add comparative thoughts before I blow the milk money?
Comments
Sorry, never come across Notion. Can't see any Audiobus or IAA, if that's important. SE is at least an input in Audiobus. Cheaper too! The samples are ok but I guess not close to Notion's 1.1 Gb in size. Otherwise rock solid, seems to analyse all the midi I throw at it
When you load a drum MIDI file (that you have get for free on the web) into SE, it comes to channel 1, which is the piano....I don't know if this is normal (dev told me "yes, it depends on how the file was created").
I bought it cheaper than actual sale price, but obviously you're trying to burn the money you have saved not buying Oscilab.
Some people claims it crashed a lot, but honestly, it never has happen to me (don't use every day, either).
I found Notion to be the more stable of the two on iPad 2 when I compared them about a year ago, for what that's worth. SE has an exciting feature list but I found Notion to be a much smoother ride and preferred its style of notation entry. Fast and smooth once you get the hang of it. So much is personal preference with this sort of thing
Notion is capable of sending midi files to other apps but very limited everywhere else.
Progression is $4.99 and has a similar notation style to Notion.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/progression/id424281020?mt=8
Thanks for the comments chaps.
Sounds like maybe there isn't a clear winner and the old standby of 'it depends' or personal preference comes into it, as ever.
Truth is, I have just got Notion, but then (backwards ass as always
I looked up SE here on the forum and folks were pretty high on it when it came out.
The idea of the clean compose (Look at me! I'm composing!), midi transfer and then ascribing a favorite sound from elsewhere is tempting, but on the other hand (non-midi) I have been thinking that if I ever get a tattoo it should read 'Copy and Paste is Workflow'.
Thanks again.
Haha but folks are high on everything when it comes out
Hope to hear your findings eventually, let us know what works
Notion is much easier to use for composing multiple parts - SE is a little awkward for that. I've just been using Notion for doing some composing and I find it the easiest and most intuitive of the three options (Notion, Symphony Pro, SE).
However, SE works well with driving MIDI. Also has a lower footprint - as does Symphony Pro.
My preference is for Notion however - IMO the easiest to use for note input that is closest to a desktop scoring product. I currently have Finale and Sibelius on the desktop - but I'm looking to crossgrade to the desktop Notion as well because I want to have easy integration with the iPad version.
Plus I'm hopeful, being an S1 Pro user, that Presonus will integrate Notion into S1 Pro at some point as well more tightly.
I find notion kind of irritating. It's good for entering notes, but editing pieces can be pretty painful. You can cut/paste delete and insert, but it's not particularly easy or fun. And god help you if you realize that you need to change the time signature half way through a piece... On the other hand it feels stable, the interface is pretty intuitive and it's beautiful to look at. Which helps...
I've not been trying Symphonix long (the feature list was hard to ignore). I'm finding the interface a little hard to get to grips with, though when I do work out how to do things it seems fairly logical. I like the way that you tap notes to interact with them. Inserting notes is nice. Moving notes is odd... (why can't I just drag them. Though notion is irritating in this regard also). Also, it's really not pretty.
In theory I quite like the way it deals with multiple voices (you see them as ghost notes) which is helpful if you're thinking in terms of polyphony/voicing etc, but I kind of wonder how that scales if you have multiple voices. I'd like the option to see them on multiple staves if that's what I need. I've not tried the piano roll, but the color scheme is off putting. Similarly the drum feature looks quite powerful, but the ugliness is off putting.
How about Notion vs Symphony Pro? I have Pro but am wondering if Notion has any advantages...
I have Symphony Pro as well, but Notion just had a price drop (finally) so I am tempted.
Mr. @JohnnyGoodyear what do you think of Notion? I mean in actual use...you have used it by now haven't you?
ditto for me. whats the consensus? I am been watching & waiting for Notion for a while. Is it any good?
http://www.presonus.com/products/Notion-for-iOS
Thanks for the tip! The problem with SP for me is that it does not export time sig changes in midi. So I can't compose in it and send a midi file elsewhere to work on effectively. As far as I could find out Notion has or had the same issue. If a recent update has changed this it would be worth it.
I have toyed with it and I like it. Have made some 8 and 16 bar 'clips' that have been used elsewhere, but am far from finishing a minuet let alone a concerto. If anything it has revealed to me how limited by ambition (talent?) in the composing arena really seems to be. Discipline and effort is required, those giants whose shoulders I have yet to successfully balance upon.
BUT, glad I bought it and, as coincidence would have it, am off to England and Belgium next week and have thought that perhaps Notion should accompany me for a closer study. This nudge confirms it will.
I hope that some time after my return we can finally meet up in person for a beverage and giggle over those forum 80s photos (but not our own, of course...
So, it is a good app? Can you export you work from Notion on iPad to another application?
If its classical composers you speak of, those people hardly did anything else with their life other than music. And apart from Handel, almost all off them were off their rocker, penny less and kind of crazy. I wouldn't seat it.
Well, I took the bait and bought it.... First off, export works better than SP. When exporting midi with SP my tracks got messed up. Not so in Notion. It does not export time signature changes, but all the notes are in the right place when you export so, for example when exporting to Multitrack Studio, all I had to do was make changes to the time signature and everything fell into place. Maybe the best part about Notion is the samples — it's full of quality samples which you'll need to download so you're going to need a few gigs (at least 2) of space for this app. There are more samples if you want to buy them. If you use brass a lot beware that not much is included and you'll have to buy a pack to get a full range of instruments.
Editing is something to get used but seems easy enough. I'm hoping to be able to make some decent backing tracks or even full tracks just with this app...we'll see.
Thanks.. yeah .. I see it now.
Piano, keyboards, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass
Do you use Cubasis? So can you export from Notion and import into Cubasis?
I know this is starting to sound like i am plugging PreSonus but trust me - I am not affiliated with the company. :-)
I have been using iPad for music and its great. Ever since I got Korg Gadget I have been using that but my beef with it is its too loose and "experimental" in nature. (Maybe is just me). You can achieve a lot by just tinkering and tweaking virtual knobs but I sort of miss micro managing my songs and tinkering with it at the note level and seeing what I am doing musically. Hence my interest in Notion.
I don't have Cubasis but as long as Cubasis accepts midi files there should be no problem. I just tried importing and exporting from/to MultiTrackStudio and it worked perfectly. Data from the finer points of editing in notation software, like adding crescendos etc, would not be included in the midi so that's something you'd have to adjust in your DAW.
Similarly to you, to date I've mostly been playing my compositions by hand into my ipad, experimenting with synths etc, which is cool, but I miss being able to create more traditional tracks like I used to do with finale (before dumping the midi into Cubase/Logic). I never really used Symphony Pro for this because of the midi export issues mentioned so I'm hoping Notion will do the trick! Actually, MultiTrackStudio has it's own notation editor which can do almost everything but the layout is awkward for editing multiple instruments, so I'm thinking I'll use Notion to compose and then throw the midi into MultiTrackStudio to sequence.
@JohnnyGoodyear Of course we won't giggle over your photo, nor mine since I don't have any fun photos from the 80's to post. I hope you make good use of Notion, and other apps during those long flights. For me, based on the excellent feedback in this thread, I've decided to take the Notion plunge.
@telecode101 Presonus is a good company, plug away! I have a pair of their Eris-8 studio monitors and love them!
I chose Notion because of the ongoing commitment from the dev. The desktop version is much cheaper than its rivals and I find it very easy to use. Currently writing three-part harmony arrangements for of pop/rock songs for contemporary choirs. I'm 90% desktop arranging now, but the iPad version gives me the option to work on public transport etc. Also, although it doesn't play seamlessly with other apps, the samples used for playback (if you have the space for them) are excellent. In a way, it reminds me of Gadget, as you can get so much done without interrupting the mythical 'workflow'.
Just curious if you would rate the samples good enough to be used in (semi) professional recording, exporting WAV files of the composition into Auria, for example?
Someone here in the AB forum posted a song that used Notion instruments, I recall it sounded darn good. I did a search here but the word notion is used quite a bit, making for a very large search result and I'm running out of time....
Thank you for that, Toz
That's encouraging ... Perhaps I'll hit up YouTube a bit later and see what I can find.
Think you're possibly talking about Pierre Balez, he's pretty active on the iPad music FB group and an excellent composer. Here's something using only Notion instruments recorded in Cubasis. It should answer your question, @eustressor
Symphony Pro is pretty mediocre. There's some nice ideas in there, but in practice it's clunky and doesn't have half the features that (I) need.
Notion has always been the 'nearly' app for me. Better than everything else, but just not quite right. The workflow was slightly clunky, the interface wasn't quite intuitive. There were just enough bugs to annoy me.
So I usually sketched out pieces in Notion until I couldn't take it any longer and exported to the desktop to finish (I like to compose at the piano). Fortunately its export features are pretty good (as are import, which can be useful if someone sends you a Sibelius file, or something).
Then Notion was updated to 2.0. The features list looked amazing - it just didn't work. Kept crashing, bizarre resets, I would lose work. Totally useless. Then a couple of days ago they fixed all the issues and now it seems really nice. Workflow is a bit more intuitive, the bugs seem to have been squashed and they've added a couple of nice new features that just make it more pleasant to work in. It also has most of the transposition/workflow features you'd expect from a desktop app.
The really cool new feature is that it's now universal with cloud sync. And the iPhone interface is pretty decent. Wouldn't want to use it to make a whole piece, but it does mean that I can work on my latest composition when I'm waiting for my kids, at the doctor's office, or whatever. It's a great feature.
So yes, it's the only notation app for IOS that I would recommend. And at that price it's a bargain. Just buy it.
Thank you, sir! You're right, Pierre's an excellent composer
Very good post. Thanks.
Because Notion has a mixer you can save individual tracks as audio and mix them in your DAW. Useful! ...Unfortunately you can't send audio direct to an app you have to save to Dropbox or Device first... Still, the tools are there to give you the option to mix your audio further.
Good stuff all. Well I guess that settles it. My pocket money is going to PreSonus this week.
@pichi Great post and thank you for exposing me to Pierre Balez! I mean, thank you for turning me on to Pierre...never mind
This is what The Real Jean Sibelius thinks of that...