Bug Report regarding Drums and Metronome Tempo

Bigpocket

Hello to the Developers, I'm a new user of SP version 2.2.  

I'm trying to use this app but running into many problems that make the app difficult to use in various ways. 

I'll report more in separate threads. 

My hope is to point out some things that don't work well so that the app can become easier to use in later versions.

I have, taken the time to read thru almost all the threads in the forum and I'm trying, not to report on things that you have already fixed or on things that have already been reported so please bear with me :-)

Okay, this time the thread is about the Drums and issues relating to Drums :-)

First off the Metronome is not accurate. I'll explain how I discovered this in an example of a real life workflow.

I have a Boss Dr.Beat DB88 Metronome and I set the Tempo to 95 bpm when I was choosing a tempo for a new song I'm writing.

I goto GarageBand on my iPad and work out some scratch tracks to write lyrics to. The GarageBand song is set to a tempo of 95 bpm.

I then send the "GarageBand" song from the iPad to iTunes on my Mac Pro which has Logic Pro installed. 

Logic Pro 9.1.6 can open iPad versions of GarageBand songs natively btw.

 

Okay, so I get the song into Logic Pro and the song plays back at the tempo of 95 bpm same as in GarageBand.

I then Export the song from Logic as a Standard Midi file so I can open it in SP.

I also check the Midi file by playing it back from the desktop on My Mac Pro and the tempo is the same.

 

So my next step is to Import the Midi file into Symphony Pro. I did the transfer thru iTunes and the song showed up in SP as expected but immediately started playing back at a tempo of 60 bpm as displayed in SP. The file imported correctly notated but the tempo was way off. 

Hmm' so I say to myself, no worries just set the tempo to the known tempo, 95 bpm and then play it back. 

Then came the verification that setting the tempo to 95 bpm in Symphony Pro was really going to play back a tempo somewhere in between 80 & 81 bpm. 

Also the Metronome is inconsistent the Timing Drifts Badly. When playing back any song, the sounds along with the Metronome pause slightly on page turns. 

Another thing is the Drums sounds and their mapping. Drum parts should be mapped to General Midi. Lots of users might want to import Midi drum and percussion parts. When imported the pitches are notated all over the place and need to be edited just to play the correct drum sound. Stopping to edit drum notes for each note is a frustrating experience. And that goes for notes played in manually too. If I enter Drums from SP's built in keyboard the drums show up on the wrong pitches. I read in another thread that SP conforms to the drum map that Sibelius uses. When you think it thru General Midi should be included and set as the Default option. Not everyone is going to transfer their song to Sibelius. Many users will be exporting their work done in SP to DAWs which will expect Drum parst to be set to Midi channel 10 and mapped as general midi. If this is done there will be alot less editing to do and stuff will sound and look right too. Even when going the other way such as importing a Midi file into SP.

One last Drum issue I wish to mention is the REVERB!

Phil has responded very favorably to another post I made regarding the Metronome sound needing to be completely dry.

I mention Reverb again here because its relevant to this topic and I wish to point out that Every last sound in this app is awash with reverb and way too much of it at that. I would like the option to turn it off in the settings for each instrument. I sounds okay on orchestral sounds. I'm a Bass Player by profession and if I may say it like this. Trying to program Drums and Rhythm section parts in Symphony Pro is like playing a gig with a Keyboard player who always has the sustain pedal pressed down. It gets in the way of the timing. So please give us the option to turn it off. Maybe this app was meant to be more popular with guys who Orchestrate strings which do sound good with a little Reverb mixed in,

but I believe it's gonna be really useful to guys like me who will use it to do quick Lead sheets for session work and want to not have to deal with timing issues and the reverb thing.

Maybe some of the Timing issues are related to my using  iPad version 1 and IOS 5.0.1

I feel that this app will become extremely popular when this timing and others issues are fixed.

My next Bug Report will address the excessive crashing. I crashed SP at least 20 times in a row tonite.

Thanks for reading.

Hopefully this info is helpful in catching some of the bugaboos before the get loose in the next release :-)

Best regards.

BigPocket :-)     

Ross

Hi, we just submitted version 2.3. You should see improvements to playback. As far as the time drifting and the delay on page flips, we're very interested in perfecting the timing, but it may take us some time as there as some tough technical problems to be solved.

This update also has lots of crash fixes. Please wait for the update before writing up bug reports. It's very likely that when you crashed it 20 times in a row, you were just running into the same one or two crashes over and over again. You should find the new version more stable.

Thanks for telling us about MIDI mapping and reverb. We're constantly working to improve the app so thanks for the detailed feedback.