Comments on: 12 Free and Cheap Must-Have Music Utilities for Windows

By: protman

protman — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:18:32 +0000

I found a great alternative to midi-yoke to be loopbe1 and loopbe30. http://www.nerds.de/en/download.html

When trying to sync ableton to resolume, I had some problems with resolume always running at 2/3 the synced tempo. Fwiw; this problem was exhibited with midi-yoke, but not loopbe.

By: Stefan Boeykens

Stefan Boeykens — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:25:14 +0000

Nice overview. Very interesting. I have used Asio4All with my old PC and a SoundBlaster card and it improved latency. I have switched to Macs now, though, so please continue the series.

By: Josue Palma

Josue Palma — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:01:12 +0000

Hey, excellent utilities, very very useful tnx.

By: malki

malki — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:31:55 +0000

I agree with phortran, asio4all is a must if you dont have an ASIO compliant soundcard

The first software I install as a musician on any pc is the AP TUNER, the best tuner out there, if youre a musician this software is a must:
http://www.download.com/AP-Tuner/3000-2133_4-10342381.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10342382

By: phortran

phortran — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:30:34 +0000

not sure if you can classify it as a utility, but asio4all is great.

By: lematt

lematt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:05:49 +0000

yeah i’m really looking forward to see the Mac selection.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:04:13 +0000

@tobamai: Whoops. So, too, was I surprised … I had intended to include GlovePIE and not MIDIJoys and, um, screwed up somehow. Added it here, will see if I can add to the Rain story, too.

And yes, I’ll have to do this with the Mac and Linux side, as well.

By: tobamai

tobamai — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:33:49 +0000

I’m a little surprised to see that GlovePIE didn’t make the cut. It can function similar to bome’s midi translator, bome’s mouse keyboard, edrum, MCmu, OSCGlue, and MIDIJoys with a little work. It’s primarily text based, but anyone with a little bit of scripting experience will find that more of a feature than a limitation.

By: llamasinspace

llamasinspace — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:10:59 +0000

This looks shiny, then I got to the Windows part. I await your excellent Mac and Linux followups!

By: Defyer

Defyer — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:00:55 +0000

Thanks for that WMIDI tool! I’ll definitely look into it! I’ve been dying to use my tablet in other ways (since I can’t draw that well.)

I knew most of them. These are quite useful, I have to admit. I once used Bome’s Mouse Keyboard with MIDI Yoke to test Reason patches in a FLish manner without drawing in MIDI data in the sequencer. That was, of course, at times when I didn’t have a MIDI Keyboard around.