Samplitude Music Studio 2015 review

troy-mac wrote on 10/1/2014, 10:57 PM

Ok I just purchased Samplitude Music Studio 2015 and I have to say Magix botched this one GUI wise. this is not an upgrade from 2014. one major throw back is that you cannot undock the Carbon Mixer and on alll the mixers if you have more than 8 tracks you have to scroll to see past the 8th. Clearly someone who doesn't do a lot of recording designed that feature (NOT) this was a terrible idea, most of us that do a lot of recording have 2 monitors and keep the mixer in one of them which cannot be done anymore sense you cannot undock it. ALso the buttons look cheesy like a childs sofware not a proffessional software. besides a few bugs on 2014 I found the look and feel to be just like Pro X but not in 2015 no no no if you were expecting this to be an upgrade then think again. OK under the hood I am sure Magix fixed some bugs but they did a number to the GUI I would guess that this was some marketing expert haha that thought he knew what he was doing but I say Magix fire this person and go back to your original design that you have had for years esepcially with the Mixer inteface and get rid of those goofy icons on the left and big buttons on the top of the screen. 2014 had a very nice interface which was much more professional looking and the functionality was more professional. I feel after I use this for a week or two I will be asking for a refund. Magix I plead with you to spend more time fixing bugs and adding more feature and leave the GUI alone PLEASE! a very unstatisfied long time (since 2000 delux) user of your product.

Comments

browj2 wrote on 10/2/2014, 9:56 AM

Hi,

As I said in my answer to another question, I rather like the bigger buttons. There were just too many before and they were more difficult to select. I can imagine that if one is using a touch screen, the buttons on the older version would have been very difficult to select with a finger.

As for the mixer, there is probably a bug. I can definitely resize and move the Carbon mixer from one screen to another, but only if I start from the Edit screen, then select the pop-down arrow from Mix, not the button, and select Carbon. Then I get a moveable Mixer. Otherwise, the Mixer is static and basically unuseable. See the video below that I will send to Magix.

I have tried the new Vocal Tune 2 and it works much better than the previous version. I like the keyboard at the bottom of the screen. Was there a keyboard before or was it only in Music Maker?

troy-mac wrote on 10/12/2014, 8:01 PM

Hey John, I did finally find the way to open the mixer in a separate window. I find this version to be a little clunky. for instance when I watch the transport line it is ahead of the wav patteren meaning, when i click start the line goes past the wav image then I hear the track playing about a second afterwards so it is not aligning properly. I found myself going back to 2014 as I liked the interface much better but I am getting used to the new look... One thing I noticed is that in the mixer the track metters don't move unless I click them. also when I click Tuner or Keyboard in the bottom window nothing happens half the time. I usually need to double click the icon to get it open. I am just a bit dissapointed that I thought I was going to get a good upgrade and get some of the 2014 bugs fixed but agian seems like another release before it was ready... I have a pretty powerful system I built just for recording AMD 8350 8 core 4 GHz 8 GB of RAM windows 8.1 64 bit I am going to put another 8 GB in and see if that makes things better but that said my Ram isn't spliking when using MSMS. if anyone has any idea for the mixer track meters to get them to work again that would be great! I notice they are now broken in 2014 arrgg

browj2 wrote on 10/12/2014, 10:36 PM

Hi,

Glad you got it working. Do you have the latest update - 21.0.0.24?

I presume that you mean the level meters in the Mixer. I have had no trouble with them.

Same with the Keyboard, Tuner - they come up first time.

Strange.

I added another 8GB on Friday, up to 16. No noticeable difference in SMS. I also use Video Pro X6 and there I noticed the difference.

I also use Xara DPX10 - I can no longer access the Designs Gallery which is a live part of the program (you have to be connected to the internet). So, there are strange things happening.

browj2 wrote on 10/12/2014, 11:57 PM

I'm afraid that I wasn't very observant and I missed a fundamental thing. The left hand detailed info for the track editor was no longer on my screen and I thought that it had been eliminated. It's still there. Things are looking better.