« on: June 24, 2017, 01:45:27 PM »
http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/c-lab-supertrack/1570If anyone had predicted two years ago that a humble Commodore 64 could become the centre of a professional studio he would have been laughed at. Even after the first micro-MIDI packages from Sequential and SIEL came out the future looked cloudy, with the limitations of the systems often becoming more apparent than their capabilities.
But something has obviously changed, and it's not the good old Commodore 64, which remains as eccentric as ever and still gives the appearance of being on its last legs despite dominating the home micro market throughout the world. There are so many C64s in circulation now that any software package written for the machine still has a good chance of success, yet the machines themselves are available for prices which should make the would-be hi-tech composer drool.
And, yes, a learning process has taken place, and the software houses have discovered ways of stretching the 64's musical potential far beyond the most optimistic predictions. And so we can now enter a music store and buy a disk which turns the Commodore 64 into a real- and step-time 16-channel polyphonic MIDI composer of enormous power and versatility.
The C-Lab Supertrack package which allows you to do all this is similar in many ways to the Steinberg Pro-16 launched a few months ago, but in some areas exceeds it in versatility. It runs via almost any MIDI interface (the Steinberg interface is in fact mentioned, along with MusicData, Passport, Yamaha, Hybrid Arts, Korg, C-Lab and Jellinghaus units), and although the package itself stems from Germany (like the Steinberg), the small handbook is written by the American company MusicData Inc who apparently market the system as MusicData MIDI Sequencer II in the USA. Here in the UK it's handled by Sound Technology.
At first glance the C-Lab software does seem to have some competition at the moment, and it will have more in the near future with the launch of 16- and 24-channel MIDI packages for the Atari 520ST. But there are way more Commodores being used for computer music and if you look beneath the surface it seems that this sequencer package from C-Lab is better than the opposition on matters of detail - the sort of thing you never thought you'd need until you discovered you couldn't live without it...
SMPTE synchronisation, cue points, cursor editing, real- and step-time recording, versatile song mode functions, rapid copying/merging and a single, easy-to-follow display make the Supertrack a very impressive proposition for any MIDI studio. With the current price of the Commodore 64 and disk drive (around £100 on the second-hand market) and a wide selection of compatible interfaces available (from less than £35), the C-Lab Supertrack is a real winner.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 07:27:49 AM by chrisNova777 »
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