New to this list -

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2012-05-31 at 13:55 +0200, bart deruyter wrote:
> Perhaps we're getting off-topic a bit, but is there actually a midi
> sequencer in the open source world that one could call 'fantastic' and
> is as reliable as Ardour has been so far?

No there's no "fantastic" Linux sequencer. Is there a fantastic
sequencer for .e.g. Windows? I still own the last legal version of
Cubase for the Atari, this is a fantastic sequencer, much better than
the Cubase sequencer for Windows.
What does "fantastic" for you mean? I still recommend to use Qtractor,
but don't upgrade it, if you've got a stable version.
Even if the sequencer application should fit to your needs, you still
could run into trouble regarding to MIDI jitter.

> So far I've always bumped on applications that are buggy as hell,
> still in development, unmaintained, limited in features or not able to
> follow new technologies etc... 
> I've tried out seq24, qtractor, rosegarden, muse, I even tried
> openoctave, but all have failed in my tests or requirements.

Subscribing to Qtractor devel mailing list could improve your usage of
Qtractor. Rui (the coder) usually fix bugs within some minutes or at
least some hours.

>  Rosegarden came out best, but as I said, with lot's of issues
> (latency in playback and recording

Latency or jitter?

A fixed latency shouldn't be an issue, jitter is an issue, but there are
ways to get less jitter.

> , crashes, it even manages to crash my XV88, which is connected with a
> midi cable, softsynths that don't work, crashing my audiofire12 on
> exit...)

Crashes are common when using Linux MIDI sequencers, especially with
fluid-dssi. I restart my sessions by a shell script.

> I'd love to hear about such an app.

Me too. Did you test energyXT? I didn't test it.

> About Ardour 3, it might be limited and look weird for midi indeed,
> but when stable, it will at least be stable and do what it has to do,
> record, edit and playback midi.

I couldn't use Ardour3 to edit MIDI events. YMMV!

> Never recommend beta-stage software to unexperienced people though,
> certainly not newbies in linux audio, and certainly not to do real
> work, beta is beta and you can almost count on it you'll have crashes,
> data loss etc...

A lot of Linux audio/MIDI software is version 0.x ;).

> lilypond

Isn't lilypond used by Rosegarden too?

2 Cents,
Ralf