Hello Dear Notion Team Community !

First I want to apologize for my mistakes in english (I am a french student).

I have been a Notion user for seven years now and I am very very happy with this software!
However, I discovered some problems in Notion with my way of composing. I'm already submitting a ticket to the support team to get feedback from the Presonus & Notion team, but I'm posting a copy of my email here to find out if these issues only occur to me or if you've encountered the same problems (and found a way around these things).
Here is the email I sent to the support team:




" Dear Notion Team & Presonus Team,


First I have to say that I really LOVE your Notion software.
For me, it finally breaks the limits of the classic score editors (Finale & Sibelius just to name a few…) by introducing a more practicable and efficient way to use our own sound libraries into a score editor, with very good results already !


Let me share with you some examples of my compositions where I used only Notion and its custom rules system with my libraries :

example 1 : (Cinematic Studio Strings & Cinematic Studio Piano into Notion) : https://soundcloud.com/matthieu-dulong/ ... ulait-etre

example 2 : (East West products, especially their Hollywood series) : https://soundcloud.com/matthieu-dulong/ ... vestigates

example 3 : (Vienna Symphonic Library Special Edition - with my own customization of the existing Notion Rules for this sound library) : https://soundcloud.com/matthieu-dulong/ ... -generique

It’s a pleasure to work this way instead of moving some midi notes in a DAW for a classical-trained student like me !


However, I discovered some issues that I want to share with you, to see if these problems can be solved.
I have done a (private) video on Youtube to be more clear about these issues. You can watch the video by copy/paste this link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WtvT5yyQpE


1) Some plugins by Slate Digital can’t be enabled. This happens with the Virtual Mix Rack, the VerbSuite Classics, Virtual Tape Machines, Virtual Bus Rack, Eiosis E2 Deesser. The others I tried work fine with my computer : FG-X and Repeater.
Every time I try to enable the plugins, I received a message that say : « the plugin can’t be enabled because it doesn’t have a graphic interface ». In every other software, all my Slate Digital plugins work fine (Logic and Cubase).



2) Some sound libraries I own have a latency (especially on the legato patches) which makes them play a little after the beat, so I have to adjust the length of the note a little before (using the sequencer overlay) to make them play in time with the metronome.
This happens with some East West libraries (for example the Hollywood Strings legatos patches) and even more with the Cinematic Studio Strings that I use actually (which have A LOT of latency on their legatos patches).
When it becomes a real issue is when I want to adjust the length of the note in Notion by using the sequencer overlay. I don’t know if it happens only for me but I have to move my mouse cursor and click several times randomly NEAR the note I want to modify before I can change its length, and surprisingly I can change the length when my cursor is generally pretty far from the note. I have done a screen capture of my computer to show you my issue (you can watch this in the link of the video I provided to you in the beginning of this email). It is very hard to work this way, especially when I have to move a lot of notes with this method.



3) Everytime I create a new track, it appears in the mixer as « mono ». When I move the volume fader, it is clearly audible. I show you this issue in the video.



4) When I want to make some modifications on a track (like changing the name, the abbreviation, the transposition, …) and I click « OK » to confirm the modifications, it reinitializes the track in the mixer (i.e. the volume fader returns to 0dB regardless of the value I set before). Again, I show you what I mean by that in the video.


5) With Notion 6 (I don’t remember having this issue with previous versions of Notion), when I want to select a note in a chord, it is now difficult to select just one note. Instead, this is the whole chord which is selected every time I click on the chord with the mouse. I show you this issue in the video as well.


6) Everytime I close a plugin in the mixer window, not only the plugin closes but the mixer window too. I don’t know if this is normal (because in other DAWs, the mixer is still open after the plugin is closed) ? I show you this in the final part of the video.


I don’t know if this is the way these things should work but just in case I wanted to address you these things. By far the biggest issue for me (and this is very time consuming) is the inability to properly move the note lengths without a lot of trial and error before I can eventually « catch » the note and drag it whenever I want.



Again, your software is really AMAZING and I use it on a daily basis to compose my music since 2010 with Notion SLE for VSL (I was on Finale before switching to Notion and never looked back !). Even trying to compose exclusively with Logic or Cubase didn’t change anything for me and I use them now uniquely to record real instruments and sometimes for mixing when Notion can’t give me the tools I need (like automation), but besides that Notion has become my main tool for composing and scoring for film (since the support of video playback !).


Thank you very much for reading this long email, I am sorry for my english mistakes (I am a french student) and I hope that the issues I mentioned can be solved


Thank you again and I wish you the best for continuing the development of such a good software (and possibly a fusion between Studio One and Notion in the near future ?) !


Matthieu Dulong "


I wish you a good day !