What do the composers here use to compose music for their games?

[Nikolas]

OHOHOHOHOHOH!

Tell us! review it! Please! (I plan on asking for sponsorship actually)

It looks really sleak and nice and awesome and all that!

COME ON! TELL US!

[Da_Elf]

a couple of mics, some voices, some guitars, violins, keyboards, base, an m-audio card, nuendo.

[Ishmael]

Reason rewired into Adobe Audition makes a perfect suite; Audition can record any real instruments, with the Reason tracks played simultanously automatically, and should you need to EQ anything it's all in Audition. As for splicing, just exporting the track to Audition from Reason and doing whatever you want with it there. It's different, sure, but as efficient as anything.

[Gregjazz]

The new version of Audition looks pretty cool from what I've seen. A friend of mine uses it at his home studio, and although the older version was behind in its capabilities, this new version gets it in the ballpark.

@Nikolas: Yeah, Sonar is awesome! I'm still getting around to customizing the interface to best suit myself. I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of its capabilities though. Yesterday I just started messing around with the Sonar ACT feature, which lets me intelligently map knobs on my MIDI controller to controls on VSTis and stuff. Very handy!

Most of the VSTis that come with it aren't that amazing. Mostly bundled light versions of stuff, but the included effects are REALLY nice.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Hmmm...

Can anyone give their opinion on Sibelius, pleasy-please?

[Nikolas]

What exactly are you looking for Rui?

I'm not a Sibelius user, but could say a few words I think...

First of, Sibelius (and Finale, and Notion) are all notation programs, and not sequencers. Sure you can sequence a tune, and make it sound pretty swell, but I don't think they handle loops, etc, or audio (none of them).

So sibelius (and finale, not so much notion) are a perfect choice for someone who would like to make scores. If you're into that, it's a matter of opinion then. Both, Sib and fin have their strengths and weaknesses, so just download the trial versions (I know that Finale has, but not sure about sibelius) and see which one feels better.

Only very recently Sibelius added VST support (which means that you can use whatever "instrument" you want with it), but it appears that there are still a few bugs floating around, and the updates have not fixed them. (<-not 100% sure here! Check elsewhere as well)

In all, in order to say more, I need to know what you want it for. Otherwise, I'm not sure where to concetrate really...

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Ah. Thanks, didn't know the difference. Notation's what I want, so I'm using the correct tool. Thanks!

[Erenan]

I use Sibelius to create MIDI files, and then generally I use Audacity to record the MIDI playback into an OGG, which I then use in my games. This is not the best approach. Sometimes I then use Audacity to manipulate the cruddy MIDI sounds. For example, everything but the sound effects in Torture-Escape was created in this fashion. The sound effects were, of course, either free sounds found on the Internet or sounds that I recorded myself with a crappy ten dollar computer microphone.