"Well, I'd love to go over to PCs, where I'd be working with a 50MHz or 60MHz clocks, much faster than my Atari, but the problem is that my music software won't run on the PC. I use C-Lab Notator on the ST and Steinberg Cubase [a Windows version has just been released — see review in this issue] on the Mac. These are slow, but because I'm very familiar with them I'd have to start all over again to learn the new Logic [Mac-based successor to Notator] and Windows equivalents, which are faster. For me the computer is a big tape machine. I can notate 92 tracks, which is three digital recorders' worth."

C-Lab Notator was used on Mike Oldfield's Earth Moving, according to the liner notes.

A studio is nothing without equipment. In A.R.T. Studio the following top shelf music gear (and some personal favorites of Michael) were available:

Custom built AMEK Digital mixing console Audio Frame Workstation and Waveframe 1000 (old at the time, very important for the Enigma sound) Custom built studio controller by Quested Acoustics Protools system hardware Emagic Logic Audio Platinum software. Sample cell (Software sampler) Steinberg’s Halion External Midi modules and hardware: Lexicon 480 and 960 (reverb) Yamaha REV1, REV7 and REV9, Eventide Reverb Dynacord DRP20. MIDIMoog, PPG System, Korg M1, C-Lab Notator Takamine 6 and 12 String Guitars Tom Anderson Electric Guitars Otari DTR-900 Akai 900 Linn 9000 Prophet 2002 X-Pander EMS Vocoder DX-7 Roland MKS-80 «Super Jupiter», Roland V-Synth, Korg OASYS Korg Karma And, of course, a PC-based Studio Sampler. This is, after all, sample heavy music!

"I was a big Studio Vision user. They went out of business. Then I had a long relationship with Cubase. I was an Emagic Creator and Notator user on the Atari way back."

Daniel Miller is listed as using the C-Lab Notator in his gear setup, as detailed in Sound On Sound.

Still, he does touch earth again to say that he prefers the Atari (with Notator/Unitor software) because "it's the language that people use in London in all the bedrooms where all the real work is done. They use Ataris because they're cheap and they do the job. Macs are an elitist medium. They're only for people who can afford to buy them. I'm not interested in elitist languages. I'm interested in contemporary things that everybody uses. When a new Casio machine comes out, I buy it."

As cited in the gear list of this May '92 feature in Music Tech magazine

"We use C‑Lab Notator on an Atari. Most people we know use this but our approach is different. It's down to our choice of sampling. I tend to use things that other people would throw away — sample bits from records that sound different. The end result is always going to be slightly unusual. Most people take breakbeats now and just loop them. We tend to chop them up and turn them around to create that unique Cabaret Voltaire sound."

Heights & Lows It was around this time that Paddy McAloon’s home recording setup began to develop, when he acquired a Fostex B16 half–inch tape 16–track machine and Seck desk to sketch out demos. After the double album Jordan: The Comeback in 1990, McAloon embarked upon the demos for its intended follow–up, Let’s Change The World With Music using his newly purchased Atari STE 1040 and C–Lab Creator–Notator, only to have them rejected by his paymasters at CBS.

BLANK'S RECORDING SETUP FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS HAS been based around two Otari MTR90 24-track tape machines and an Amek 2600 48-channel mixing desk. It's a setup which he continues to be very pleased with. C-Lab's Notator software running on the Atari ST now takes care of much of the MIDI sequencing, though sometimes Blank syncs the Fairlight CMI Series III's Page R sequencer to it.

Manuel Göttsching uses the C-Lab Notator, as listed on the official Ashra website detailing his Studio Roma setup.

Used on Depeche Mode's ULTRA, according to a gear list provided to Future Music magazine by Tim Simenon.