DP 11 is out

[Trensharo]

The cross grade is also surprisingly expensive, considering it's a cross grade and the people buying it already own DAW software that they could likely continue using without an additional $400 investment (+ future upgrade costs).

I had to look up the cross grade from Cubase, because for years Cubase's crossgrade was also $399. I can't disagree with that, they should have lowered it when Cubase was lowered. To be fair though DP comes with film score features that you only get in Nuendo. What I did with Bitwig which doesn't offer a cross grade, is wait until someone was selling it in the buy and sell market here. DP comes up sometimes here, I would bet someone buys it and it doesn't sit with them. Last price I saw was $200.

That's ignoring the pretty predictable promotions Steinberg has. Right now, you can get a Cubase Crossgrade for $199 off Best Service... Tax Free. I've never seen MOTU run a sale on DP. Maybe once? I can't even remember when this was. Probably over a year ago... Maybe Black Friday, or something?

I mean, yea, there are some features not in Cubase Pro in DP for Film Scoring, but they have a yearly upgrade cycle, and the upgrade costs are on par with Nuendo's. So, as long as you wait for Steinberg to offer a cross grade offer to Nuendo, and it's basically the same cost as cross grading to DP - both up front and long-term - minus the learning curve.

Actually, maybe cheaper long term, since Steinberg is more reliable to sell Nuendo upgrades/updates at promotional prices (and is available from resellers that don't charge sales tax) at some point throughout the year - so you can just wait and pay 40-50% off the normal MSRP...

I like the idea of being more open in terms of native support for different types of controllers, though. Other vendors can learn from that.

Bitwig, Live and DP all do a good job there. Logic lags with only Novation support, but their own Logic Control is fantastic if you have an iPad.

My M-Audio Oxygen Pro feels like it was made by Yamaha/Steinberg in Cubase - also great in Studio One, and I'd assume at least the same in Pro Tools and a few others (it has like 9 DAW profiles in the Firmware). If the controller manufacturers put in the work, they can make this happen.

Depends heavily on the manufacturer. I'd never buy a Novation controller, because they only really support Live, Reason and Logic.

[Trensharo]

Why does everyone talk about money all the time? If I have something that suits me and helps me do my job better, I don't care if it cost me a little more or a little less. My enjoyment of my work and tools is far more important to me than the money I spent on them.

It depends, for some people it's a hobby and paying 499$, which is the price of a midrange desktop computer, a set of nice monitor speakers or a new hardware synth, is a bit hard to digest psychologically. You can't underestimate the financial aspect.

Yes, I understand that many people make music as a hobby, but there are enough cheap or even free DAWs here. Digital Perfomer is not cheap or intended for hobby musicians, it should have been clear to everyone a long time ago.

Most growth in the DAW market is at the lower end. There are legions of people just starting out and buying a commercial DAW to do it. Almost no one I know has heard of Digital Performer, unless they work in the film scoring/composition business. None of the producers doing popular music know about it, unless they also buy and use MOTU hardware, and heard about it in that way.

If you go to /r/MusicProduction or /r/EDMProduction - no one is going to be talking about DP - despite MOTU going out of their way to add features to appeal largely to the types of producers who would otherwise bias to Ableton Live or Bitwig Studio. There is a "What DAW do you recommend?" thread every 2 days, and DP is never mentioned. Maybe one time per 100 threads, in passing?

The result of this is that they are adding these features, but they are only being sold to a user base that has largely no interest in them. They are not expanding into the segments where the industry is growing most, and they are not being marketed well to the niches where they are most valuable.

Hobbyists are buying Ableton Live Suite all the time, so pricing cannot be the only factor. I think exposure is a huge deal - or lack of it, rather. Lots of people simply don't know it exists, which actually limits it in other areas of the market where people look to justify the purchase of other DAWs (Tutorial Material, Content Coverage on YouTube, etc.).

But, MOTU seems fine with that, so good on them.

You have to go out of your way to find any decent information about this DAW. It is too difficult for the layman, and this is bad in a market where word of mouth and hive/bandwagon tendencies are such strong marketing forces. You can be the best thing on the planet, but it doesn't/won't matter if no one knows it exists.

I do think taking so long to port to Windows was a critical mistake. Regardless of what people think of it as a platform, it's where the majority of the market was... and it's where the growth potential is strongest now that hardware prices are lower (price:performance) and distribution avenues have become largely democratized.

Honestly, they should just sell Performer Lite for $89 and see what kind of uptake/interest they can generate. Just the headlines that come out of it are likely to benefit them more than any sales generate - simply by brute forcing DP into the conversation.

[pdxindy]

What you meant is clearly inferred from your post.

You inferred incorrectly cause my literal words have no relation with your stylized interpretation. I then tell you what I said and that what you inferred is not what I said, then you call me a liar.

Really at that point there is no basis for communication as you are making up meanings of someone else's words and arguing with yourself. It's a weird form of public masturbation, but hey, have at it. Nothing to do with me. I'll put you on ignore and you can jerk off to your hearts content.

[machinesworking]

Cubase brought the Mac build up to sync with the Windows build in the year 2000. ]

Cubase on OS X was troubled with low latency tracks counts much much lower than other DAWs up until at least 2015. I remember people talking about the fix around that time. So I wouldn't say they were on par. Steinberg went full into the Windows port previously, so it was a solid operation. Remember Steinberg started off with both ports for VST. So their issues on either platform can't be chalked up to a port.

I get what you're saying though, porting to a new platform has the extra stress of any bug in the DAW or plug in being a travesty to the end user. I'm guilty of thinking that way. When a bad Windows port of a plug in is introduced I rarely check back to see if later incarnations fixed the issues. It's got to be a nightmare to do, no matter how you sell it, if it's near stable accounting and marketing departments are going to want to ship it, to recoup all the money spent porting.

[machinesworking]

That's ignoring the pretty predictable promotions Steinberg has. Right now, you can get a Cubase Crossgrade for $199 off Best Service... Tax Free. I've never seen MOTU run a sale on DP. Maybe once? I can't even remember when this was. Probably over a year ago... Maybe Black Friday, or something?

When I looked it up it was $199, read my post again, I thought they dropped the crossgrade price permanently to $199. So if you're willing to wait for a sale, then it's cheaper.... bleargh!, that's not what you or others inferred at first.

I mean, yea, there are some features not in Cubase Pro in DP for Film Scoring, but they have a yearly upgrade cycle, and the upgrade costs are on par with Nuendo's. So, as long as you wait for Steinberg to offer a cross grade offer to Nuendo, and it's basically the same cost as cross grading to DP - both up front and long-term - minus the learning curve.

Yeah, but people using advanced features in film scoring aren't going to wait, they don't have time for that. Again, it's a strange come back, if you're crossgrading from a different DAW, not Cubase, Nuendo isn't anywhere near $400, ever. Currently $749 at Sweetwater.

My M-Audio Oxygen Pro feels like it was made by Yamaha/Steinberg in Cubase - also great in Studio One, and I'd assume at least the same in Pro Tools and a few others (it has like 9 DAW profiles in the Firmware). If the controller manufacturers put in the work, they can make this happen.

Depends heavily on the manufacturer. I'd never buy a Novation controller, because they only really support Live, Reason and Logic.

You're missing out then. Novation make great controllers. The Remote SL MKIII has advanced support for Logic, Reason and Live, but I wouldn't rule it out for Cubase, HUI support is pretty dammed great with LED readouts naming tracks and plug in parameters etc.



To your other point. DP is doing a lot of things that Live, Logic, and other EDM etc. oriented DAWs are doing, but it's not at all its bread and butter. Its audience is nearly completely made up of professional composers in film and TV, recording studio owners and the like. I've run into more Jazz and Classical musicians using DP than any other DAW. It's a completely different audience than Ableton Live, FL Studio etc. DAWs that are similar in mind set IMO are Pro Tools, Reaper, Cubase, and Logic. The fact is IMO it's differentiating itself from Pro Tools, Studio One and Reaper with the whole Clips feature, but in no way is it marketing itself as a hip simple to understand UX DAW for dance music. From my perspective it's Reaper without the compromises in terms of hacked on scripts, and Logic without the compromises to Logics own odd internal structure.

There's a lot of discussion about this move towards modern DAW features like CLips on DP forums, but the truth is DP is a very old DAW, and most of it's users are older, because you either never left to another DAW, or you gravitated to it for features it has that other DAWs don't have or don't do as well. I don't get at all that MOTU want or care to appeal to young EDM producers, that's not who they're going after, they don't even try for that audience and IMO they shouldn't. You pretty much have to learn how to use DP then configure it to work the way you want it to. If you put in the time, you get a lot out of that type of configurability, but if you want something otherwise, it's going to be rough. There are two useful and confusing at first views of the timeline in DP for starters. People always IMO make the mistake of going to the Sequence Editor first, and they don't attempt to wrap their head around Track Selections.

[syntonica]

Regarding Clips in DP, it was a sorely needed feature just from the arranging point of view. You now have discreet containers you can wrap your MIDI and audio in to copy and move about on the timeline rather than just piles of loose notes to wrangle. The Clip launcher page seems more like an afterthought than an attempt to be hip and cool.

[geronimo]

https://motu.com/en-us/performer-lite-download/

[machinesworking]

Regarding Clips in DP, it was a sorely needed feature just from the arranging point of view. You now have discreet containers you can wrap your MIDI and audio in to copy and move about on the timeline rather than just piles of loose notes to wrangle. The Clip launcher page seems more like an afterthought than an attempt to be hip and cool.

Mixed feeling about this, I like that there's still loose "parsed" MIDI, but Clips are lacking right now, if there was anything big missing in DP11 it's improvements to clips. Clips currently only are editable from the Clip editor, which is a straight MIDI Piano Roll. No Event List, Drum, or Score editing. So as of right now it's not much of an advantage over parsed MIDI. The Drum editor not being able to edit Clips is an especially erroneous error IMO.

[machinesworking]

https://motu.com/en-us/performer-lite-download/

Like someone mentioned it's only available if you own MOTU hardware. I love DP, but I also love RME, so I don't have access to Performer Lite. It looks pretty solid. I like the GUI better than the standard regular DP GUI.

[Trensharo]

I mean, yea, there are some features not in Cubase Pro in DP for Film Scoring, but they have a yearly upgrade cycle, and the upgrade costs are on par with Nuendo's. So, as long as you wait for Steinberg to offer a cross grade offer to Nuendo, and it's basically the same cost as cross grading to DP - both up front and long-term - minus the learning curve.

Yeah, but people using advanced features in film scoring aren't going to wait, they don't have time for that. Again, it's a strange come back, if you're crossgrading from a different DAW, not Cubase, Nuendo isn't anywhere near $400, ever. Currently $749 at Sweetwater.

Market Growth isn't in that segment. It's what we call a Captive Market. The Post-Production and high end Video Editing Markets are also examples.

In those markets, there aren't enough influx of users to actually grow market share at a decent rate. You're relegated largely to poaching off of the few serious competitors in that space.

People in that market aren't going to have much issue affording Nuendo, which is priced extremely competitively against others that play in that market. For Film Scoring, Nuendo and Cubase are largely interchangeable, so there isn't any pressing need to upgrade to Nuendo for most. If you work in Post, then Nuendo is less than half the price of Pro Tools | Ultimate and a third of the price of Sequoia or comparable Pyramix SKUs.

This is why companies like Avid have been more serious in targeting the lower areas of the market, where there are far more options but far less deeply entrenched options. User are more fickle. Competitive pricing, Value-Adds and Product Bundles become major advantages.

The fact that DP has some features that Cubase Lacks for Film Scoring literally doesn't matter if the people going to Cubase Pro got there by way of Cubase AI -> Elements -> Artist/Pro. Once you capture those users, especially professionals, the chances of poaching them are much less. If it works, there's nothing to fix, and switching comes at an opportunity cost when you are no longer a hobbyist and Time = Money.

You're better off targeting DAW collecting casuals, at that point, but DP is less ready to do that than any of its competitors.

Mayb e they're trying to be the Apple of DAWs - ignoring the fact that even Apple caved to these market pressures with both their software and their hardware.

[Trensharo]

Unintentional Double Post...

[machinesworking]

Market Growth isn't in that segment. It's what we call a Captive Market. The Post-Production and high end Video Editing Markets are also examples.

In those markets, there aren't enough influx of users to actually grow market share at a decent rate. You're relegated largely to poaching off of the few serious competitors in that space.

People in that market aren't going to have much issue affording Nuendo, which is priced extremely competitively against others that play in that market. For Film Scoring, Nuendo and Cubase are largely interchangeable, so there isn't any pressing need to upgrade to Nuendo for most. If you work in Post, then Nuendo is less than half the price of Pro Tools | Ultimate and a third of the price of Sequoia or comparable Pyramix SKUs.

This is why companies like Avid have been more serious in targeting the lower areas of the market, where there are far more options but far less deeply entrenched options. User are more fickle. Competitive pricing, Value-Adds and Product Bundles become major advantages.

The fact that DP has some features that Cubase Lacks for Film Scoring literally doesn't matter if the people going to Cubase Pro got there by way of Cubase AI -> Elements -> Artist/Pro. Once you capture those users, especially professionals, the chances of poaching them are much less. If it works, there's nothing to fix, and switching comes at an opportunity cost when you are no longer a hobbyist and Time = Money.

You're better off targeting DAW collecting casuals, at that point, but DP is less ready to do that than any of its competitors.

Mayb e they're trying to be the Apple of DAWs - ignoring the fact that even Apple caved to these market pressures with both their software and their hardware.

I don't disagree, the original post I replied to here was about how DP is expensive, it's not. It's just not on sale, or cheap like Reaper and Logic.


DP is definitely living in its own world for sure, but so was Logic before Apple bought them. I posted a while ago about group memberships on Facebook, basically it's expensive to maintain a DAW, but you really don't need the market share that FL, Live or Logic get, you can do just fine as Bitwig or DP or Traction. MOTU are still running their own game with DP that's for sure, and I don't see that changing, they have a core audience that keeps the lights on, and yes, they're adding features that appeal to casuals, DAW collectors and EDM types etc. but IMO (and this is me, because this is how I work), DP is a fantastic all in one DAW, with at this point every feature represented. I'm the target audience, I want a DAW with built in full song sequencing (Chunks), Clips, SysEx support so I can dump hardware patches directly into the Project, articulation mapping, MPE support, full featured score and piano roll editors, multiple automation types (drawable automation curves like sine, square, ramp etc. doesn't hurt), odd little arcane MIDI things like CC velocity compression, film scoring features, not to look too crowded with larger projects, etc.

Of the DAWs I know of DP covers all of that. The only close competition is Logic, but Logic doesn't do Chunks or songs within a project in a way that's elegant like DP, it also has a MIDI input limitation that drives me nuts, plus it pauses before playing upon opening a project, on the first AUi you select no matter what setting you have in preferences. Plus DP's VEP support is better.

[pinki]

Just to come back to this thread again...

Like I said, I used DP professionally for over 20 years. The issue with DP is not features or lack of them. It has features galore. The issue is stability.
It no longer has what is used to have: the ability to not crash. It never used to crash. Literally you could run it for weeks and it just never ever crashed. That was up to DP 5.

Then, around DP 6, things started to wobble and then go downhill, and they have been going downhill ever since. DP7- rubbish. DP 8 - rubbish. DP9 - a small reprieve DP 10 - a complete disaster, a joke release. At this point I thought Motu were closing down to be honest.

DP 11- I cannot say as I have lost patience and moved on, but if Motu's track record is anything to go by, it will be a crash fest. I hope not for people who are getting on board. I do love DP, I really do.

But this will be the roll out: release DP 11, shortly after 11.01 and 11.02 to fix 11 bugs. Silence for about 18 months...release DP 11.5, which will squash one or two bugs from 11.02 but also introduce a whole load more. Silence..for about a year. Release DP 12 .

That's why I now use Studio One. It crashes too, but not as much as DP. But Presonus are active and alive. Features are all well and good but stability in the end is more valuable to me.

[machinesworking]

David Das did a nice little video on Articulation Maps in DP with Spitfires BBSCO free edition.

[Pencilina]

I've used DP since v 2.3 (around 25 years) for professional and personal work almost every day. I know it probably too well. I started using bitwig 3 years ago. To me they are almost completely different beasts. BW is more like a musical instrument disguised as a daw or new paradigm of generative modular sound and music playground for total nerds (like me) and DP a tool for making and precise linear work especially with picture. In DP there many ways of looking at and organizing what you're working on. No one has really mentioned it's "Tracks Overview" window in this thread. Its bonkers insane what one can do with it and track folder especially when it comes to orchestration and and arranging. I'm not an authority on all DAWs but I'm highly curious if there is any tool (when used with absolute familiarity) better suited for working with midi to create or emulate almost any style of non-electronic music in a computer and make it fit into set period of time and then to make and the same piece of music or sections of it fit into a shorter or longer period of time when a director changes their mind in a few minutes and deliver it with stems shortly thereafter. Its pretty nice for mixing as well. Sadly, I agree mostly with Pinki's sentiments except I think there have been relatively stable versions since 6. Windows should not be considered a viable platform by any DP user with an once of sanity unless they can forgo using plugins or gamble they suddenly might not work. MOTU is basically unresponsive when it comes to fixing or even addressing something they know is broken which can be really frustrating and horrible as some issues have existed for almost a decade. Honestly, I wish I was as familiar and fast with another DAW but I'm not and have work to do so I stick with DP. It's fun to read what people think of it on first impression and how agitated or impressed they are. Because of MOTU's apparent lack of interest in developing and maintaining DP with any sort of rigor or community involvement its long term viability seems dubious but my fingers remain crossed that I can keep shedding on it into the future.