Mark Of The UNICORN - D1G1TAL PEFORMER 11

[machinesworking]

Seems like MOTU is missing opportunities to really set themselves apart from other DAWs. If you look at the way Presonus has integrated Studio One with their Quantum interfaces, it's pretty slick. MOTU should do something similar with DP and their line of audio and MIDI interfaces - i.e., integrate the control software for these devices right into the DAW itself and allow full control of the interfaces and connected devices at the track level. That could be very appealing to a lot of people.

I could see that. Personally I don't change my hardware setup really at all after I initially set it up though. I use an RME Babyface Pro FS with ADAT to an old Fireface 800. I suppose the Babyface does the heavy lifting there, the dial on it can adjust things in the RME mixer etc. Mostly what the means is the master out volume of the output from the Babyface is adjusted though.

MOTU are competing on the AVB level with other manufacturers, I'm not sure how that would be integrated in DP? there is an iPad app for controlling those setups.

[machinesworking]

As for stability on Windows, IMO it's probably a matter of third party VSTs, even on Mac most of the time that's the issue.

I'm not so sure. So every other DAW I have had no problems with the same plugins I tested in DP? Suspicious. There were tons of things, from improperly drawn GUIs, to black screens, to outright crashes when breathing on the thing. Just not confidence-instilling...

I get why that might be a conclusion but IMO that's just not how it works at all. I'm on Mac with 5+ DAWs here the way it works is each DAW implements plug in hosting differently because Steinberg... So for instance the only crashes I've had in Reaper were VST3 plug ins. That same VST3 plug in would run fine in DP, Bitwig, and Live. This applies to every DAW I've used ever. Battery in earlier versions had an issue with Live, Ableton tossed the blame at NI, stating that NI were aware of it and lo and behold it was fixed in an update to Battery.

It's not just NI and Ableton, or Reaper or.. This is the ways it's worked forever, since DAWs all have to figure out how to implement VST hosting on their own more or less. DP on Windows may have more problems than other DAWs with VST hosting, but it's not like other DAWs are bullet proof that way.
I've definitely run into the situation with a DAW demo starting it up for the first time and having it fail in plug in evaluation so many times it's not funny. To put it this way, there are people running DP that do not think of it as less stable than any other Windows DAW, that points to their plug in setup IMO.

They recently decided to not make it universal and something you implement in the plug in window itself, which doesn't make any sense.

?

You always have the option to "Run as" when you right-click the plugin in the FX browser. It also works on a multi-selection, too...

. IMO it's not anywhere near as elegant as what Bitwig does, Bitwig is better at it in general. The reason Justin gave for removing the universal sandboxing selection was that there was a significant CPU hit, and I can totally see that, since Bitwig is nowhere near as efficient as Reaper or DP in terms of plug in count, but having a preference that changes the sandboxing on the fly in a single window is vastly superior to the way Reaper does it, I don't think that can be argued logically. what's weird about Bitwig is how little of a CPU hit sandboxing does, but Bitwig like Live does that whole "uninterrupted audio" thing.

Anyway DP's one unique feature is Chunks, basically projects within projects, that can be of course loaded into each other, so parts of a song can be separated into different Chunks etc. or Chunks can be various remixes of the same song, different lengths etc. and yeah, that ability ties in really well with film scoring of course where variations on a theme can take up to 5 hours of music etc. People also use them for setlists along with the virtual rack idea etc.

[ecristian]

DP 11.2 https://motu.com/en-us/products/software/dp/#ara

[dayjob]

DP 11.2 https://motu.com/en-us/products/software/dp/#ara

nice additions. i'm stoked they've had a more or less steady stream of updates that add features and fix bugs.

[Spitfire31]

MOTU Digital Performer 11.2 is out!

https://motu.com/en-us/products/softwar ... %20NEW#ara

[dayjob]

MOTU Digital Performer 11.2 is out!

https://motu.com/en-us/products/softwar ... %20NEW#ara

see 2 posts up. lols.

[syntonica]

Argh! Effing Melodyne?!?

Has the M-thing finally surpassed the overall quality of the original ZTX pitch correction? Or, is it all about the real-time Cher-Pain fx?

(Edit: oh, and DP11.2 is now out! )

[machinesworking]

DP 11.2 https://motu.com/en-us/products/software/dp/#ara

nice additions. i'm stoked they've had a more or less steady stream of updates that add features and fix bugs.

Yeah this one was really needed, 11.11 broke MPE support and now that’s fixed, and they fixed a bunch of small bugs that aren’t in the release notes. ARA support has the snag that now I want to update Melodyne for compatibility etc.

[machinesworking]

Argh! Effing Melodyne?!?

Has the M-thing finally surpassed the overall quality of the original ZTX pitch correction? Or, is it all about the real-time Cher-Pain fx?

(Edit: oh, and DP11.2 is now out! )

As far as vocal correction goes I’m pretty sure it’s still Pure DSP that DP uses, ZTX is more for bigger changes, stretch etc. Melodyne is a bit better at it, and if you have Studio it does polyphonic pitch. Honestly I’ve mostly used it to break down a song I’m trying to learn on guitar.

[machinesworking]

Not to spam this thread, but Melodyne Essential is now included for free with DP11.12.

[zerocrossing]

Argh! Effing Melodyne?!?

Has the M-thing finally surpassed the overall quality of the original ZTX pitch correction? Or, is it all about the real-time Cher-Pain fx?

(Edit: oh, and DP11.2 is now out! )

Melodyne can sound great, but definitely don’t select the entire performance and hit “correct.” The key is finding the bits that you notice are out of tune and gently correcting them. Doesn’t sound synthetic at all.

[syntonica]

Argh! Effing Melodyne?!?

Has the M-thing finally surpassed the overall quality of the original ZTX pitch correction? Or, is it all about the real-time Cher-Pain fx?

(Edit: oh, and DP11.2 is now out! )

As far as vocal correction goes I’m pretty sure it’s still Pure DSP that DP uses, ZTX is more for bigger changes, stretch etc. Melodyne is a bit better at it, and if you have Studio it does polyphonic pitch. Honestly I’ve mostly used it to break down a song I’m trying to learn on guitar.

Oh okay, thanks! I loved the pitch correction in DP7. At the time, nothing else sounded as good. I haven't kept up on pitch correction since.

[Trensharo]

As for stability on Windows, IMO it's probably a matter of third party VSTs, even on Mac most of the time that's the issue.

I'm not so sure. So every other DAW I have had no problems with the same plugins I tested in DP? Suspicious. There were tons of things, from improperly drawn GUIs, to black screens, to outright crashes when breathing on the thing. Just not confidence-instilling...

I get why that might be a conclusion but IMO that's just not how it works at all. I'm on Mac with 5+ DAWs here the way it works is each DAW implements plug in hosting differently because Steinberg...

Sorry, but no. Not going to scapegoat Steinberg on this one.

The issue with DP and VST plug-ins is due to MOTU, and the fact that they have the MOTU Audio System (MAS) where they sort of wrap the VST system (I maybe wrong, but that seems like what's happening to me). Their system of hosting plug-ins is simply unreliable. The native plug-in format for DP is actually MAS, and their AudioUnits Support on macOS is far more mature than the VST Support on Windows (to which the DAW was only - in the grand scheme of things - recently ported).

I bought DP and had to get a refund a month later because it could not reliably scan plugins and make them available.

Random plug-ins would fail validation, and others would pass validation but not show up in the plug-in manager. It was a complete crapshoot. I finally got things to show up after a large number of reinstallations to force a revalidation (simply doing it in the DAW doesn't seem to do much, I had to actually reinstall the plug-in to trigger it - it probably notices something in the metadata regarding when it was last modified or whatever)... BTW, MOTU Support is actually prompt and responsive - among the best I have ever dealt with.

Then, days later they issued the DP 11.02 update, which broke everything all over again.

In addition to that, DP could not run off my M-Audio Interface. I was so intent on getting this DAW to work that I went out and bought a new audio interface... JUST FOR DP11!

However, the plug-in validation/scanning/usability issues continued and I ended up getting a refund because I just could not justify keeping it if I were either;

1. Never going to use it due to these issues, or
2. Spend 20% of my time using the DAW troubleshooting and fixing plug-in issues. I don't have that kind of time to burn, and it's a complete creative showstopper.

BTW, these issues happened across several vendors' plug-ins. It was not isolation to a certain bundle or company. I had issues with plugins from Native Instruments (ESPECIALLY Komplete Kontrol), iZotope, IK Multimedia, Softube, d16 Group and others.

Again. DP 11 on Windows. I am aware macOS users do just fine. The DAW was exclusive to that platform for decades. But I'm not switching platforms for a DAW

[machinesworking]

.... the usual rant I've posted on every forum that has any mention of DP for over a year now.

Your vendor list.. NI are great, love their stuff, but they have never been any bar for stability, ever. I've used their products for almost two decades now, and the fact is they're always slow to fix compatibility bugs.

I get it, you didn't have a good time with DP. I know plenty of Windows users that do. I'm sorry if that's offensive to you, but it's just the way it is. I interact weekly with at least a half dozen Windows DP users that do not have your experience.

You got your money back, I have no idea why you're so aggressively interested in promoting that DP sucks on Windows? In every forum with a DP subthread you're there telling everyone about what an unstable mess DP is, and how awful your experience was. MOTU gave you your money back, which is pretty much unheard of in the software world. They're actively working on the Windows version, plenty of fixes for Windows in the last update. Hell maybe the bugs you experienced are fixed? but hey obviously they deserve this right? They deserve to never make it anywhere with the Windows version. IMO this is the problem all developers face on Windows, random configurations leading to random instability in the same DAW with the same plug ins. Yes, other DAWs by now for the most part have this nailed, and no, it's not some MAS issue, every DAW beside Cubase is doing some sort of translation of VST, ASIO etc. and those are not as transparent as you think they are to implement. There's a reason why Bitwig's sandboxing is so effective, why a DAW would bother with that.

Earlier versions of Reaper for Mac were unstable messes, random high CPU glitches when before there were none etc. I didn't spend my time ranting on Reaper forums about it, ( same applies with Reaktor on Mac until v4.7 roughly ), and it's rock solid today. Just saying.

[syntonica]

In addition to that, DP could not run off my M-Audio Interface.

I just consider that a matter of discernment and good taste.

Unfortunately, Windows is pretty much a free-for-all for programming, particularly drivers, MIDI and audio where Apple has a very standardized CoreAudio. I think MOTU has done a terrific job of porting to Windows, considering their lack of resources. Yeah, they definitely had a bumpy start, but everything seems to have been ironed out. I don't see much screaming over at motunation ehere all the hardcore DP users hang out.