Is DP8 unusable?

[Stuartfox]

Ok, so I'm mightily concerned and, to be honest very disappointed to read from various sources, all the things that are, apparently not working in DP8.

* Kontakt 4/5 crashes in 64bit mode.

* Video won't play back properly / stutters

* Keyboard shortcuts only work intermittently

* Mouse pointer peculiarities

* Memory management / leakage issues (projects form dp7 reported to be using substantially more ram in dp8, even in 32bit mode)

* Slow / sluggish GUI

I love using DP, but I've been living with so many long term issues for months / years, and I'm not sure I've got the energy to swap these for another set of issues that may take a year to solve. I know MOTU won't make an announcement to address concerns, but I wish they would, just to offer a timeline so those of us who use DP professionally can make plans for future projects.

Saying this - I'm still waiting on my copy, and the MOTU videos show things running very nicely on a setup very similar to mine - so who knows, I may be lucky, however it looks like we'll be waiting 'til the first patch before 8 is useful in a pro environment.

[tshaps]

My two cents:
I'm in the middle of a project. Just for kicks I opened a cue I'm working on in DP7.24 in DP8. The first time it crashed upon launch. The second time it loaded up, but it felt sluggish and weird, in particular the aforementioned scrolling issues. I even thought the instruments were less responsive-- though I grant that this part could have been purely imagined. Point is, after after 2 minutes I went right back to 7.24 and there I'll stay until the next update.
In summary: not unusable, just undesirable.
T

(edited to correct a confusing typo)

[MIDI Life Crisis]

For me, DP6 was also "unusable" and for all the warts in DP8 ver .0 I'm working in it happily. Not there isn't work to do, but knowing MOTU, the next release will be rock solid and many bugs will be crushed. I just hope they are watching the threads here carefully as many of us will not have the time to report each issue.

[frankf]

Ok, so I'm mightily concerned and, to be honest very disappointed to read from various sources, all the things that are, apparently not working in DP8.

* Kontakt 4/5 crashes in 64bit mode.

* Video won't play back properly / stutters

* Keyboard shortcuts only work intermittently

* Mouse pointer peculiarities

* Memory management / leakage issues (projects form dp7 reported to be using substantially more ram in dp8, even in 32bit mode)

* Slow / sluggish GUI

I love using DP, but I've been living with so many long term issues for months / years, and I'm not sure I've got the energy to swap these for another set of issues that may take a year to solve. I know MOTU won't make an announcement to address concerns, but I wish they would, just to offer a timeline so those of us who use DP professionally can make plans for future projects.

Saying this - I'm still waiting on my copy, and the MOTU videos show things running very nicely on a setup very similar to mine - so who knows, I may be lucky, however it looks like we'll be waiting 'til the first patch before 8 is useful in a pro environment.

I've had none of these issues to date, and each day I've tried to push DP8 64-bit a little harder. I'm up to 4 instances of K4, 1K5 with LASS, 1 Ivory 2, 1 Stylus. And Video (tests are with mp4s). Tomorrow, during a break, I'll be adding Omnisphere, and some tracks of Korg wavestation and M1 plus Mach5v2 in VEP 32 bit (same machine). I'm running 48k 24 bit audio and buffer at 256. All Kontakt memory servers are off. If These fly, then it will be time to try buffer at 128. My test project started as a DP 7.24 import.


Frank Ferrucci
DP 8
Mac Pro 3,1 OS 10.6.8, 24gb RAM
Metric Halo 2882, ULN-2

[James Steele]

No—certainly not for me. "Unusable" is word that gets thrown around an awful lot.

[Shooshie]

I get a lot done in DP8 when I don't spend my time here writing about it, so it's not unusable. But the keyboard focus issue really is annoying. As in… I may have to cave in and go back to DP7.24 if they don't come out with a fix soon.

James, have you not seen the keyboard problem?

Shoosh

[MIDI Life Crisis]

DP8? I'm soaking in it now...

[James Steele]

James, have you not seen the keyboard problem?

Not really, but I may not have been working it as hard as you are.

[James Steele]

DP8? I'm soaking in it now...

Madge?

[David Polich]

Maybe James hasn't seen the keyboard problem, or maybe he has - I have not seen it on either of my systems, running DP8 32 bit in Snow Leopard.

Then again, I'm not even sure what is meant by "losing focus"...my wife
says I've been losing focus a lot lately...

[Shooshie]

Then again, I'm not even sure what is meant by "losing focus"...my wife
says I've been losing focus a lot lately...

David, that was just the words my brain chose when I was typing up the problem. Still, I can't think of anything that describes it any better.

It starts out with a command or two, then after a while, most of the commands are not working. The keyboard commands just gradually quit working. It could be happening to you, but you don't notice it, since it could be commands that you don't use often.

I first noticed it when trying to resize the tracks in the Sequence Editor while holding down W to apply it to all of them. W didn't work. T didn't work. Then I needed to Select-All, which I then pare down to the tracks and range I want. Command-A didn't work!

It's 100% reliable on my system: leave it for a while, and the commands will always stop working.

Shoosh

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'm doing a lot of editing and recording (of VIs) Shoosh, and I'm not seeing that at all. I did see it when I had disabled consolidated windows and I did manage to go back to disabling the CW without having the problem return. DP8 is essentially running like DP7 for me at this point - only better.

I wonder if it could be a keyboard driver? I'm using a Logitech Wireless (solar powered) keyboard and Revolution MX Mouse. Commands have really settled down since the first couple of days. Mousey is a happy camper as well. Scrolling is good, yadda yadda yadda...

Go figure!

[Michael Canavan]

I'm working on a song in DP8 with hardly any issues at all, but I'm only now getting used to being able to tax my system. I jumped from an 07 macbook pro duel 2.4ghz to an 8 core 2.66 Mac Pro, so I'm still at less than 20% CPU with what would have been a 90% cpu before.

I'll try to see if I can't have some keyboard command issues later tonight.

[Stuartfox]

No—certainly not for me. "Unusable" is word that gets thrown around an awful lot.

Well DP7 is 'almost' unusable for me. 32bit means I can't even begin to load a useful template directly into DP7 but lack of Dynamic Latency Compensation and other timing bugs means that running my template in Vienna Ensemble Pro is somewhat problematic.

This has been confirmed fixed in DP8

Video issues and graphics related crashes.

Also confirmed as a bug and fixed in 8 by MOTU

These are the things I come up against every day - DP's power and features in other areas plus the fact that the main issues are fixed in 8 make it worth sticking with, but I think that MOTU need to act fast with this latest set of problems. I'm frustrated with DP's reputation among people who don't know the software, but it will become harder to defend if these issues are here for a year or more as other known issues have been.

As I say - I am still anxious to get hold of my copy - I'm one of the first preorders in the UK but still, I think that shipment is taking its time to get here

Maybe that I'm one of the lucky ones and everything works smoothly.... (I'm due some of that kind of luck).

[bayswater]

It's 100% reliable on my system: leave it for a while, and the commands will always stop working.
Shoosh

Does it happen with any keyboard?