DP9 stability, etc....compared to DP7

[Topo]

Contemplating an upgrade to DP9 from 7, which has been rock solid on Snow Leopard. Can anyone confirm 9 is equally as stable with the Yosemite? Obviously there are little bugs here and there, but, overall, 7 has been incredibly great, all around.

[Robert Randolph]

I skipped DP7, however I've used everything since V3.

DP 9 is the most stable in my experience thus far, in that I have not had a single crash with it except for once when loading the new update (hasn't happened since).

Every other version I've had various crashes leading up to some golden version (X.0y usually).

I have heard from various people though that v7 was a fantastic version as far as stability goes, and obviously a lot of this is system dependent. So YMMV and such.

[Topo]

Thanks Robert. Is your iMac beefy enough to handle plugins, etc? I've got an older i7, and sometimes it's a bit stretched to run omnisphere, Trillian and my Ravenscroft piano....but, it does it. I just had to disable the warning that says you're exceeding limits.

[Robert Randolph]

Thanks Robert. Is your iMac beefy enough to handle plugins, etc? I've got an older i7, and sometimes it's a bit stretched to run omnisphere, Trillian and my Ravenscroft piano....but, it does it. I just had to disable the warning that says you're exceeding limits.

I work primarily with recorded audio, and I have no issues with CPU power in this realm.

I can't say much for working with softsynths and samplers, however in my limited experience I have wished for a bit more power at times. When working with large sample libraries (which I record and edit), it can require a beefier system to utilize them fully.

[bayswater]

DP 7.24 with OS 10.6.8 was probably the most stable I've seen (back to 4.6). But DP 9.01 with OS 10.10.5 is a close second, and I get fewer issues with things like channel names, bundles and other things related to general under the hood audio stuff. I've had the odd crash, but I was able to trace it to a plugin.

[Shooshie]

DP 7.24 with OS 10.6.8 was probably the most stable I've seen (back to 4.6). But DP 9.01 with OS 10.10.5 is a close second, and I get fewer issues with things like channel names, bundles and other things related to general under the hood audio stuff. I've had the odd crash, but I was able to trace it to a plugin.

What Bays said, except I haven't had any crashes yet. The color wheel started spinning after a take yesterday, and I prepared the singer to have to do the take over, but then it caught up with itself, and all was well. That was a one-time thing. In fact, I think it was waiting on disks to spin up. I turned off the "put drives to sleep" option in the System Prefs after that, and had no more trouble, so that's probably all it was. (sometimes I forget to do that at first)

Shooshie

[Topo]

What Bays said, except I haven't had any crashes yet.........

Shooshie

Do you think DP9 is any more demanding on processor power? I was tossing around the idea of up'ing to a newer iMac. I've got the i7 model before Thunderbolt came out....however, it's another chunk of change that's probably unnecessary.

[bayswater]

I think you'll find a lot of disagreement on DP 9's processing demands. I find it less demanding -- others find it more demanding. Initially, I had a lot screen update problems but I just nudged down the max work percent setting and things are fine. Hard to be sure though because I made the change to Yosemite about the same time, and got a new non MOTU interface. Logic, MixBuss and DSP-Q all seem a bit more efficient too. Apple says 10.11 is snappier, so looking forward to that. My iMac is about six years old, maybe the same one as yours, so this is all great for me; I have no reason to replace it.

[Robert Randolph]

What Bays said, except I haven't had any crashes yet.........

Shooshie

Do you think DP9 is any more demanding on processor power? I was tossing around the idea of up'ing to a newer iMac. I've got the i7 model before Thunderbolt came out....however, it's another chunk of change that's probably unnecessary.

DP9 is better than DP6 or 8 for me on the same system with the same plugins.

I'm not sure why at all.

[Shooshie]

What Bays said, except I haven't had any crashes yet.........

Shooshie

Do you think DP9 is any more demanding on processor power? I was tossing around the idea of up'ing to a newer iMac. I've got the i7 model before Thunderbolt came out....however, it's another chunk of change that's probably unnecessary.

I see the performance meters and my "MenuMeters" (CPU meters running in a utility in the menu-bar) moving a little more than they did in DP8. I'm not sure that means anything. Seriously; CPU performance meters do not always mean what one would be inclined to think they mean.

I'm using OS X 10.10.5 and DP 9.01. So far it's been magic. Really, it's been great.

I had been away from DP all summer, kind of on a forced leave of absence. I just wanted time off and away from DP, to which I've been joined at the hip since 1986, and MOTU's Composer before that. So, when I came back about a month ago, or less, I installed DP9, followed almost immediately by DP9.01, and started working within minutes. I have yet to sit down with it and go through all the new features and changes. There hasn't been a single crash, all my files work like they are supposed to, all my new stuff is going down flawlessly, and I'm happening upon little surprises all the time. Today it was the Plate Reverb, which I haven't used in years, and I find out that it has a whole new interface. Maybe that's been there for a while; I don't know, but I sure like it. That reverb is amazing. It gets a sound I cannot get in Altiverb. I may write a post about that.

Anyway, hitting the ground running, installing, and working without even taking the time to see what you've done is not something I normally recommend, but it just worked. DP continues to blow me away with its fricking awesomeness. (Damn! My fanboy biases are showing again!!!)

I hereby rate this DP 9.01 update the maximum allowable: Five Unicorns!


Shoosh
PS: the last and only other time I've rated an update with 5 unicorns was DP7.0, the best dot-aught upgrade to this day.

[Topo]

I hereby rate this DP 9.01 update the maximum allowable: Five Unicorns!


Shoosh
PS: the last and only other time I've rated an update with 5 unicorns was DP7.0, the best dot-aught upgrade to this day.

Nice to hear Shoosh.....I'm in the same situation having been off DP since my last project many months ago, but things are shifting and I'll be crackin at it again soon. For now I'll stick with my iMac and hope for the best with performance.

[mikehalloran]

i7 2.93ghz iMac 1tb

That should be a 2010 like mine.

I believe that the only differences between the 2009 and 2010 iMac i7 are CPU speed and the 2010 having an extra internal SATA buss. There may be minor GPU differences as well.

As I have posted earlier, each succeeding OS release has made mine perform better. 10.9 lowered the operating temperature – replacing the internal HD with an SSD has made it run even cooler and the speed bump was nice.

I'd like to justify an upgrade on a need basis but really, I can't. My 2010 is the best Mac I have ever owned.

The 2011, however, has Thunderbolt and is easier to replace the HD and much, much easier to replace the NV RAM battery.

[Shooshie]

I like my current Mac Pro (2012) a lot, but Mavericks and Yosemite kind of broke a lot of things for a while. Some are still not working 100% the way they were supposed to work (Quicklook in the Finder, for example, and Mail is currently almost unusable because something is making it run super-slow), but I tend to forget the problems and get excited about things that ARE working. DP is one of those things. It just gets better with each release.

The one thing that perplexes me is why Apple released Thunderbolt in the 2012 iMacs and MacBook Pros, but not in the Mac Pro of the same year. One of these days I'm going to have to get a new Mac Pro just because of Thunderbolt. Also, USB 3. No excuse for not including it. I'm guessing we can get PCI cards, but it seems there are more trade-offs doing it that way.

Shoosh

[mikehalloran]

The one thing that perplexes me is why Apple released Thunderbolt in the 2012 iMacs and MacBook Pros, but not in the Mac Pro of the same year.

The only thing that makes sense is that the new Mac Pro was already in development.

Still, with the rest of the Apple line embracing SATA III and TB in 2011 and adding USB 3 in 2012, Apple should have released a transitional Mac Pro or two for those years.

I wonder if the EU declaring it non-compliant had anything to do with it but wasn't that mid-2012?

[kassonica]

Contemplating an upgrade to DP9 from 7, which has been rock solid on Snow Leopard. Can anyone confirm 9 is equally as stable with the Yosemite? Obviously there are little bugs here and there, but, overall, 7 has been incredibly great, all around.

I'm still on that combo.... so stable....