Thoughts on DP9 after a couple of hours toying around

[toodamnhip]

I would like to see us keep this discussion on a constructive Path. Constructive means, what can MOTU change to be better?
Personally, it makes me feel nothing good to berate MOTU for having bugs in DP nine, as much as I think a few of us are annoyed that we have offered to beta-test and MOTU seemed closed off to our offers. My personal offer was based off of dealing with another company that needed inside information in advance, and still, with the other major company telling me they needed me on the beta site at MOTU , I could not get MOTU to to except my offer as a tester, and after technical explanations of why I needed to be on the inside . And people I know here on the forums have had the same issue. So my point is, if you're going to turn down offers to help test the product before it's released, you incur a greater responsibility to release a bug free product. For a why else would you have turned down offers of help? Turning down offers to help Test must mean you have enough beta testers. Turning down offers of help and then releasing a buggy product kind of means you're somewhat illogical or crazy ? Am I missing something here? So hey MOTU , test you're darn product and make sure you have enough people to do so so that you don't embarrass yourself with obvious bugs upon release!

[dewdman42]

providing bug free software goes WAY WAY beyond merely checking to see if the specs match the coded functionality, though that is one small part of it. Does the lane feature not match specs in some way or is it an actual bug?

For a product as complicated as DP, pretty much every feature should have automated unit testing in place so that every time the product is built it can be ran through thousands of little unit tests to make sure no new changes in the build from last night broke anything else, new or old. Sadly, a lot of devs don't make adequate unit tests because they're running with their hair on fire trying to make a deadline. Writing unit tests is laborious and time consuming work. I personally think its essential, but the realities of a competitive marketplace often make it difficult for devs to devote enough time to it.

That's a simple reality and is even more of a reality if you have a small team supporting a large and complex legacy product. Its simply not possible to manually sit there and test the software completely, this has to be automated. However, the very job of setting up automated testing is humongous in and of itself, and particularly when there are a bunch of new features added, its going to be a very big job to update any automated unit testing to reflect changes in the software. The cost involved in doing that is very high. GUI software is particularly difficult to unit best because there is always a human usability component so its very difficult to test every possible scenario.

The bottom line is that devs have to make some compromises in order to create more feature filled software and keep the cost down for us the consumer. There is no way around this, particularly for a complex product like DP. If you want them to have bug free code, its either going to cost at least twice as much or its going to take at least twice as long..maybe more.

Obviously some amount of less-then-perfect testing happens during development. Often times this is able to catch the lionshare of the issues and then a beta program with real users can help catch more issues...but even after all that, sometimes bugs will sneak through, thus there are bug fix releases. This is nothing revolutionary I am saying..its just the simple reality.

All of that being said, I do think 9.02 is a bit on the buggy side also. The MIDI port bug was identified a few months ago, no bug fixes came out. Other bugs that are kind of major have been reported, no fixes in months. A die hard DP friend of mine is actually using LPX until DP fixes the bugs. So...I do also think that DP9 came out a bit more bug prone then usual, for whatever the reason, which could be attributed to many different things. I'm also confident MOTU will fix the major bugs...they have probably already fixed most of the ones we are talking about now and planning to roll it out with the big update that is coming. I do also think MOTU could be more proactive about rolling out some bug fix patch releases.

[bayswater]

providing bug free software goes WAY WAY beyond merely checking to see if the specs match the coded functionality, though that is one small part of it. Does the lane feature not match specs in some way or is it an actual bug?

Certainly it does take more than checking, but I disagree that creating code that performs the function specified in the original requirements is "one small part".

Whether the lane feature has bugs or simply doesn't meet the specs is moot. You don't need to start looking for bugs if the original functional requirement is absent. It doesn't matter if code that doesn't do anything has coding errors.

In the original release the user could not select and edit controller data in lanes. Hard to imagine that the original requirements did not indicate this should be possible. I have had coders who didn't think creating functioning code consistent with requirements was particularly important, but they didn't last long, and I never met a tester who thought it was OK.

[dewdman42]

Can you point us to the requirements document which you feel they did not adhere to?

[bayswater]

Can you point us to the requirements document which you feel they did not adhere to?

Of course not. But unless they just made up stuff as they went along, there was a list of requirements for V9 that included Lanes. If there was, it would have specified what Lanes should do. Whatever else that might have included, the ability to use it would have a basic piece.

[toodamnhip]

Can you point us to the requirements document which you feel they did not adhere to?

Of course not. But unless they just made up stuff as they went along, there was a list of requirements for V9 that included Lanes. If there was, it would have specified what Lanes should do. Whatever else that might have included, the ability to use it would have a basic piece.

Perhaps there is a new cutting edge type of programming wherein “being able to use” the program...has been found to be wholly unneccessary? This could mean that when a product actually works, THAT functionality is the new bug!

[dewdman42]

I understand your frustration if a new feature doesn't work the way you think it should, but that can't necessarily be considered a bug. Poorly thought out design perhaps.

[bayswater]

I understand your frustration if a new feature doesn't work the way you think it should, but that can't necessarily be considered a bug. Poorly thought out design perhaps.

You're right, it's not necessarily a bug. In any case, it is a lack of functionality.

[kassonica]

well getting the thread back on track I just bounced out a quick ref mp3 for a client and wow lame build in, auto bounce folder, and it bounced quickly as well..

Nice

Can't wait to install 9 and the update at the studio

[toodamnhip]

well getting the thread back on track I just bounced out a quick ref mp3 for a client and wow lame build in, auto bounce folder, and it bounced quickly as well..

Nice

Can't wait to install 9 and the update at the studio

For the longest of time, I used iTunes for Mp3s. It sounded very good and was VERY FAST. Before DP 9, and maybe even before DP 8, I thought DP mp3 was slow and kind of sucked. With the latest versions and the mp3s DP now makes, I use DP over iTunes and have tested it and can say it sounds better than iTunes.

[kassonica]

well getting the thread back on track I just bounced out a quick ref mp3 for a client and wow lame build in, auto bounce folder, and it bounced quickly as well..

Nice

Can't wait to install 9 and the update at the studio

For the longest of time, I used iTunes for Mp3s. It sounded very good and was VERY FAST. Before DP 9, and maybe even before DP 8, I thought DP mp3 was slow and kind of sucked. With the latest versions and the mp3s DP now makes, I use DP over iTunes and have tested it and can say it sounds better than iTunes.

Interesting...

I always installed the LAME codec and prefered it over iTunes, although it was much slower

[toodamnhip]

well getting the thread back on track I just bounced out a quick ref mp3 for a client and wow lame build in, auto bounce folder, and it bounced quickly as well..

Nice

Can't wait to install 9 and the update at the studio

For the longest of time, I used iTunes for Mp3s. It sounded very good and was VERY FAST. Before DP 9, and maybe even before DP 8, I thought DP mp3 was slow and kind of sucked. With the latest versions and the mp3s DP now makes, I use DP over iTunes and have tested it and can say it sounds better than iTunes.

Interesting...

I always installed the LAME codec and prefered it over iTunes, although it was much slower

Earlier versions od DP LAME had dop out and artifacts on my system, and took FOREVER to render

[Shooshie]

For the longest of time, I used iTunes for Mp3s. It sounded very good and was VERY FAST. Before DP 9, and maybe even before DP 8, I thought DP mp3 was slow and kind of sucked. With the latest versions and the mp3s DP now makes, I use DP over iTunes and have tested it and can say it sounds better than iTunes.

Interesting...

I always installed the LAME codec and prefered it over iTunes, although it was much slower

Earlier versions of DP LAME had drop outs and artifacts on my system, and took FOREVER to render

My experience is exactly the same as TooDamnHip's. I used to love LAME, then it either got lamer, or iTunes got less lame, but now DP's LAME is less lame again, so I use LAME!

• Then there was my uncle who used a saw in Arkansas, that could out-saw any saw I ever saw saw...

Shooshie

[toodamnhip]

I SAW your post Shoosh

[Shooshie]

I SAW your post Shoosh

Ooo, that was lamer than LAME!