Thoughts on DP9 after a couple of hours toying around

[Shooshie]

Well, they fixed Tap Tempo, a long-standing buggy feature since about 2002. This is the first time that Tap Tempo has actually worked correctly since OS X was created. It makes me very happy to have it back.

DP was completely rewritten to comply with Apple's Cocoa environment. (all apps had to be in order to go completely to 64 bits.) It was expected that in the process, there would be a lot of things broken. DP was a complex piece of software full of exceptions, links, and patches that may not have been well documented, given that it was created over 2 decades of development by many programmers on several different CPUs and OSes. Such development is a strength until you have to rewrite it in another language. Then it takes time to figure out what's going on, basically having to make the same mistakes that previous teams of programmers made, and fix them.

I think it's being written better than ever, but there are just certain little things that happen, sometimes with big results. Extra-beta testing by people who know what to look for would help, but for now we users are sometimes the beta team.

Still, the bones are there in DP, and they're strong. Most of us have no doubt that MOTU will eventually fix it all; their record has always been good. Sure, some little nits have gone untouched for many years, and some of you amplify those to make it sound like the whole damned app is crushing under its own weight, but longtime users who have weathered storms before know that there's no need to drone on about it once the bugs have been reported.

MOTU didn't used to publish a long list of their fixes. We were always in the dark except for the short lists they would tell us in the manual addenda. Now they're being much more transparent. I have to admire this, and I encourage them to keep it up. Looking at this current list, I see so many fixes over such a wide range of classes that it would be almost impossible to do that and test for every possible failure without just releasing it to the larger audience. Give them a chance to fix them all as we find them. DP9.1 is taking a while. That can only mean that they're being careful and more thorough. I hope it means they are utilizing all of our reports to the greatest advantage.

Let's give them a few chances to get these bugs under control. It's not like anyone else can do this better. Every app goes through this. The great thing is that we ARE seeing progress. The list that James posted is factual proof that this app is being polished. Just using DP9 tells me the same thing.

Shooshie

[kassonica]

Even though I've only been toying around in the last few days and actually watching the very helpful motu DP help videos and learning new techniques after all these years DP9.02 hasn't crashed, I noticed a couple of bugs and it seems a tad slow, but here is the kicker, my gut tells me that when the update comes out it's going to really be something and have many fixes and enhancements, HW inserts for one (which I've personally been waiting for years).

the longer the wait, the better it's going to be and this is somewhat historical for motu, hence why I use a stable version for so long.

Yes, it's a bit of a shame, they don't 'seem' to use more beta testers but it's a small company which I really like supporting and when they get it right, it's untouchable IMHO

Anyway back to learning more new things about it

[bayswater]

When V9 came out there were a lot of threads about bugs. But many were not able to repeat them, so it's not clear that they would have caught in beta testing without a large number of testers across a lot of systems and OS versions. I think the lanes bugs were the only ones I could reproduce consistently, and I couldn't reproduce all of them. Some happened on one of my two installations (iMac and MBP) and not the other.

It doesn't seem to me that 9.0 was any buggier than 8.0 or 7.0, or X.0 of other DAWs I've used. For example, Logic update notes have listed several times as many "fixes" as listed above for DP, and it went through several updates with bug fix lists just a long. My brief attempt to trial Cubase 8, and Live 9 found more bugs than I experienced with DP 9.

That said, the problems with lanes baffle me. This had some prominence in the information about the new V9 features, but the problems with it were pretty obvious as soon as you tried them out. Difficult to understand how this could have been tested to any reasonable degree, or if it was tested, why it was released without another round of bug fixes.

How many of the bugs in DP 9.0 would have been classified as critical -- would have stopped people getting work done? IIRC, in most if not all cases, we could simply go back to the way we did it in V8. But still you'd think MOTU would be a little more concerned with the reaction of users to things like the lanes bugs.

[kassonica]

as I'm coming to 9 very late, what are/were the bugs with lanes?

[bayswater]

There were problems actually selecting and copying and pasting automation points in the lanes. I don't see that any more, but I'm still having intermittent problems getting automation points to stay exactly where I put them, problems with smooth ramps turning into steps, and DP adding stray automation points I didn't put there. The work around for me is to use reshaping tools rather than trying to select and move the edit points.

[toodamnhip]

MOTU didn't used to publish a long list of their fixes. We were always in the dark except for the short lists they would tell us in the manual addenda. Now they're being much more transparent. I have to admire this, and I encourage them to keep it up. Looking at this current list, I see so many fixes over such a wide range of classes that it would be almost impossible to do that and test for every possible failure without just releasing it to the larger audience. Give them a chance to fix them all as we find them. DP9.1 is taking a while. That can only mean that they're being careful and more thorough. I hope it means they are utilizing all of our reports to the greatest advantage.

Shooshie

I think we first met each other online with me complaining about how MOTU would never publish bugs. So yes! Progress.

[toodamnhip]

When V9 came out there were a lot of threads about bugs. But many were not able to repeat them, so it's not clear that they would have caught in beta testing without a large number of testers across a lot of systems and OS versions. I think the lanes bugs were the only ones I could reproduce consistently, and I couldn't reproduce all of them. Some happened on one of my two installations (iMac and MBP) and not the other.

It doesn't seem to me that 9.0 was any buggier than 8.0 or 7.0, or X.0 of other DAWs I've used. For example, Logic update notes have listed several times as many "fixes" as listed above for DP, and it went through several updates with bug fix lists just a long. My brief attempt to trial Cubase 8, and Live 9 found more bugs than I experienced with DP 9.

That said, the problems with lanes baffle me. This had some prominence in the information about the new V9 features, but the problems with it were pretty obvious as soon as you tried them out. Difficult to understand how this could have been tested to any reasonable degree, or if it was tested, why it was released without another round of bug fixes.

How many of the bugs in DP 9.0 would have been classified as critical -- would have stopped people getting work done? IIRC, in most if not all cases, we could simply go back to the way we did it in V8. But still you'd think MOTU would be a little more concerned with the reaction of users to things like the lanes bugs.

Lets hope DP9 , bugs and all, wasn’t released because of a desperate need for money in the company? Such a “trick”, can only be used a few times until there’s a revolt. Personally, the 200 does;t bother me. But I hear many users equating the bugs to a bit of a rip off when it comes to having paid for an update.

[bayswater]

Lets hope DP9 , bugs and all, wasn’t released because of a desperate need for money in the company.

Amen (in a most secular way)

[dewdman42]

MOTU is a business with a primary goal of making money. I don't think I would label that as "desperation". If they don't make money, they won't keep working on the product. I'm actually amazed they continue to work on DP at all, I'm pretty certain they make a lot more money from their hardware business.

As to why bugs get through to production releases...well...that is a complex subject and there are so many variables as to why that can and does happen. It can come from the development process, it can come from marketing depts, it can come from the board of directors, it can come from many different places where some deadline is set, and the deadline needs to be met, and perhaps originally slated list of features was a bit aggressive. Lots of different things can effect this ranging from engineering approaches to budget management.

There are pros and cons also to two ways of producing software...one in which great painstaking and time consuming work is done to ensure extremely bug free software, vs another mode where new features are cranked out and the bugs located after the fact. Pros and Cons.

Can't really have it both ways though. If you demand that MOTU release absolutely bug free software, then we will have to wait much longer between releases and receiving fewer improvements to the software..its just that simple. Producing bug free software requires a lot of painstaking and boring work, which is redundant and laborious and time consuming. The more complex the software, the greater that is the case. It means you either have to throw a lot of man power at it, or you have to greatly increase the length of time required to get it done...and the kind of work that is done to ensure bug-free software is not the fun creative kind of development work...its very nerdy, structured, organized and basically boring kind of work. Most people try to strike a balance in the middle between the two extremes, but in that light, a few bugs are going to get through..

I think the upcoming update to DP9 is probably what they really wanted to release initially, with some substantial new features that they just couldn't get ready in time for the initial DP9 release deadline. Just guessing here. "substantial new features", means possibility of bugs and lots of complicated development work to test for and find bugs before releasing to the public. None of the DAW's are immune to bugs... They are going to happen with every release of every software. To me the real test is how effectively the maker can respond to bug reports and fix them.

[csiaudio]

Let's give them a few chances to get these bugs under control. It's not like anyone else can do this better. Every app goes through this. The great thing is that we ARE seeing progress. The list that James posted is factual proof that this app is being polished. Just using DP9 tells me the same thing.

Shooshie

Shooshie I respect you and you're points are taken. I've been using DP since 3.x and of course app's go through this, I get it...but the only reason this is still a topic of discussion is that it's been a YEAR since 9.0 came out!! What are they doing other than coming out with a bunch of hardware?? Look at this forum - it's chocked full of 'crash issues', 'this doesn't work issues', 'it no longer does this issues'....All any of us want is for MOTU to fix their super buggy program and improve their beta system because that is (obviously) seriously lacking.

Peace

[Shooshie]

I get it...but the only reason this is still a topic of discussion is that it's been a YEAR since 9.0 came out!! What are they doing other than coming out with a bunch of hardware??
[...]
All any of us want is for MOTU to fix their super buggy program and improve their beta system because that is (obviously) seriously lacking.

There have been three releases of DP9 in one year. That's a release every four months, averaged. You want it every two months? One month? Have fun balancing that budget for MOTU, not to mention finding beta testers who will stay up 36 hours at a time doing nothing but sending in reports.

And "super buggy?" There are two prominent bugs that I'm aware of that I have to work around: Bounce to disk misses the fades, and Automation Snapshots and working with control points. Yet I am able to do all my work without crashing or losing data, and it's as good as any other work I do. So yes, those are bugs. Super buggy? You've never used super buggy software, or you wouldn't be saying that.

I'm afraid you DON'T get it.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

There's one thing about beta testing that people may not realize. You have to test the ENTIRE APPLICATION for every release. If they fix the automation snapshot and control point issue, they can't just say "test for that." Well, they can, and some companies probably do, but invariably a bug will pop up somewhere else. Where? It could be anywhere. In object oriented programming, code sits in little mini-programs called classes. Those can be called from anywhere, anytime, for reasons known only to the programmer who called them. Fix one, and you have go find every other class that may have a dependency. In the byzantine world of program code, there may be a little link here or there that gets broken when someone comes in to fix something else. Especially if the original programmer did not comment it out, clearly and thoroughly.

Bottom line, you change something, you test the whole thing. Bugs never happen where you expect them to be. If they did, there wouldn't be any bugs. I've beta tested software many times. I even did it for MOTU back in the 1980s. (not today, but I'm starting to wish I was on that team) When I was the main tester for a very complicated app called IdeaKeeper in the late 1990s, I was doing almost nothing else. Of course, I was also designing new features, and we were splitting the profits, so I could do that. But it was a very difficult thing to do, very tedious, boring, and yet every single menu and process had to be checked. There was always weird stuff; for example, changing a font caused a problem in something totally unrelated, but it was quickly fixed when I found it. Testing is much more time consuming than writing code. Or I should say GOOD testing is.

Shooshie

[musicman691]

Let's give them a few chances to get these bugs under control. It's not like anyone else can do this better. Every app goes through this. The great thing is that we ARE seeing progress. The list that James posted is factual proof that this app is being polished. Just using DP9 tells me the same thing.

Shooshie

Shooshie I respect you and you're points are taken. I've been using DP since 3.x and of course app's go through this, I get it...but the only reason this is still a topic of discussion is that it's been a YEAR since 9.0 came out!! What are they doing other than coming out with a bunch of hardware?? Look at this forum - it's chocked full of 'crash issues', 'this doesn't work issues', 'it no longer does this issues'....All any of us want is for MOTU to fix their super buggy program and improve their beta system because that is (obviously) seriously lacking.

Peace

I'll admit there are some issues with the current release of DP9 but nothing that can't be dealt with. There's the couple of things that Shooshie's mentioned and one that bugs the living daylights out of me (the routing of MIDI tracks to vi's sometimes changes on it's own - and yes a Techlink has been filed on this) but super buggy - I don't think so. I'm getting a LOT more work done in DP 9.02 (latest release) than I ever could in PT 11.3.1 so my clients and I are happy and that's what counts.

[Robert Randolph]

Let's give them a few chances to get these bugs under control. It's not like anyone else can do this better. Every app goes through this. The great thing is that we ARE seeing progress. The list that James posted is factual proof that this app is being polished. Just using DP9 tells me the same thing.

Shooshie

Shooshie I respect you and you're points are taken. I've been using DP since 3.x and of course app's go through this, I get it...but the only reason this is still a topic of discussion is that it's been a YEAR since 9.0 came out!! What are they doing other than coming out with a bunch of hardware?? Look at this forum - it's chocked full of 'crash issues', 'this doesn't work issues', 'it no longer does this issues'....All any of us want is for MOTU to fix their super buggy program and improve their beta system because that is (obviously) seriously lacking.

Peace

I'm going to point out that of course a forum will be full of crash issues.

People that don't have issues have no reason to post about the stability, we just talk about other things, and there is plenty of 'talking about other things' that happens here.

[bayswater]

Can't really have it both ways though. If you demand that MOTU release absolutely bug free software, then we will have to wait much longer between releases and receiving fewer improvements to the software..its just that simple.

I don't think anyone demands bug free releases. But clearly something went wrong here that shouldn't have. Assuming a basic IT development process was followed, a new feature like the Lanes would have been laid out in a requirements documents to specify what it has to do from a user's perspective. At some point, ideally at the same time, those who provided the requirement would have documented what specific tests will be performed, and what the result of that test would be before the requirement is considered to be satisfied and delivered to the client by the coders. That should have happened prior to a beta test.