In this post, I've labeled the issues I encountered with 'BUG' if it's a bug, and 'DF' if it's what I consider to be a design flaw. A 'bug' is where the software doesn't function as it was designed to, and a 'design flaw' is functionality that you could argue goes against 'normal' or 'reasonable' usage.
DF. You can't run DP in demo mode unless your DAW is connected to the Internet. For people whose DAWs have networking disabled, it's impossible to test the software unless you buy it first, or have a gracious friend who'll let you play around with his copy when he's not using it. It's not uncommon among serious users to find their music machine not connected to the Internet, so IMHO MOTU really shot themselves in the foot with this one.
DF. It takes literally 15-16 seconds for DP to pop up the file chooser window to select a video for import into a project.
BUG. There is no way import a video's audio into DP.
- The soundtrack isn't available automatically. Pressing 'play' right after importing a video results in nothing but silence, even though the image displays correctly in the movie window.
- The soundtrack isn't imported to an audio track in the project either.
- The function 'import movie audio track', accessible from the mini-menu in the upper corner of the movie window, is non-functional. It does absolutely nothing at all.
BUG. Trying to import audio from an avi file into the soundbites window fails, with the cryptic error message: digital performer has encountered an error. os error: internal error: parameter error (-50). This occurs even when you specifically set the file type mask to '*.avi' in the file chooser pop-up. A veteran Mac DP user said this error often occurs when DP doesn't have permissions on the file or folder. This doesn't seem to be the case here, because everything in the project folder - and in fact on the entire projects disk drive - was set to allow 'full control' to 'everyone'.
BUG. Trying to import audio from an MPEG file into the soundbites window results in the error: digital performer has encountered an error. This occurs even when you specifically set the file type mask to '*.mpg' in the file chooser pop-up.
BUG. DP 'loses' movies that have been set in a project if you close the project. For example, in the movie window, do 'set movie…' and choose the video for the project, play the movie, save the project and close DP, then reopen the project. DP either notifies you that it can't locate the movie file, or it thinks it still has a movie file (i.e., the movie window is still black) but there's nothing on the movie track any more and no movie plays back when the 'play' button is pressed.
DF. Displayed names of VST plug-ins with multiple configurations are identical, regardless of the configuration of the VST. For example, there are 4 different kinds of Kontakt 5, each with a different number of outputs. In DP, all display as simply 'Kontakt 5'. (Yes, there is a work-around; you can open up one of each, see how many outputs it has, then modify the plugins menu to reflect that, and repeat for every single multi-variant plug-in you have. Tedious.)
BUG. DP gives you the choice of putting an instrument on an instrument track when you create the track, but the track is created with a blank instrument berth anyway. You then have to choose the instrument once again in order to get it to appear. Adding insult to injury, if you've already named the track, you have to rename it, because when DP puts the instrument on it, it names it to a generic name like 'kontakt-1'.
DF. VSTi's with multiple outs are handled clumsily. The first stereo pair is output directly to the instrument track, while all the other outputs are accessible only if you map them to busses from the bundles window. Only then can you output the audio from outputs 3 and up to an audio track or an aux. OTOH, you can't output the first output directly to an audio track or an aux, you have to instantiate a bus first, then map the output to the bus, then map the bus to an audio track or aux. A homogenous approach would be much nicer. For example, you could give the user the choice of setting up one/all/no outputs to busses (or to audio tracks, or auxes) when the instrument is instantiated, so you're all ready to go.
BUG. Even though the documentation says there's an audition button on the file chooser window, there isn't one.
BUG. The documentation says I can drag a rex file from the browser onto a track in the sequence window. This won't work, not for either rex 1 ('.rex') or rex 2 ('.rx2') files. The mouse pointer simply changes to the 'no' icon.
BUG. When importing a rex (.rx2) file using the 'import audio' function, DP displays the error 'digital performer has encountered an error. digital performer could not find the rex shared library. digital performer will be unable to import files from recycle'.
DF. Changes made to a given audio segment occur to ALL audio segments on ALL tracks if the segments belong to the same soundbite. For example,
1- import audio to the soundbites window of a multi-track project
2- drag the audio to a track
3- drag the audio to another different track
4- slip-edit the audio on one of the tracks. The corresponding edit is made to the audio on the second track as well.
Although there appears to be a work-around for this (for example, using 'merge soundbites' on a single clip to create an independent copy of the file first), this approach is kind of silly. Audio on a given track should be editable independently from audio on a different track, even if the source audio file was originally the same.
BUG. If you want to use hardware monitoring when you track (by selecting 'direct hardware play-through' on the setup=>configure audio system=>input monitoring mode menu), by some inexplicable stroke of illogic, DP turns off the inputs you want to listen to! This is especially frustrating given that I reported this problem a year and a half ago, and it's still not fixed. Admittedly, this only happens if you select the interface's ASIO driver, not the generic Windows audio driver, since DP won't allow direct hardware monitoring with the Windows audio driver (the option is greyed-out). However, almost all users under Windows will use the interface's ASIO driver in preference to the generic windows driver if one's available, because its performance is usually many times better than the generic one. I've been told by a Mac DP user that this phenomenon is probably a side-effect due to DP trying to control a MOTU audio interface. My advice to MOTU's developers here is simple: if it's not a MOTU device hooked up to DP, don't touch it. Don't fiddle with it, don't try to change it or do anything to it - just leave it alone!
BUG. VSTs often cause DP to crash. Admittedly, it's difficult to guarantee smooth operation when you have no control over software that 3rd-party developers may be plugging in to your system; for years, the whole Windows operating system would crash with a 'blue screen of death' for exactly that reason. But apparently there are ways for an audio host to guard against this kind of thing and instead disable the problematic VST, since the most popular DAWs under windows do that.
BUG. When DP crashes, sometimes it still stays in the process monitor, so it's impossible to start it again. Sometimes you can't even kill it with 'end process'. When this happens, you may find a process called 'MOTU_ZeroConf' running which, when you kill it, will allow you to kill DP and restart it. But sometimes that one doesn't exist either, in which case you have to reboot the machine.
DF. DP x64 doesn't support 32-bit plugins. Many people will argue that the developers of 32-bit plugins should just release them in 64-bit format. Point well taken; however, there are boatloads of VST's out there that just aren't being developed any more, and some of them are pretty good. Using a product called 'jBridge' will solve this problem to a degree; it's a great product, and well worth the money. However, bridging 32-bit plugins with jBridge will also sometimes cause DP to crash. This may be a valid design choice on MOTU's part, but given that the top 3 DAWs in the Windows world already support 32-bit bridging natively, it's certainly not a very competitive one.
DF. DP help is practically useless, because it isn't searchable. On Windows, selecting help from the DP help menu doesn't pull up a typical help screen; instead, it causes Internet explorer to launch and display an index page of html installed on the machine. Since Macs don't use the typical Windows help file format, this could just be a result of porting the software from the Mac environment. MOTU developers might be interested in learning that there are tools out there that will convert html files into Windows help files, which might be a good place to start.
Picking at nits
The rest of these are obviously not that important, but worth mentioning in an effort to improve the quality of the software.
- BUG. When dp8 comes up, if an audio device isn't connected, DP reports 'Cannot found [sic] a device'. Admittedly, this is far from being a show-stopper, but it gives me the impression that MOTU's programmers aren't all that concerned w/details and QA can't afford a spelling/grammar checker.
- DF. Commands window. The software implies you can add key bindings to multiple windows and they'll function, but that isn't the case. For example, binding the 'home' key to the 'rewind' command doesn't work until you delete all other bindings of the home key for other windows where it might've been put.
- BUG. Menus. The notation editor doesn't appear on the project menu (according to the documentation, it does). The only way to open the notation editor is by first opening, e.g., the sequence editor and selecting 'notation editor' from the pull-down button at the far upper-right corner.
- BUG. Commands window. Documentation specifies that the key used to clear a binding is 'delete'. It is 'backspace'.
- DF. Various idiomatic windows gestures are ignored (for example, Alt-F4 to close a window, etc.).
- DF. There's no way to make plug-ins float on top of all other windows. This is a godsend whenever you want to A/B your VST and refer back to the track it's on without either having to Alt-Tab back and forth ad nauseum or else squeeze both windows really small, because under windows the window that has focus is on top.
- DF. I'd like to configure my mouse wheel to allow for zooming, dependent on modifier keys. For example, alt-mousewheel = zoom horizontal, ctrl-mousewheel = zoom vertical. There's apparently no way to configure this in DP. My guess is that this feature isn't used on a Mac because Mac mice usually don't have wheels. But in the Windows world, this functionality is pretty much standard.
