Potential FAQ Question for new DP users?

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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: Potential FAQ Question for new DP users?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Q: I'm moving to a new Mac Pro (the one that looks like a black trash can) from an Atari 512ST. I have a 20MB hard drive (see below) that I paid $500 for. Can I load DP on the HD and still have enough room for a film project I have been asked to do? Also, where can I find a SCSI to Thunderbolt adaptor?

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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: Potential FAQ Question for new DP users?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

ps - Will DP read Editrack and Dr. T notation files. Pro Tools can do that.
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

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Re: Potential FAQ Question for new DP users?

Post by mwalthius »

James Steele wrote:Q: I am a [insert DAW] user who is trying out the Digital Performer demo. In [DAW], I can [desired operation] by [detail workflow using feature very specific to DAW], but I can't in DP? How can I get DP to [desired operation] exactly like [DAW]?

A: Digital Performer is not [DAW].

Hehehe... just joking around... :lol:
I'm glad you're just joking around, because these kinds of things can be very important to people who are looking to switch DAWs, or have already bought DP and made the switch.

Example:

Before switching to Mac/DP around 2003, I had been using Cakewalk on a PC for many, many years. I do tons of MIDI sequencing, and recording of my synths, and that's about it.

There was a feature in Cakewalk's Track Window that was incredibly valuable to me - a simple field for each track where I could enter a positive or negative number. This number adjusted the velocities of all of the MIDI events in that track by the specified amount. So, if I recorded a hi-hat part on a track, and it was just too loud, I could enter -7 or -15 or -22 or whatever in that field and effectively bring the volume down, without affecting the volume of the instruments in the rest of the drum kit.

Well, after getting a Mac and spending $499 for DP, I quickly learned that DP's Track View didn't offer this little parameter adjustment. I couldn't believe it, and tried and tried for a long time to figure out how to do in DP what I'd done in Cakewalk for years.

It never occurred to me in a million years that you could have an "insert effect" basically on a MIDI track in the Mixer where you could adjust, en masse, the velocities of a track. But as I know now, this is how DP does what Cakewalk does with a parameter in the Track Window.

As I recall, someone, somewhere (maybe here) knew what I was talking about, and told me how to do it in DP.

So these things come up, but I doubt that anyone will ever be able to effectively think of all of them. These DAWs are just so full-featured at this point that you'd never think of everything. IMHO, the best way is just to have someone clearly explain what they've been doing in DAW X (and please, don't tell them that they don't "need" to do that particular thing) - and hopefully one of the friendly, knowledgeable folks here will be able to help them out.

It has been a long time since I switched from Cakewalk to DP, but I still remember how much of a hassle it was.

Just my two cents.

Michael
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Re: Potential FAQ Question for new DP users?

Post by bayswater »

stubbsonic wrote:So TIP SHEETS about converting from "logic to DP", "PT to DP", etc. might be useful. Maybe those already exist.
I did one for Cubase a long time ago. After a while, I gave up on it because there really isn't a one to one correspondence between the Cubase commands and the DP commands. You end up with something more general than most people are looking for, and essentially copying out the manual.

And since then we've got Eli Kranzberg's tutorials which are a pretty efficient way of getting started, along with a lot of newer videos from MOTU since DP 8 was introduced.
2018 Mini i7 32G 10.14.6, DP 11.3, Mixbus 9, Logic 10.5, Scarlett 18i8
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Re: Potential FAQ Question for new DP users?

Post by James Steele »

Right, but the bottom line is there is NOT exact feature parity between some DAWs and when people show up and say "I can't find MIDI Objects" in DP, what should I do?" I'm tempted to say "Go back to the DAW you are using if that is critical to you, because DP currently does not have that feature and no amount of decrying how lacking DP is on this board will change that."

My "joke" was decrying posts from people who join this board and their first post is a diatribe about DP not having some sort of feature that makes it "unusable" for them. Sorry. Go back to your old DAW then.
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