Future of DP?

[rosindabow]

I have been using Performer (yes, I said Performer, not DP) since version 2. I began my journey in NY and that was the best game in town. Now, I live on the West Coast. Among many things that I do, I teach at a University. I am always trying to get my students to switch or at the very least try DP but it is relatively expensive and there are not many of us out here. I am nearly alone in keeping DP alive. Everyone else tells me I'm nuts and should let it go but I love things about it that no other DAW quite does. I also hate the fact that as far as manipulating audio it feels old and complicated. I am just not sure if I can keep fighting the good fight. Do we think there will be a DP10 with what I consider to be an absolute necessity if it is to stay relevant - a major upgrade to it's audio handling? Btw, I love using Pro Tools with Elastic Audio - simple and elegant, though I hate Pro Tools MIDI. Thank you.

[Michael Canavan]

MOTU actually previewed better audio editing for a future update/upgrade to DP.
By far the most easy answer to this perennial question.

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=62948

I think if there was ever a time when DP might have gone away it was when Logic was first on OSX and DP took a long while to get there. Certainly not after they spend resources on a Windows version etc.

[terrybritton]

I go back to Performer 2 myself on an accelerated Mac Plus. I still cannot believe the MIDI part still is practically the exact same as it was then -- same continuous controllers filter, a scant few other filters, cannot use third party filters. Bleh! At least we can mute MIDI notes now (finally!) So many of the features are the same. That, of course, is why it was comfortable for me coming back to it nearly thirty years later when it came to Windows, but I was a little surprised at how little had indeed been improved upon in that department.

It seems to have been features very slowly being piled upon a very old program that worked well (just like Samplitude is also). I certainly would love to see faster development. This pace is agonizing. The recent update did nothing to wow me whatsoever.

It also would be nice if any of the media writing about "supported DAWs" ever mentioned DP. The fact that it does not appear on so many lists is upsetting. (Well, they usually don't mention Samplitude either!!! They follow a similar drip-feed strategy.)

Eh... don't get me started.

Terry

EDIT - DP's handling of large templates, however, does seem unsurpassed in the DAW field. I don't use them very often, though I do have them set up.

[Michael Canavan]

It seems to have been features very slowly being piled upon a very old program that worked well (just like Samplitude is also). I certainly would love to see faster development. This pace is agonizing. The recent update did nothing to wow me whatsoever.

Just to be fair, DP has been essentially rewritten more than three times; OS9 to OSX; PPC chip to Intel; Carbon to Cacao (OSX graphics standards); and of course OSX to Windows. Personally I don't expect much from updates since they don't charge for them. The last update with features that they didn't tell us about in advance was in v7, it was nice but I don't expect them. I wouldn't expect too many major improvements after 9.1 with the NextGen stuff, but I also expect DPX is around the corner sometime this year or at least announced by Jan2018 NAMM.

Every once in a while I get all jealous of the feature sets of DAWs like Cubase, Steinberg tend to attempt to ad new features in faster than the rest, but it comes at a price, the Mac version had horrible CPU problems at low latencies until recently, and window handling on the PC side was apparently bungled by recent "improvements" to the graphics engine... not to mention no one has ever said "Cubase is rock solid compared to other DAWs" or any DAW for that matter.

Just saying be careful what you ask for. DP isn't bug free by any means, but for the most part I've never had a version of it that was impossible to use, that can't be said for Logic around 7.0, and I avoided 8.0 in Live for that reason, it was a bug ridden mess, partially due to them using their fan base users as beta testers, i.e. they refused to notice that it wasn't ready for prime time.

[James Steele]

This topic again? People have been saying this off and on for what? 30 years?

FWIW, any discussion about MOTU as a company and the future of a product goes in the OT/Theoretical forum. The Troubleshooting/Criticism forum is for actual nuts and bolts type discussion about features or how the app works. Not speculating on the future of the app itself. So; I have moved it.

Perhaps I need to open up a "Sky is Falling" forum. Actually no. That's not what this forum I'd meant for.

[James Steele]

I think if there was ever a time when DP might have gone away it was when Logic was first on OSX and DP took a long while to get there. Certainly not after they spend resources on a Windows version etc.

Agreed. Or with the ill-fated DP6.0 release which was probably the most dodgy version over. By the time 6.02 was released the DP6 reputation was such that MOTU jumped version numbers past 6.1 and went right to DP7.

[James Steele]

Everyone else tells me I'm nuts and should let it go but I love things about it that no other DAW quite does.

Let me rewrite that sentence with a substitution that might help see the issue a different way. It helps me put it in some perspective.

"Everyone else tells me I'm nuts and should let her go but I love things about my wife/girlfriend that no other woman quite has."

[Dear readers, please don't jump me for sexism. I was too tired to construct a gender neutral analogy!]

Kind of a weird example I know. But speaking for myself I look at it like this. If I'm happy, and it's working for me, I'm as likely to get "peer-pressured" out of my DAW as I am a relationship. Which is to say: not likely at all. What others tell me doesn't matter... ESPECIALLY when it comes from people who "don't really know her." That is, they have not used DP either at all, or for so little time, they can't possibly understand its strengths.

My 2 cents.

[mikehalloran]

.... but I also expect DPX is around the corner sometime this year or at least announced by Jan2018 NAMM.

This year ... really?

Trying to recall the number of times MOTU made such announcements about DP other than Winter NAMM... it's still never, right?

They promised us improvements in time stretch/compression in January without announcing DPX. Let's see if they make good on that first. No reason to believe that they won't.

...the ill-fated DP6.0 release...

Oh man.... DP 6... that was as bad as Word 6... yet both products survived.

[terrybritton]

It seems to have been features very slowly being piled upon a very old program that worked well (just like Samplitude is also). I certainly would love to see faster development. This pace is agonizing. The recent update did nothing to wow me whatsoever.

Just to be fair, DP has been essentially rewritten more than three times; OS9 to OSX; PPC chip to Intel; Carbon to Cacao (OSX graphics standards); and of course OSX to Windows. Personally I don't expect much from updates since they don't charge for them.

Actually, I really appreciate their coding work and porting challenges. I am just pointing out that a ton of the MIDI features are the same as they were 26 years ago, and that little has been added. Much of the architecture remained the same. Of course, I would not want them changing stuff around on me when I already liked the features they had, but adding a FEW more filters that most other DAWs handling MIDI inputs offer would really make my day! And I'd really like to be able to control which ports were visible (and taken up) by the program, so I can use MIDIQuest in DP.

Small things but shocking to me they have not been added in 27 years!

But admittedly, what it does do it does quite well.

Terry

[mikehalloran]

It seems to have been features very slowly being piled upon a very old program that worked well (just like Samplitude is also). I certainly would love to see faster development. This pace is agonizing. The recent update did nothing to wow me whatsoever.

I am just pointing out that a ton of the MIDI features are the same as they were 26 years ago, and that little has been added. Much of the architecture remained the same. ...

A "ton" of the MIDI standard has not changed. The last serious proposal was in 2005 and no standards have been adopted. Before that you have to go back to Yamaha in 1999 and Roland in 1992 — still not adopted as standards.

[terrybritton]

I am just pointing out that a ton of the MIDI features are the same as they were 26 years ago, and that little has been added. Much of the architecture remained the same. ...

A "ton" of the MIDI standard has not changed. The last serious proposal was in 2005 and no standards have been adopted. Before that you have to go back to Yamaha in 1999 and Roland in 1992 — still not adopted as standards.

Correct, and a "ton" of the available MIDI features still do not exist in DP. That is what I was saying. It is virtually the same as Performer 2 (or was it 3?) had 27 years ago.

And again, DP steals all my MIDI ports so I do not have a free one for MIDIQuest to use. No option to control that behavior. And because it forces all ports open, I cannot use Native Instruments tools (Maschine, S-Series keyboards) in anything but Multi-Record, because something acting like a MIDI feedback loop occurs in Single Record mode, which is an Omni (including every port in existence) mode. Senselessly, I might add.

Terry

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Zzzzzzzz.....

[terrybritton]

Zzzzzzzz.....

Will somebody please go wake up MIDI Life Crisis. I'm sure he has some work to do.

Terry

[HCMarkus]

The snore was sampled and playing back from DP.

MLC is, I am sure, hard at work.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Not so much that I don't check in on you guys every few hours.

The thread is a little like asking "when will you die?"

Intriguing. Unanswerable. My humor has gotten a bad rap when I insert it into a thread (any thread) and has been called "clutter." Yet silly hypothetical threads that run for tens of pages are ok as long as they're in this section.

Back to sleep... zzzzzzzzz ppppppppp.... zzzzzzzzzzz pppppppp... zzzzzzzzzzZZZzzz... PPppppPPpp... (©2017 MIDI Life Crisis)

(and stay off my lawn!)