DP 6 GUI - What do you think of it?

[monkey man]

I didn't get a box. I've kept 1 box: Descent 1 for keepsake. I do admit the gui on the box is cool. I love the way it looks. I had a whole shrine ready.

I believe in astheticly pleasing visuals. I wanna feel like I'm opperating something on a brand new viper Mk6 or something from the future. PT8 got the idea and really did wonders with the concept. I don't think its the colors themselves but the artistic combo while keeping functionality. I'm no expert, but I can tell if something really works even if I can't tell you why it does. Like a good painting or someone listening to music that is not an audio engineer. They can tell the difference but won't be able to tell you why one sounds better over the other.

Steve
artist, philosopher, consultant's consultant's former roomate's best friend from high school.

LOL! Too funny, Steve.

I've been a Gran Turismo guy from the get-go myself, so I can relate to where you're coming from.

[LittleLeadMen]

I don't know what you're looking for in your color codes, but I've never seemed to run out of colors. I change sets for any reason that suits me. Sometimes it's for contrast so that I can see certain tracks more easily. Sometimes it's just because I want a different look for a while. With QuicKeys, I can never run out of keyboard commands, so I store as many as I want and use the card for my favorites.

Again, you seem missing the point of my criticism. Clearly, you can change your color sets as often as you see fit. My criticism is as follows:

If DP6 if capable of 1000's of colors (which it clearly is), then DP6 should be capable of displaying 1000's of color options simultaneously. In other words, instead of switching your color sets to see certain material more easily, it should be possible to assign the sum total of all of those colors to individual tracks at the same time. Rather than having a set of 12 color spectrums (from color A to shade B), one should have access at all times to all of the colors available, without having the pre-limited "12 sets".

Not sure if I'm making myself completely clear, but basically, when you gave an example of your color pre-sets that you switch between? I would like to see all of those colors available simultaneously. It would be the equivalent, for example, of having the "rainbow" set for my woodwinds, and a "metallic" set for my brass, all at the same time. It's the built-in limitation of the color settings that I have issue with, particularly when I'm running 130-150 tracks. I need a lot of clearly discrete selections to visually differentiate my data in a way that's useful to my workflow. Having 20 shades of light green doesn't help me, but having a set of conventional RoyGBiv colors and Metallics, etc, is helpful to me.

As for this:

Seems a shame to find such disappointment in such trivial matters; I mean, it's not like MOTU didn't provide us with the ability to use thousands of colors, and Note-Off velocities are the kinds of things that someone could manage not to encounter over a 30 year career. It's just really scraping the bottom of the barrel when you find fault with the way they implemented these things.

That's really uncalled for. The thread specifically asks what DP users think of the new GUI. Those examples are things that I deal with on a regular basis and they bug me. They're not deal-breakers, but they annoy me when I'm working, so if asked, I'm going to tell you what I think of the GUI. Again, MOTU provides the ability to use 1000's of colors, but not at the same time within the same preselected color set. There's a substantial difference between those concepts.

I can't understand the defensiveness of some posters on this site over DP. It's a commercial program. It's got a lot of great features, but it isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There are plenty of legitimate complaints and/or suggestions that professional users have and would like to see implemented in the future.

[monkey man]

I've asked for this "full palette" ability, albeit only here on the board, for some time, LittleLeadMen, and fully concur with your beef.

Of course, I too have had to repeat colours over and again whilst doing my best to avoid adjacent matches. Even though it still looks purdy, this is impractical as it means that a quick scan of all tracks/track types requires that I pause at strategic points in order to determine whether or not I've chosen the correct instance of a given colour. This means I've found myself counting, for instance, the number of times I see purple whilst scanning from, say, left to right in the mixer, to ensure ending up in the appropriate area.

I've tried creating numerous colour sets, but the 12-row limitation of the interface has stifled any potential progress.

[Crashdown]

After 10 years on DP....
I'm beginning to HATE IT! Crashing randomly.... bad editing workflow.... heavy fades... beachballs.... Artifacts in pitchshifting, and bouncing... uncomprehensive beat detection and senstivity... incompatibility with some plug-ins... incompatibility issues to macOs systems using other languages then english, etc... Horrible new GUI. What else can go wrong??

I saw Protools 8 and I'm green of envy...! It Looks Amazing! Ready to work on it for hours.... on DP you now get tired after 15 minutes looking at it....

I HATE IT!!!! Period.

Anyone recommends a good alternative DAW, other then ProTools? I've been looking at Cubase........

I'm done with Motu.

[Bill O'C]

I've got Cubase 5. Haven't delved too deeply into it yet, though.

Cubase 5 is still in its infancy (v5.0.0). On the Mac, it puts more of a load on the CPU and the graphics than DP6. There are problems with the new automation implementation, and residual problems from v4 with mute automation and solo/mute functions in some circumstances--and that's in addition to some initial bugs (in that respect, at least, it's a very clean release).

It incorporates Yamaha's Variaudio pitch correction system, which is quite good and much like Melodyne. It's got a new rhythm machine, a beat masher, convolution reverb, and perhaps the potentially the most interesting, "VST Expression," which purportedly enables you to simplify instrument articulations, use existing articulation maps, or creating your own.

As usual, it's a Steinberg release that would be utterly fantastic if it wasn't so problematic.

[dpdan]

I still think DP is so much less hassel to manipulate things compared to Pro Tools, when it is not taking a break, but I too don't know how much longer I can tolerate waiting 30 seconds while DP freezes and then chooses to come back to life, I mean this is 15 stereo audio tracks, with 12 or so MOTU plugins, four Altiverbs and .......... running on a MacPro 2.8 ghz quad core Intel Xeon machine with six gigs of ram.

And I know there is no law that says "ALL AUDIO METERING SHALL BE INDUSTRY STANDARD GREEN" but man these meters are so professional looking, by the way, it takes Pro tools LE exactly 1 second to open the same project and when I choose close project the three screens IMMEDIATELY go to the desktop. No crashing or....... Digital Performer has unexpectedly quit.

Look at this beautiful GUI... let it keep playing even though it looks like it is over, something got messed up with the screencast... but it's free so who cares.
http://screencast.com/t/4YYBtBHa

All the negative pulling down this ugly GUI of DP6 has done to the MOTU guys, and everyone trying to "roll their own" geez

Dan

[Tritonemusic]

Hey Dan,

This is the reason, for the first time, I haven't immediately upgraded to DP's latest version. I thought I'd feel "left behind" but now I feel lucky. I'm using PT LE 8 too, and am loving every minute of it. I never thought I'd say that but it's true. I agree with you completely. At least I have DP 5.13 which is quite dependable. I haven't had PT8 for very long but, so far, it's been functioning perfectly. The GUI is fantastic and a pleasure to work with. I'm still a big MOTU fan; not when it comes to DP6, though. That's not to say that I don't have hope for a future version of DP that I'll embrace. Performance and stability are two things I can't comment on because I don't have hands-on experience. The GUI, alone, is holding me back; not to mention the countless posts from reputable and respected members of the forum, citing all of the obstacles and difficulties they've encountered.

I'm just sharing my honest thoughts. I realize that will annoy some people. Oh well.

[kats_corner]

Actually, if anyone recalls my post way back when, re: some specific issues I had with the interface/etc, here's a new update: I just downloaded/installed the latest maintenance update a few days ago (6.02 - I know, I'm a little late on this, the update came out early Feb).

* My issue with the Audio Performance pane is now gone, the labels and meters are on the same line again.
* 32-bit float now appears to be working fine.
* I have not had a hang/crash so far with 6.02 (used to get them a LOT on 6.0[1] when just moving markers etc).
* The information bar one-liners now appear to allow further width sizing to allow more time formats to appear while still displaying the desired parameter value.
* The whole thing runs faster on the same architecture, same projects - and my laptop stays physically cooler, further indicating that she's not being hit as hard now. In fact, The CPU load indicator generally runs oh, if I had to guestimate, about 25% lower in 6.02 than it had under 6.0 and 6.01, which leaves me more horsepower to use for actual work.
* I've also noted a few additions/improvements to the prefs menus, and so forth - most enjoyably the fact that the audio files prefs window now fits on my screen! It used to be too tall, and I had to switch to a different prefs pane in order to hit the OK button.

For any of you still running 6.01 and having problems, consider giving 6.02 a whirl. For me anyway, 5.13 was a real joy to use; 6.0 was a handful of hurt, and hit my machine pretty hard too; 6.01 still sometimes got downright maddening and still hit my machine pretty hard; 6.02 is actually enjoyable to use again, with faster user interface response and cooler operating temps to boot.

All in all, the people at MOTU in my opinion are doing a fine job fixing the little "oops-es" we've all been experiencing, and they seem to be trying to keep user requests/suggestions in mind along the way. Obviously not everything requested has been done, and some of it might not even be easily done. But it sure looks to me like they're trying to cover as many issues as possible. I for one appreciate their work, and the power of the diverse capabilities they've packaged into a single app for those of us who need it. Thank you, MOTU!

[dpdan]

nice post kats,
I too agree, and can relate to your experiences with 5.13, 6.0, 6.01 and now 6.02.

I really do appreciate the folks at MOTU and I am trying my best to learn Pro Tools 8,
not because I am replacing DP... NO WAY! But my last post was an outburst I guess because
I just feel like,,,,, if Pro Tools can do that, why the heck can't DP?

The absolutely amazing thing to me about Pro Tools is how unbelievably fast EVERYTHING works.
I don't wait a nanosecond for anything. In Pro Tools, I can open, play, stop, close and re-open and play the same Pro Tools project in the same amount of time it takes DP 6.02's same project to open.

I just don't get it.
MAN! if DP ran like that I would be soooooooooooo happy.
I really do think it has everything to do with the level of knowledge and experience that the engineers at Digidesign have compared to what MOTU has. That's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Dan

[Crashdown]

the gui is horrible... the fades still too heavy.... again.. after 10 years using DP...

WHAT AM I STILL DOING HERE???

Please MOTU!! Get a grip on that GUI... ProTools looks just AMAZING!!!!!

I'm sorry that I'm being so hard on MOTU... but I just feel I've thrown away 10 years of DAW Experience...

[kassonica]

the gui is horrible... the fades still too heavy.... again.. after 10 years using DP...

WHAT AM I STILL DOING HERE???

Please MOTU!! Get a grip on that GUI... ProTools looks just AMAZING!!!!!

I'm sorry that I'm being so hard on MOTU... but I just feel I've thrown away 10 years of DAW Experience...

Um Good question what are you still doing here?

If your that unhappy I'd go with pro tools.

[jpiscitello]

I'd say overall the transition is a typically rocky one for a major version upgrade. As often happens, many subtle behaviors which users rely upon are broken, and it takes time to learn new workarounds. And it takes a few versions before things are truly stable.

Here is one example I'd love to see fixed in 6.03: Double-clicking on the conductor track in the Tracks Overview no longer brings up the conductor track in the MIDI edit window.

Instead, you get the MIDI tracks that were showing last time you were at the MIDI window. It makes no difference what preference you have for the Track Selector.

To see the Conductor track, you need to go to the tab at the top right of the MIDI window and select the conductor track from there.

It's irritating when a long-established behavior (and by long I mean like 10 years ago) - double click a track, open its edit window - breaks down in the new version.

I held out on 5.13 as long as I could, but I needed the 23.976 frame rate feature. So I work around it and hope for a fix!

[jpiscitello]

the gui is horrible... the fades still too heavy.... again.. after 10 years using DP...

WHAT AM I STILL DOING HERE???

Please MOTU!! Get a grip on that GUI... ProTools looks just AMAZING!!!!!

I'm sorry that I'm being so hard on MOTU... but I just feel I've thrown away 10 years of DAW Experience...

I'm on DP6 for like 2 days now - I think some things are better. I'm not sold necessarily on the new control panel layout, but the main thing is that I believe the overall graphic rendering to be performing much better on my G5 dual. Things seem to draw more quickly.

My custom commands merged smoothly. There are a few things - like double-clicking on the horizontal and vertical dividers to quickly hide and re-activate them - are helpful.

I am suspicious still of the handling of VIs - I am getting beachballs a bit (though I think it's because I updated to Kontakt 3, which is doing lots of virtual purging which is getting in the way - I am monkeying around with the plugin's "reload al samples" option to work on that).

However I am also suspicious of memory & CPU handling - my project brought forward is getting cracking and popping from my VIs which I didn't have in 5.13. Again, this may be due to Kontakt 3, and the fact I also updated to Leopard. So I'm keeping an eye on that. I think things will settle down in a month or two - man I wish I hadn't had ot do this in the middle of a project!

[ssfm]

the gui is horrible... the fades still too heavy.... again.. after 10 years using DP...
...

What does that mean, "the fades still too heavy?"

[Crashdown]

When slicing up a few drumtracks using beatdetection, if I drag the files and put crossfades on all the tracks at the same time, the back processing window opens and the processor take a lot of time to process those fades. If I save and quit the project, in that state before merging those fades, It will take 15 minutes to open up...( I'm on a Mac Pro 2,66 5GB Ram...)

Sometimes DP just cannot handle all the fades, and "quits unexpectedly".... there goes your work down the drain...

The fades are still too heavy on the processing.