Screenshots of DP 2

[splproductions]

I started using DP at 2.7. Does anyone have any screenshots from that era? I found a few small ones doing a google search, but nothing that great.

I just want them for nostalgic reasons. It takes me back to my beige G3 with a 4GB hard drive.

[KEVORKIAN]

Love me some DP 2.7

Very fond memories of some great work done in DP back then. That version was a total workhorse.

That said, you couldn't pay me to go back! DP 7.2 rules!

[cuttime]

I recall that one of our esteemed members did a photo montage of every single version of DP that ever existed. It was quite impressive, and several other members contributed screen shots. I've been searching for a while now, but I am unable to locate it. Does this ring anyone's bell?

[Frodo]

Here's 2.5, fwiw:

[David Polich]

Blast from the OS8 past (or was it 7 or 9?)

[scooter]

That's great Frodo!

After all these years it's really not all that different from what it looks like today.

scooter

[Frodo]

I could be wrong--- but here goes:

DP 2.5 was released in 1999. OS 9 was released late in 1999, so we might have been using OS 8 and OS 9 with DP 2.x.

[cuttime]

Ah! Found Shooshie's version:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... +performer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Flashgerkin, can we stiil get yours?

[Shooshie]

I'm not sure where this file stands in regard to the finished product that Flashgerkin was working on, but this is at least one version of it:

http://homepage.mac.com/shoosh/.Public/ ... P_2008.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(about 23MB download PDF)

Shoosh

[Frodo]

I'm not sure where this file stands in regard to the finished product that Flashgerkin was working on, but this is at least one version of it:

http://homepage.mac.com/shoosh/.Public/ ... P_2008.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(about 23MB download PDF)

Shoosh

New name proposed: "Shoosh-sonian". That is, has been, and will remain a brilliant and time-intenseive aggregation of data.

Thanks, Shooshie.

[Shogun Assassin]

Wow. That OS 9 window takes me back.

[twistedtom]

I started on DP2 I think I had DP2.7 and got my first Mac at the same time (new). The Mac came with OS8 so Yes Dp2 was in OS8.

[KarlSutton]

so is DP the oldest DAW still running strong these days?

[Shooshie]

Still running strong? That would be Pro Tools, due to the technicality of the name. DAW doesn't mention MIDI anywhere in it. The original Pro Tools didn't either.

DP started as Performer, several years before Pro Tools emerged. Digidesign came up with Audiomedia Sound Tools, or something like that. (I once had most of this history pegged in the Digital Performer entry at Wikipedia, but it was gradually edited out by people who do not realize the role in this history that Performer/DP played. Now I can barely remember it!) You could record first two tracks, then four tracks of audio using Audiomedia, a sound card that plugged into Macs like the Macintosh FX, among the first to be expandable. Digital Performer offered one of the first front-ends for AudioMedia that turned it into what we now call a "DAW." It was the first to record MIDI with audio with sample accuracy. I do not know who made the first, or what it was called. It may well have been Performer, but somehow I doubt that. There's always one that someone wrote at a university and ran on a mainframe. Anyway, from this, Pro Tools emerged somewhere around 1991, give or take a year, with a full set of editing tools for two-tracks of audio. Later they added more tracks and mixing. DP continued to grow, offering MIDI with Pro Tools.

So technically Pro Tools was the first Digital Audio Workstation, even though it was extremely limited in what it could do -- nothing like the multi-track studio replacement we think of now when we think DAW. That would have been closer to what Digital Performer was. In any case, Digital Performer itself is older than Pro Tools, but younger than Sound Tools, from which PT emerged. We're talking about months in either direction; not a big deal.

DP with its own audio engine wasn't far behind, but it was limited to 4 tracks of audio. At least you could mix and bounce. Remember, Native Audio was in its infancy, just as digital audio of any importance had been on any PC prior to this. Earlier, there had been a number of "hobbyist" audio apps for the Mac, enabling you to play files of practically any format known at the time.

DP's growth from that point on paralleled the ability of the Mac to process audio. The birth of the G4 was the biggest single step, AFAICR, and would record, mix, and play over 90 tracks of audio (mono), or 45 stereo. It could apply EQ and other plugins to many tracks at once and still operate! Smaller productions of, say, 30 tracks stereo could easily handle lots of plugins. Timewise, this was about the year 2000. This was the first time that it was clear that the writing was on the wall: Pro Tools' days were numbered as the dominant DAW in the industry. Native Audio was rendering unnecessary the whole concept of outboard sound processors. Granted, you could still find added benefits -- smoother controls, for example -- but even Digidesign saw this writing and put out a native version of PT. (Actually, it had been out for some time, acting as a feeder into the expensive versions of PT) But the difference in one area profoundly swung the pendulum toward native audio: cost. At 1/10 the cost of the most stripped-down entry-level PT HD system, and none of the fuss or limitations, Native Audio was clearly the choice for most people. And those who chose $100,000 PT systems had to be wondering why they had made that choice. It was not possible to achieve higher-quality audio with either system. Plugin availability was the chief difference, and even the plugins for PT (TDM format) were twice as expensive as Native plugins.

But PT had a firm hold on its dominant position simply through its installed base. I suspect that the recession may prove to be the nail in the coffin. There's no question about the ability of Native Audio to do even the most complex of albums now. I made my bet on Native Audio years ago, believing that it was the one for which hardware would only improve and come down in cost, while Pro Tools and its incremental "gotcha" system of marketing guaranteed its demise at the first chance. Nobody gets rich paying 10 to 100 times more for their tools (except the toolmaker), and that was clearly where THAT was headed. And did.

I can't do this justice in a forum post. It was an exciting time to live in, and I'll never forget the first time I expanded an audio track in Pro Tools to see the individual waves and their mysterious, detailed shapes, realizing that those were the very shapes that told our ears "piano here," or "flute there" or even more than that, "Frodo's piano here," or "Michala's Flute there," and not to mention "Frodo here," or "Michala there." That sense had taught creatures long before us to distinguish friend from foe, contentment from hunger, night from day (without out leaving the cave). And there it was on the screen. I wanted that. Then I learned the cost. For the 2-track system I was looking at, it cost $25,000 in 1992 dollars. I could attempt to work my way up through a studio and eventually own one, or I could continue making music as a music director/arranger and wait for the hardware to catch up. I did the latter.

The rest, as they say is history.

Shooshie

[mhschmieder]

Oh wow, how did we get anything done back then?

It's amazing how quickly we become used to the luxuries of each new version... yet the workflow philosophy hasn't changed significantly, other than become more flexible with built-in redundancy.

It's also easy to forget how relatively recent the viability of multi-track native audio recording is, vs. MIDI front-ends etc.

I came into DP at version 3.x under OS 9. This is the first I have seen DP 2, and I've never seen DP 1. Does it exist, or was it just a beta?