What is the future of DP?

[Michael Canavan]

I would call a Big Sur/M1 post from Nov 12, 2020, with no DP update in 6 months, a prolonged issue.

Well to be fair, there are only four DAWs that have M1 native betas or working versions out right now, and one of them Bitwig, was just announced in public beta yesterday. There are at least 15 DAWs on Mac OS. Pro Tools, Live and Cubase are not M1 Ready, of the big players only Logic and FL Studio are.

Fair, I guess. Pandemic, layoffs (probably) and completely new architecture all wrapped up in a nice package for us users. **fart noise**

One thing that makes me think we might get DP11 with M1 support sooner than some is they did spend some time a while ago on the GUI, making it resizable. This I would assume came with some updates to that GUI. The main reason any DAW has a hard time porting is the GUI, the older it is the more depreciated dependancies it has, the harder it is to port, requiring a complete rewrite. We could see DP at the least beat out Cubase and Pro Tools, if not Live to Apple Silicon.

As sort of proof of this, Bitwig and FL Studio are relatively new to Mac OS DAWs making their GUI frameworks that much easier to port. Logic of course has the benefit of being Apples baby.

[dix]

Perhaps check out the webinars pencilina. They always include a generous Q&A. As many longtime users will tell you, even this "hint" that Michael gleaned from the webinars is dramatically more info than DP users usually get historically. For better or worse, it's how MOTU has always conducted their business.

HI Dix,

I'm a user of 25 years and have experienced how MOTU conducts itself. And it's a bummer....

I don't disagree! MOTU's style of communication has always left something to be desired.

Of course this isn't the thread to take up your specific issues, but your point is taken. I highly recommend the webinars. They're conducted by MOTU's Matt LaPoint who may be able to resolve some issues, but at the very least tell you if they're on MOTU's radar.

[bayswater]

Perhaps check out the webinars pencilina. They always include a generous Q&A. As many longtime users will tell you, even this "hint" that Michael gleaned from the webinars is dramatically more info than DP users usually get historically. For better or worse, it's how MOTU has always conducted their business.

HI Dix,

I'm a user of 25 years and have experienced how MOTU conducts itself. And it's a bummer....

I don't disagree! MOTU's style of communication has always left something to be desired.

Of course this isn't the thread to take up your specific issues, but your point is taken. I highly recommend the webinars. They're conducted by MOTU's Matt LaPoint who may be able to resolve some issues, but at the very least tell you if they're on MOTU's radar.

Aside from whatever dissatisfaction there might be with some features, aren't the expectations here a but unrealistic?

Easy to criticize communications at MOTU, but consider what you get with Logic, or any other app. I file a bug report with MOTU, and in a day or two I get a concise answer on whether they can repeat it and whether it's on the list to be addressed, and if not, whether they will report it the developers. I've never see that from any app at Apple, and certainly not Logic.

We don't know when a DP update will be released and what will be on it. Do we know when a Logic update is coming, and what's on it? Or Cubase, or PT? I have been given information of this sort from couple of one person companies, but not not anyone else, and certainly not Apple.

[Michael Canavan]

Aside from whatever dissatisfaction there might be with some features, aren't the expectations here a but unrealistic?

Easy to criticize communications at MOTU, but consider what you get with Logic, or any other app. I file a bug report with MOTU, and in a day or two I get a concise answer on whether they can repeat it and whether it's on the list to be addressed, and if not, whether they will report it the developers. I've never see that from any app at Apple, and certainly not Logic.

We don't know when a DP update will be released and what will be on it. Do we know when a Logic update is coming, and what's on it? Or Cubase, or PT? I have been given information of this sort from couple of one person companies, but not not anyone else, and certainly not Apple.

I think the issue is comparing DP to deep pockets DAWs like Logic etc. I've been spending a good amount of time getting used to Logic again and it's pretty insane what they added into it since even the last update. MOTU is a small company compared to pretty much any of the major DAWs, they need to keep the lights on, and that means a slower pace with updates and upgrades. You have to IMO accept the fact that DP has good bones, that the basics are better implemented, to not spend too much time getting upset that things aren't happening at the breakneck paces that Yamaha and Apple for instance can afford to keep going at.

That said, I think we're at most a couple months away from an upgrade to DP. So hopefully everyone is happy with what they bring, including myself of course.

[bayswater]

hopefully everyone is happy with what they bring

Amen.

[stubbsonic]

I'm wondering about the price-tag of software in a ratio to the rigorousness of (current) development. Then you have to factor in the size of the user base, as well as the likely quantity of paid updates and new buyers.

Also, given the pace of Apple's OS and hardware upgrades, it has to be a painfully difficult business to be in.

[pencilina]

I appreciate and delight in most of what motu has added to DP over the years (more so in the past) and look forward to seeing what's next. My business is made more "painfully difficult" when I'm forced to work with broken tools so I have little sympathy or empathy for them doing such a luckluster job maintaining what exists. I'm going to be positive and proactive and politely write once again to tech support with my list and try and attend a webinar. Sorry if I harshed anyone's mellow.

[Michael Canavan]

I'm wondering about the price-tag of software in a ratio to the rigorousness of (current) development. Then you have to factor in the size of the user base, as well as the likely quantity of paid updates and new buyers.

Also, given the pace of Apple's OS and hardware upgrades, it has to be a painfully difficult business to be in.

The price tag isn't cheap, good developers are expensive, but it only takes a couple thousand users upgrading to support that development. From what I understand most development teams are pretty small, like 3-7 people, the rest of the people working at a company like Bitwig for instance are in advertising, distribution, website maintenance etc. etc. Bitwigs team is like 15 people, so if the average wage was 70,000 then we're looking at a million a year to stay afloat, if they sell 7000 copies of their update plan a year they're good.

Mostly developers tend to get upset at Apple because they're trying to compete for new features and improvements to the core software, and dealing with things like Apple Silicon get in the way of that. The upside is of course people moving to your DAW, plug in etc. if you get in early and they get sick of waiting. Watching it unfold at KVR where a lot of plug-in developers hang out I would rather deal with the guys like Melda who get upset, but tend to upkeep their code so they're already ported to Apple Silicon, then deal with NI who haven't touched their GUI code in 15 years by their own admission, so they're going to take forever to get to Apple Silicon, just like they still don't have resizable GUI's or VST 3 versions of their products, for the same reason.

[dix]

I appreciate and delight in most of what motu has added to DP over the years (more so in the past) and look forward to seeing what's next. My business is made more "painfully difficult" when I'm forced to work with broken tools so I have little sympathy or empathy for them doing such a luckluster job maintaining what exists. I'm going to be positive and proactive and politely write once again to tech support with my list and try and attend a webinar. Sorry if I harshed anyone's mellow.

Your pointing out that the 7.1 panners are broken harshed my mellow a bit. I now see that it's messed up here too. Did you ever start a MN thread on this I could check out? ...i don't want to veer this one off its course.

The 2nd to last post, from a fellow 7.1 mixer, on this thread may offer a solution or a workaround re 7.1 panning. But they too confirm the messed-upness of DP10's 7.1 implementation https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewto ... 93#p578593

[pencilina]

The 2nd to last post, from a fellow 7.1 mixer, on this thread may offer a solution or a workaround re 7.1 panning. But they too confirm the messed-upness of DP10's 7.1 implementation https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewto ... 93#p578593

HI Dix, I commented in that thread.

I also sent a nice tech note with my list of issued and noticed I had sent a tech note about this issue last July (after confirming it's disfunction 2 years prior to that with tech support ,which I referred to as well).

Also, for anyone cares, To my list of broken stuff I rely on in DP I also added this - The ”Set sequence tempo from MIDI” is sort of broken and could be sorted out better. See here:
https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewto ... na#p505931

I'll also say that flexible tempo mapping of rubato recordings is something I use and rely on a lot and consider to be one of DP's strengths. Though the above process works, its not well documented and definitely erratically implemented. I'm sure others will chime in about how they achieve this in other ways but nothing seems as easy to me in my workflow as tapping a along, fixing any bad taps, having DP figure out the tempo map and then inserting any meter changes to clean up bar lines. This is something they could fix up and put in their sales brochures that some potential new users might find more useful then grid loop functionality. "Tap along and let amazing DP figure out your tempos!". Instead most people will try this function and decide its broken, give up and/or decide that they need to record beats in real time and move bar lines or tempo ticks which can be a bit more convolved. Back in the day I used to loop a MIDI cable back into DP to record beats which I think still works. Anyway, enough procrastinating here! I've been proactive. Thanks for hearing my gripes. I hope some of this stuff gets fixed.

[bayswater]

I'll also say that flexible tempo mapping of rubato recordings is something I use and rely on a lot and consider to be one of DP's strengths. Though the above process works, its not well documented and definitely erratically implemented.

I do a lot of this too. You might find the 5 videos on the topic done by Magic Dave helpful. I don't recall where they are but google probably does.

It doesn't seem anyone has really nailed this. Logic does its usual thing and decides things for you. Sometimes it comes up with a good tempo map and sometimes it comes up with nonsense. DP can also be hit or miss, but it gives you a few tools and alternate methods that will result in a usable tempo map if it doesn't come up with something decent out of the blue. The app Capo sometimes does it with what seems like magic, but doesn't always work.

Ironically, MOTU had an app years ago that did this beautifully. You just played MIDI into it in record mode, and when you were done, you had a sequence with a tempo map, quantized, with notation, and all ready to go. I think it was called Freestyle?

[pencilina]

Thanks, I’m sure Magic Dave’s videos contain useful stuff (and it was great when Magic Dave was around these threads and chiming as it seemed at the time like MOTU was interested its users experience) but I’m interested in the software functioning properly with consistence and predictability. IMHO, DP absolutely “nailed it” with the process I linked to and then broke it with DP 10. I can get what I need to done, If my MIDI beats are on then the tempo map generated is dead on. Also, what you described (in freestlye or whatever it was), is, as I wrote before and you probably know, doable with record beats but that requires more time. All it takes is a few steps but DP code’s analysis is slightly off and requires a workaround as I described in the link I provided. This should be fixed or documented properly for the sake of the next person who isn’t familiar with the bugs, needs this feature, has read the manual (which is completely nebulous about about this p646) and/or is in a creative flow, dealing with a deadline or maybe has a client breathing down their neck only to come across another broken feature that makes them want to run to another DAW that seems more capable or better maintained... "The Future of DP".

[waterstrum]

Hey Pencilina...
Are your running DP as Windows or Mac version?
Or both?
Hackintosh?
Any difference in performance?
Looks like you are running a Windows machine.
I gotta know!

[pencilina]

Both. I have a hackintosh desktop and a win touchscreen laptop. If you search my threads you'll find way more about my experience then you probably want to know. The short of it is I tried to migrate to using DP on Windows which, for me, was solidly horrible. I run DP on my laptop when I have to from time to time when necessary. As far as performance, I couldn't get Waves or PSP working in DP on 'doze, DP's fonts looked crappy (and still do in 4k after whatever fix was apparently implemented), its windows were clunky, and DP shredded on 10.14 so I gave up on windows and got back to work. I was never able to have a project with a similar CPU load to do a comparison because my primary plug ins wouldn't function. I haven't booted windows on my desktop for months. IMO, DP might be viable and comparable on windows with no third party plugins hopefully on a machine that isn't hooked up to internet and even better with no other software on it maybe ideally located in a cleanroom for good measure. Others here have had better luck and were very helpful to me.