DP 6 GUI - What do you think of it?

[martian]

well whatever it is, DP has never been exactly user friendly, myself coming from Protools I find it hard to handle

Coming from DP, I find Pro Tools hard to handle. But I don't think that's due to any inherent difficulty with PT.
.

I think in terms of audio editing - PT is way easier and it has the more straight forward approach .... snap things to cursor and switching to volume automation being 2 work flow friendly things off the top of the head..

BUT DP is amazing and can run circles around PT in some ways.. faster than realtime bounce to disk...

oh is my dream that I can cherry pick from the apps I like and pay DP prices... the rest I shall use to upgrade my whisky bottles..

[James Steele]

What's been happening lately? Has the Emperor fired up his Ray Gun of Trolldome and zapped us?
Why all the angst? I'm sure MOTU's heard the noise by now.

I thought this was a poll, not yet another opportunity to vent. Having got that off my chest, I'll get down off my high horse now. Anyone got a ladder?

*EVERYTHING* is an opportunity to vent if you're unhappy. I think one thing I'm seeing though is a lot of people want to give it a chance. Users say they *prefer* DP6 to DP5 by 49% to 42%. They just say that it needs work, which is something almost all of us agree on. I'll bet MOTU is working on making improvements to it as we speak.

The key point I see from it is very few people subscribe to the "it wasn't broken, don't fix it" view, desiring a retreat to DP5. And as with many things, the amount of noise made by a particular viewpoint isn't always a good indication of numbers.

I think what we see on this board is that GUIs are an issue that people feel very strongly about and and issue that no company is going to come close to making everybody happy. I eagerly await 6.01 or 6.1 or whatever the NEXT version will be.

[monkey man]

It'll be 6.01, dammit! How many times do I have to tell you peeps?
Glad I took that opportunity to vent, James; thank you. LOL

I agree. It sure has been enlightening watching the board since its release; I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Thank you for bringing me up to speed on the pole, James; it was, as you implied, impossible to get a feel for where the numbers stood.

FWIW, I predict that the numbers will creep into more positive territory as '6 veterans get 'round to implementing the small number of super-effective tweaks posted on the board (basically trashing prefs except for user-specified "sets") and the Brits and Aussies get to jump on board during the next week or two. We late comers will have the advantage of being able to insure against most disasters thanks to our 'Cornie brothers across the pond.

Thank you for the poll man. Seems timely.

[James Steele]

It'll be 6.01, damnit! How many times do I have to tell you peeps?

Yeah... based on MOTU's pattern, I would tend to agree with you. My guess is it will be 6.01. I hope it comes SOON!

[Tonio Ruiz]

It'll be 6.01, damnit! How many times do I have to tell you peeps?

Yeah... based on MOTU's pattern, I would tend to agree with you. My guess is it will be 6.01. I hope it comes SOON!

Hey James, do you have any sort of comunication with Motu what so ever??? I mean, would you know about releasing dates or upgrades and stuff???

[monkey man]

It'll be 6.01, dammit! How many times do I have to tell you peeps?

Yeah... based on MOTU's pattern, I would tend to agree with you. My guess is it will be 6.01. I hope it comes SOON!

Dammit and dash it all, how many times... oh, you agree?

My guess is it'll be within a month from now, if not sooner(!), James. These initial, more "urgent" patches tend to follow rather quickly in my experience; MOTU probably implements the most critical, quick-to-fix patches in these updates. 6.1 should follow several months after that, and introduce some new features (and VIs?) as well as perhaps addressing more esoteric, slower-to-implement changes such as GUI tweaks (re-introducing missing buttons?). Either way, I do feel that the 6.01 patch will prove to be the "must have" update for now.

If it's a worthwhile patch, we could well see 6.11's being super-stable, even though 6.1, as I suggested, will likely introduce one or two extras. This would imply to me that MOTU is ahead of the game vs where it was for the DP5 series, as 5.12 was laughable (did anyone manage to get it to run glitch-free for an extended period?), and as we all know it wasn't 'till 5.13 that things settled nicely. I well remember too that 5.01 messed up all my sysex dumps, as what you spat out of DP never matched what you recorded into it. Yikes! I sure hope we've come a long way since that, and the reports are starting to suggest that potentially at least, we have.

Monkey musings. They're worth a fortune somewhere I'm told, but I've not seen evidence of this anywhere yet. Still, best to keep an open mind.

[Monkey chooses a quiet corner of the room and proceeds to remove his skull flap and peer into the depths therein...]

[James Steele]

It'll be 6.01, damnit! How many times do I have to tell you peeps?

Yeah... based on MOTU's pattern, I would tend to agree with you. My guess is it will be 6.01. I hope it comes SOON!

Hey James, do you have any sort of comunication with Motu what so ever??? I mean, would you know about releasing dates or upgrades and stuff???

LOL... MOTU keeps secrets better than the CIA!! I have NO IDEA!

[Timeline]

I think they learned that from Apple, don't you.

[BobK]

I voted 4, but could almost as easily have voted for 5. I don't mind change necessarily; in the past I've found, MOTU's changes to the DP GUI mostly subtle, tasteful, and classy. But with DP 6 they seem to be moving in a direction I can't stand. I sent them a 5-page hard copy letter a couple of weeks ago. Probably just pissin' in the wind, but at least I spoke up. Will consider posting a condensed version when I have the time.

One thing I realized only yesterday is that the icons in the track info bars in the SE have been changed. In DP 5 they each had a more distinctive look; now they're all the same size and shape.

play-enable button:

used to be: raised, triangle-shaped button; now: 2-d square button


rec-enable button:

used to be: raised, round button; now: 2-d square button


track settings menu:

used to be: raised square button; now: 2-d square button


input monitor button:

used to be: raised square button w/more convex surface than track settings menu button; now: 2-d square button


It's not a huge issue, but in a subtle, gut-level way I think these buttons are now harder to distinguish, requiring just a little more unnecessary effort. Another case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

[Klaus]

If DP 6 is using similar skin as the CueMix FX, I suggest channel - based colors, and thick and big channel naming...
Ugly maybe but effective
I even would take vertically writing, inside the level display
but big letters, please...

Best to all

Klaus

[thelonecynic]

The new layout is gonna take some time getting used to.

Some of the things I miss.
Button that moves the active screen behind inactive screens.
The chunks selector integrated with the control panel. Not that I mind the separate palette, but I would have loved redundancy and retain the facilities that were hidden in the control panel.


Mostly, I miss how the GUI design resembled 3-dimensional hardware, especially the mixing board. DP5 had the most attractive mixing board of the versions (and the meter bridge looked great). Truthfully I picked DP since 2.7 over Cakewalk Pro Audio, Studio Vision Pro, Logic Audio Platinum, and Cubase for the very 3-D hardware-like graphical resemblance.

DP6 graphically seems a bit too simplistic and makes me feel like I'm working on a juvenile shareware app. I suspect the new design helps the app perform faster. I would hope that a DP6.01 updater would provide options to return to 3-D.

[Klaus]

Skins could simulate actual hardware, i.e. SSL, Midas, Crest...
and then : Actually sound like

Klaus

[monkey man]

Ha! Now there's an idea, Klaus: Theme-Oriented board colouration.

We could have the choice of a range of classic mixing hardware, as well as a "neutral" option. I'd be down with that, and GUI changes needn't be a part of it; the colouration options would be sweet, methinks.

[stephentayler]

Personally I really like what ProTools has done with its mixer, where you can apply the track's colour to the entire channel strip. You have control over how light or heavy the tinting is. It really helps separate or group sections of the mix, especially in larger sessions, really makes things obvious at a glance.

Now if DP could do this that would be great!!

kind regards

Stephen

[Spikey Horse]

Personally I really like what ProTools has done with its mixer, where you can apply the track's colour to the entire channel strip. You have control over how light or heavy the tinting is. It really helps separate or group sections of the mix, especially in larger sessions, really makes things obvious at a glance.....

+1

I already suggested this in some other thread (not that I'm accusing you of copying!), this would be far more useful than being able to colour waveforms IMHO.