DP doesn't even get a "notable mention", but newcomers rank on DAW lists

[pencilina]

Where DP10.13 stands though, the UX is all over the place, Clips and looping are essentially a mess, you can't loop the regular MIDI or audio in a track, and you can't edit MIDI/audio in Clips in anything but the simplified Clip Editor. You can't loop MIDI/audio in the Tracks window. So there's this push to get DP to modernize a bit, but it's stopped halfway, it doesn't integrate with the old way at all, and it's not as complete of a solution as any of the other DAWs that do Clips. This goes to even control surfaces, all the other DAWs have multiple solutions to dealing with clips in an interactive way, with Novation and Akai products as well as iOS solutions, DP has MIDI learn, no haptic response from any controller, none. DP's iOS solution DP Control was one of the first iOS controllers, and it's abandoned by MOTU, DOA. So some of it's unpopularity is IMO due to the current state.
these lists are stupid, they haven't made any sense for years, and DP doesn't need their attention to do well, it just needs a freaking update that integrates the UX a bit, gets an articulation management system, MPE, M1 support and streamlines everything.

Well put. FWIW, I agree wholeheartedly.

[stubbsonic]

How does ProTools stack up, by those criteria?

[Tidwells@aol.com]

Here is my take on it: I've been a Performer/DP user for over 30 years, I think. Years ago I started noticing that the Full-Page ads MOTU purchased on the back cover of Keyboard and Electronic Musician Magazine every month were almost always advertising their latest hardware products, NOT the latest upgrade of DP. Maybe one or two ads out of the 12 each year would be about DP. I believe that MOTU made a strategic business decision years ago to focus on hardware product development. Hardware can't be pirated like software. It was probably a smart decision and is probably why MOTU has survived so long. As a consequence, DP has survived all these years.

The harsh reality, in my opinion, is that DP may have never been MOTU's top priority, or at least hasn't been for many years. Right now, there are 28 different audio interfaces advertised on MOTU's website, plus 4 MIDI interfaces and 3 video interfaces. And 1 DAW... And yet, even though it's not their top priority, I've enjoyed using DP and sticking with the same DAW for 30 years. I'm now more skillful in using it than ever. But DP's pace of updates and bug fixes has always been frustratingly slow. I suspect they usually let other DAW makers innovate and then copy popular features for DP. It's the "me, too" innovation philosophy. It worried me when MOTU stopped the full-page ads and I wondered if they were on the brink of going out of business. But I think that was 5 or 6 years ago and they are still here.

Perhaps DP IS the geriatric DAW for senior citizens. Very possibly, if MOTU's hardware business continues to thrive, they will continue to update DP another 20 or 30 years until I am old and dead and I will NEVER have to start over learning a new DAW from scratch. I certainly hope so! So, from my perspective, the longevity/continuity of DP has been more valuable to me personally than having the latest cutting-edge features. Something to think about...

Doug

[Tidwells@aol.com]

Slight correction: There are actually 3 DAW's on MOTU's website: DP, DP Lite, and AudioDesk. Maybe DP Lite will help bring in new users for DP...

Doug

[mikehalloran]

Slight correction: There are actually 3 DAW's on MOTU's website: DP, DP Lite, and AudioDesk. Maybe DP Lite will help bring in new users for DP...

Doug

I think that Audiodesk is dead. If not, it should be.

Performer Lite is the most modern version of DP 4 you can find (yes, really) without some of its functionality (no Waveform editor, for example). Still miles ahead of Audiodesk.

[Michael Canavan]

Here is my take on it: I've been a Performer/DP user for over 30 years, I think. Years ago I started noticing that the Full-Page ads MOTU purchased on the back cover of Keyboard and Electronic Musician Magazine every month were almost always advertising their latest hardware products, NOT the latest upgrade of DP. Maybe one or two ads out of the 12 each year would be about DP. I believe that MOTU made a strategic business decision years ago to focus on hardware product development. Hardware can't be pirated like software. It was probably a smart decision and is probably why MOTU has survived so long. As a consequence, DP has survived all these years.

I think the real reason for priority change was OS X, and Logics acquisition by Apple. It took MOTU a while to get DP ported from OS 9 to x, and in the mean time Apple had inadvertently shoved a big wrench into DPs position as the premier Mac only DAW, this right after the downfall of Studio Vision. MOTU already had a thriving hardware business, and a sea change in how DP was seen by the general audience of it's at that time only OS platform.

I recall seeing how this affected DP in terms of the general population, at least people I knew and crowds I was around. Previous to OS X, DP was in the top 4: Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, DP. Then it just dropped out of the scene. Not completely, but by the time the dust had settled, Ableton Live was in the top 4, and DP was on the way out. Partially because PPC chips were getting skunked by Centrino and Windows, but Logic was now super solid on OS X, so the general audience for DAWs was changing to the PC crowd, and the DAWs on PC.

The harsh reality, in my opinion, is that DP may have never been MOTU's top priority, or at least hasn't been for many years. Right now, there are 28 different audio interfaces advertised on MOTU's website, plus 4 MIDI interfaces and 3 video interfaces. And 1 DAW... And yet, even though it's not their top priority, I've enjoyed using DP and sticking with the same DAW for 30 years. I'm now more skillful in using it than ever. But DP's pace of updates and bug fixes has always been frustratingly slow. I suspect they usually let other DAW makers innovate and then copy popular features for DP. It's the "me, too" innovation philosophy. It worried me when MOTU stopped the full-page ads and I wondered if they were on the brink of going out of business. But I think that was 5 or 6 years ago and they are still here.

I don't know? I think it's hard to truly judge. We can compare the development teams of DAWs and of course it looks like some are bigger, but reality seems to be that most teams are about 2-6 people at any given point. So the real deal is probably more complex, for certain Apple will use the Logic team for other audio related things, and MOTU will use the software developers for their hardware, but there are other things to take into consideration. The older the software the harder it will be to jump through all the hoops that new changes in Mac OS introduce, along with changes in the things that people expect from a DAW.

MOTU definitely need to think about prioritizing DP for a while though, their iOS apps for their hardware are all working, DP Control has been DOA on new iOS devices for years. DP did come out with Clips before Logic did, there's good bones in DP, it just needs a new version soon with something to address up and comers that are taking some of it's base, like Studio One.

Also, there's a sort of weird graveyard on MOTU's site these days. Audio Desk is still listed even though it hasn't been updated since 2014, and it's completely replaced by Performer Lite. Pretty much the rest of their line up is depreciated. MachFive and the rest were pretty obviously collaborations with UVI, with whom they don't work directly with anymore. Falcon a long time ago replaced M53, and the rest of the instruments IMO are also based on UVI libraries, and haven't had updates in years, also all around 2014.

Then there's Apple Silicon, I often use another DAW for electronic music, Bitwig, they're relatively new but they tied their interface to OpenGL, which has beed depreciated on Mac OS for three years or so and probably won't work at all on Apple silicon natively.

[pencilina]

I really hope MOTU gives DP some real attention before it disintegrates beyond being just irrelevant in an increasingly saturated, competitive and interesting DAW market to being not worth it all for them to maintain or us to use.

[Michael Canavan]

I really hope MOTU gives DP some real attention before it disintegrates beyond being just irrelevant in an increasingly saturated, competitive and interesting DAW market to being not worth it all for them to maintain or us to use.

I don't think that's going to happen. I've dumped a lot of thoughts on this in this thread but it bears repeating that it theoretically really only takes about 10,000 customers to keep a DAW alive. Basically 10K (users) /3(years between upgrades) x $200 / 3 developers equals a salary of $222k per developer. That's a break even amount and I think it's entirely reasonable to assume MOTU have at least 10,000 DP users.

Plus, again it should be noted that not all DAWs out there are direct competition to DP. I use Bitwig precisely because it's strengths are DPs weaknesses and visa versa. The term DAW is so dammed loose that ReNoise and Pro Tools are both "DAWS" but no one in either camp would for a moment think of using the other DAW for the purpose they use it for. The crowd for DAWs is now so large it includes recording studios working with orchestras and a guy in his basement making beats with the mouse and a pencil tool in FL Studio.

[pencilina]

I don't think that's going to happen. I've dumped a lot of thoughts on this in this thread but it bears repeating that it theoretically really only takes about 10,000 customers to keep a DAW alive. Basically 10K (users) /3(years between upgrades) x $200 / 3 developers equals a salary of $222k per developer. That's a break even amount and I think it's entirely reasonable to assume MOTU have at least 10,000 DP users.

Plus, again it should be noted that not all DAWs out there are direct competition to DP. I use Bitwig precisely because it's strengths are DPs weaknesses and visa versa. The term DAW is so dammed loose that ReNoise and Pro Tools are both "DAWS" but no one in either camp would for a moment think of using the other DAW for the purpose they use it for. The crowd for DAWs is now so large it includes recording studios working with orchestras and a guy in his basement making beats with the mouse and a pencil tool in FL Studio.

Sadly, you're probably right though I like to be positive. I starting using Bitwig a couple years ago for the same reasons (and adore it as a giant synth). I'm surprised MOTU hasn't catered to DP's strengths. It would have been nice if instead of jumping on the clip bandwagon if MOTU had focused on improving and stabilizing DP's workhorse features that its user base rely on professionally especially in film and TV. It would seem that DP is at best in its sunset years or at worst, dead in the water. Its encouraging for me to remember that SVP had a few years of practical utility after Gibson killed it eons ago (which is when I switched to DP). So when the unicorn's horn deals it final deathblow to the old workhorse leaving its final bloody mark they'll fair warning to learn another similar tool. In the meantime let's hope they can maintain the meat and potatoes functionality we need as the toll of the death bells grow.

[Michael Canavan]

I don't think that's going to happen. I've dumped a lot of thoughts on this in this thread but it bears repeating that it theoretically really only takes about 10,000 customers to keep a DAW alive. Basically 10K (users) /3(years between upgrades) x $200 / 3 developers equals a salary of $222k per developer. That's a break even amount and I think it's entirely reasonable to assume MOTU have at least 10,000 DP users.

Plus, again it should be noted that not all DAWs out there are direct competition to DP. I use Bitwig precisely because it's strengths are DPs weaknesses and visa versa. The term DAW is so dammed loose that ReNoise and Pro Tools are both "DAWS" but no one in either camp would for a moment think of using the other DAW for the purpose they use it for. The crowd for DAWs is now so large it includes recording studios working with orchestras and a guy in his basement making beats with the mouse and a pencil tool in FL Studio.

Sadly, you're probably right though I like to be positive. I starting using Bitwig a couple years ago for the same reasons (and adore it as a giant synth). I'm surprised MOTU hasn't catered to DP's strengths. It would have been nice if instead of jumping on the clip bandwagon if MOTU had focused on improving and stabilizing DP's workhorse features that its user base rely on professionally especially in film and TV. It would seem that DP is at best in its sunset years or at worst, dead in the water. Its encouraging for me to remember that SVP had a few years of practical utility after Gibson killed it eons ago (which is when I switched to DP). So when the unicorn's horn deals it final deathblow to the old workhorse leaving its final bloody mark they'll fair warning to learn another similar tool. In the meantime let's hope they can maintain the meat and potatoes functionality we need as the toll of the death bells grow.

Lol you read something entirely different into what I wrote. DP isn't going anywhere, it easily IMO has 10,000 users willing to upgrade every three years, there are new versions in beta right now. MOTU and the beta testers won't go into detail of course, but they're actively working on 11. I think they need to do Clips right if they're going to do it. I don't do enough film work to find anything wrong with DP in that area, mostly it needs articulation management support like Logic, Cubase, Studio One etc. They do it right and it's by far the best for live performance as well as film composing etc.

Logic has an unfair advantage over all the DAWs, so comparing there is kinda moot, but messing around in Logic I'm still shocked by some weird leftovers from it's days as a MIDI sequencer, MIDI input is severely limited, so the way it addresses MIDI output from AUi's that have their own sequencers is weird, a MIDI instrument slot. This is why DP only does MIDI out from VSTi's. Anyway, DP isn't going anywhere, and although this particular version feels incomplete it's not a v6 level, and we can expect the next version to have a much better UX experience.

[mhschmieder]

Michael, I think you're referring to the overall cost of an employee vs. salary? That's about twice what I would expect salary-wise, and even more, in most locations, in these times, as salaries in expensive places like Boston and SF are "normalizing" due to the availability of cheaper workers from the South and Midwest.

At any rate, the point in rolling those numbers is well taken. I have no idea if 10,000 is a lot, or a little. The audio app that I wrote for my former employer had 35,000 users and could only be used with their data due to the measurement criteria, so that's actually a pretty high number of users for something that couldn't be used with other companies' hardware products.

Too long to go into details, and a bit private as well (NDA). But I continue to use that number as a reference point for other specialized products. Anyway, my product was free, but it helped sales so paid for itself.

[Michael Canavan]

Michael, I think you're referring to the overall cost of an employee vs. salary? That's about twice what I would expect salary-wise, and even more, in most locations, in these times, as salaries in expensive places like Boston and SF are "normalizing" due to the availability of cheaper workers from the South and Midwest.

At any rate, the point in rolling those numbers is well taken. I have no idea if 10,000 is a lot, or a little. The audio app that I wrote for my former employer had 35,000 users and could only be used with their data due to the measurement criteria, so that's actually a pretty high number of users for something that couldn't be used with other companies' hardware products.

Too long to go into details, and a bit private as well (NDA). But I continue to use that number as a reference point for other specialized products. Anyway, my product was free, but it helped sales so paid for itself.

Yeah it's a super ball park number, the largest Facebook group for DP only has 3,800 members, but you could easily guess there are more users than a Facebook group would suggest. Just to point out Logics total dominance though, there are 85,600 members in the largest Logic group.

The point is an established DAW with a loyal user base doesn't need brutally large sales numbers to keep afloat and even be competitive with the big players. There are DAWs that literally have two employees, charge a sliding scale, and thrive.