"Someone else will report it."

[James Steele]

Just a thought...

I know many of the users here do this, but if you do encounter a bug in DP or other DAW or plug-in, if you can, please do contact the plug-in developer and let them know. I've done some testing here and there for different companies, and sometimes I encounter bugs and say to myself "Surely someone would have reported this by now." Sometimes some bugs only manifest under just the right conditions with a very specific combination of hardware and software, and realistically many developers don't have a large enough pool of beta testers to cover all those combinations and bugs will make it into release software.

Again... it's natural to encounter something and think "Someone else will report it," but I'm starting to suspect that a lot of times that assumption is incorrect. I think if more of us contacted developers about these issues, the software would get better and our music making would become more enjoyable. It just takes a little bit of time to go to a developer’s website and make a report, hopefully including key details that will help them track it down. This may even be more incumbent on us as DP users, since many companies may not test on DP, and because there may be fewer of us, the odds that "someone else" has both encountered the issue AND reported it goes down significantly.

I'm not apologizing for, or absolving developers of their culpability when longstanding bugs are reported and fixes don't seem to happen. But I know there have been a few times where I've gone back and forth via email or on forums with a developer reporting a problem, then trying something they ask me to do, then reporting back the results. Sometimes it may take a few hours spread over a couple of days, etc, and it's a hassle, but it's going to make things better for other users if occasionally we dig into an issue a little bit and provide valuable feedback to a developer. Again... seems like this is even more needed for we DP users. I know some developers may think "Well... this AU plugin works in Logic... our job is done here." Wherever the responsibility for a problem lies, be it MOTU or a plugin developer, if you can, take a few minutes and report the issue. Again, not saying developers should treat end users as testers, but for many reasons, sometimes that happens and is difficult to avoid. Nor are we obligated to act as testers, but seems like for the good of everyone... to borrow an old phrase ... "if you see something, say something." Don't assume a bug has been reported.

[HCMarkus]

Amen.

[labman]

Great post james.

[EMRR]

Yes!

I have a running list on DP11, waiting to be sure behaviors are truly from new build, nothing legacy I’ve dragged forward.

[Michael Canavan]

My tech link list is full, and if there's a plugin involved I contact the developer.

I'll be flatly honest here, for years now I'm not that happy with DP's overall stability. It's not great, I routinely have had DP save a new version of a project after a hard crash 4-6 times before it's finished, if not more. Besides the fact that I like the workflow, the fact that MOTU have tech support that addresses bugs is what keeps me with them over Apple and Logic. I don't even know how to report a bug with Apple, they just seem to think they can read the reports if it's a hard crash and that's good enough. I've reported bugs to MOTU and had them flatly state it's being fixed in the next update. That means a lot to me.

[mikehalloran]

I confess to not being as good about this as I should.

With MOTU, though, I sometimes feel as if I'm tilting windmills—especially with Performer Lite where page after page of the documentation is still flat out wrong.

I'm on the phone a lot to Apple lately where I am so often treated as the only person in the universe experiencing and often receive incorrect advice on how to deal with (again, fill in the blank).

[Michael Canavan]

I confess to not being as good about this as I should.

With MOTU, though, I sometimes feel as if I'm tilting windmills—especially with Performer Lite where page after page of the documentation is still flat out wrong.

I'm on the phone a lot to Apple lately where I am so often treated as the only person in the universe experiencing and often receive incorrect advice on how to deal with (again, fill in the blank).

I tried to get help on a networking issue from them recently. Macbook Air with Thunderbolt cable supposedly blistering fast networking that way. Mac Pro with a Thunderbolt card added. after an hour or so, on the third representative after being moved up to the super genius, who still barely knew anything about TB networking, I knew he was just looking for a way to blame some other thing besides the software, and when he found out it was a third party TB card on an obsolete Mac, we were done.

Tilting windmills is good though. I love MOTU but I sure wish they hired a cleaning lady every once in a while, it's just weird to see MachFive 3 on their site with Falcon at 2.8.

[mikehalloran]

I checked on my Tech Links for the -43 File Not Found and Unable to create User Templates in PL issues. Both are still In Progress so I updated with new information.

For the PL issue, the documentation changed. I let them know that the new info on pg 252 is 100% wrong. For the -43 problem, I updated to let them know it's still doing it in Ventura with DP 11.21.