Never used DP

For seeking technical help with Digital Performer and/or plug-ins on MacOS.

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This forum is for seeking solutions to technical problems involving Digital Performer and/or plug-ins on MacOS, as well as feature requests, criticisms, comparison to other DAWs.
Phil Jeffers

Post by Phil Jeffers »

P.S. I highly recommend getting a dedicated interface for DP. Using a Digidesign interface will work (i.e. the LE line) but it's extremely limited. The core audio driver from Digi is pretty lousy.
Unicorns kick ass
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Post by Unicorns kick ass »

bendrissa wrote:By all means check out DP and other software, but beware of getting itchy feet just because the grass seems greener. What features do you really need which you don't have? Is it really such a drag using a Digi interface? etc.
I'm working on some short films which will require me to buy the dv toolkit $1300 which I don't really want to buy. I have no tech support from digi. I can't syncronize some of my gear without the dv toolkit (which I still really don't want to buy). No RTAS, can't even cheat it with an aux. No problems with the interface, but to 'move up' it would be $1500 (CDN) to get 8 inputs from 4 in the mbox 2. Thats the bulk of my troubles. I'm cheesed about the intense cost of upgrading and being excluded from all the great RTAS plug-ins.
Unicorns kick ass
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Post by Unicorns kick ass »

even moving up to say digirack 003 I'd have to buy pro-tools again and still be spending a ton of $$. The thing that pissed me off the most was finding out that half the plugins i got when i bought it were posted for free downloads on their site.
Phil Jeffers

Post by Phil Jeffers »

Unicorns kick ass wrote:even moving up to say digirack 003 I'd have to buy pro-tools again and still be spending a ton of $$. The thing that pissed me off the most was finding out that half the plugins i got when i bought it were posted for free downloads on their site.
DV Tookit 2 is actually pretty damn cool, same with Pro Tools ver 7.3.1.

Just keep in mind that DP is a very different application. I wouldn't expect it to solve all your problems in one foul swoop. Don't buy DP to save money, buy it because you want a powerful and truly amazing application for music and audio in general.
Kaszper
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Post by Kaszper »

mckelly wrote:For me MIDI is very important. PT cannot even begin to hold a candle to DP in this regard.
Ditto. I liked PT LE, but there are certainly drawbacks and this was the biggest. MIDI in PT is clumsy to the point of obstructiveness, whereas in Performer it's elegant simple and powerful.

Like moving from Windoze to Macintosh, in fact!
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dpdan
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Post by dpdan »

I have PT LE with the audio interface that looks like this...
Image

I did not know DP could use it, not that I need to use it with DP, but sure enough DP performed perfectly through it.

Of course, I can not use PT with my MOTU interface because of Pro Tool's
licensing scheme.

Just thought I would mention that :)
Dan
Phil Jeffers

Post by Phil Jeffers »

Kaszper wrote:
mckelly wrote:For me MIDI is very important. PT cannot even begin to hold a candle to DP in this regard.
Ditto. I liked PT LE, but there are certainly drawbacks and this was the biggest. MIDI in PT is clumsy to the point of obstructiveness, whereas in Performer it's elegant simple and powerful.

Like moving from Windoze to Macintosh, in fact!
Yep, totally - I agree. Pro Tools (HD, LE, MP whatever) is like a machine (and yes, it's very stable, versatile and powerful - in a lot of instances, more stable than DP). It's incredibly easy to use, which is why so many guys love it so much. You don't really need to think. It doesn't stretch you. It's like a multi-tracker and decent virtual mixer. The MIDI implementations only came in with version 5, which wasn't all that long ago. They borrow (or steal) ideas from DP all the time... The next one will be track folders - you wait and see.

Use both; even use others - why not? You're not being unfaithful by doing so (although, don't say that too loudly around here!).

Yes the M-Box (original, mini, 2, 2-Pro etc. etc.) will work with DP (so will "no" interface - just built in audio - without even an iLok!). But you'll be knocking your head against the wall.

I have interfaces for Pro Tools and interfaces for DP (plus controllers also BTW). When I use Pro Tools, I turn on the 002R and Command 8. When I use DP, I turn on the PCI interfaces and MCU. This is extremely stable and besides the odd little problem, life is pretty much non-crash.

Good Luck!
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