NAMM REPORT (2nd hand): DP SIX!!!!!!!

[pcm]

Hey, did anyone at the show happen to notice if those little yellow help balloons reared their ugly heads or were magic Dave's fingers too nimble?
Maybe that's where he earns his nickname.

No such luck. They're still there.


Shoosh

Pro Tools has a toggle in preferences. In DP, the tip off obscures the very thing you are trying to adjust. To not include this as a preferences would make one wonder if they actually use this thing themselves.

[lwilliam]

I think this got buried earlier when I originally posted the NAMM pics, but Dave said the upgrade would be $199 for anyone who had EITHER 4.x or 5.x. He wasn't sure how far back the "grace period" would be for a free upgrade from 5.x, but he did mention that there would be a grace period.

Yeah...there was no "MOTU security". Lots of people were taking snapshots. They do appreciate it if you don't use a flash, but otherwise it's free publicity for them...gets a "buzz" going about the product.

Also, Proverb and the MW Levelor are included, but Electric Keys is separate. I'm pretty sure Dave told me it would go for $299 MSRP.

[pcm]

Does anyone else think it strange that the transport control is still not part of the consolidated window? (At least as a preference.)

[Timeline]

Pro Tools has a toggle in preferences. In DP, the tip off obscures the very thing you are trying to adjust. To not include this as a preferences would make one wonder if they actually use this thing themselves.

This is exactly why we need to write, spaek, complain and protest for MORE PREFS

[Dubnick]

Does anyone else think it strange that the transport control are still not part of the consolidated window?

You know what's funny is that a lot of Logic users where not happy with the transport being part of the consolidated window in Logic 8, to the point where it was one of the first things modified in 8.01. Different strokes, huh?

[Shooshie]

PS ; I pray for a tap tempo from external MIDI controller

Would you explain what you mean? I use tap tempo from my Kurzweil keyboard quite often. You have to know the workaround to get it to work properly, but it's pretty simple. Once done, it's pretty much flawless.

Workaround:

1) Set tempo to Conductor Track.
2) With the Pencil Tool, write an initial tempo of 400 bpm (the max to which DP can be set)
3) Continue with your regular Tap Tempo setup and use.$
4) Anywhere you need to start again, repeat steps 1 & 2 at the point where you will begin.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

Does anyone else think it strange that the transport control is still not part of the consolidated window? (At least as a preference.)

The Transport Window is not resizable and would not play well with the other panels in the Consolidated Windows. If it could be shrunk and expanded like the other windows, that would be a good idea. As things are, however, I prefer having it external to the CW. I do wish we could make it appear and disappear, like the OSX Dock, by moving the mouse up to its corner, or something like that.

Shooshie

[macguitarman]

Was at NAMM yesterday, DP 6 looks great, man DP 5, I just got, another $200.00.

- Pro Verb looks great, if one can truly import any audio files as an IR and Pro Verb "learns" the reverb from that track, this is awesome, I have some solo guitar reverbs from guys like Preston Reed, Ed Gerhard, Pierre Bensusan, Earl Klugh. Can someone confirm.

Getting Real and proper reverb on solo guitar is a challenge to say the least, guys are using high end Lexicons with very cool settings, reverb only on the tails where there is space and really no reverb on attacks, etc. Can take time to program.

This alone is worth DP 6

- LA-2A, Master Leveler, I was thinking of getting L1 Maximizer, but 300 bucks plus for it, and is it really that musical. The LA2A is waveform / musically based, so it is working based on the the actual musical waveform and my solo fingerstyle guitar playing has a lot of dynamics, hard settings in any compressor completely kill any performance (why I totally avoid any compression on my solo guitar tracks) hopefully this is what I can get, if anything like a real hardware LA-2A.

-Final Cut support, I just took a 3 day class on Logic, for better Final Cut Pro workflow. This feature could be pretty cool. I used to work at Apple as a QA engineer on Final Cut Pro 4, and FCP it is not designed to really do any audio / music editing mixing, at all. This whole idea of taking bounced audio files from FCP and bringing them into DP, doing a mix , plugins, etc. and send back to DP, is horrible workflow.

What would be better is to "send" your audio from FCP to DP, do your narration, music, mix, etc and send it back to FCP, as 2 track audio, and then do your output from FCP to tape, Compressor, DVD SP. This is what SoundTrack Pro can do.

The deal is your final audio mix is part and included with the FCP project, otherwise, you have to be very organized in your workflow folders as to where your audio is for a certain FCP project and if you do many projects it can get confusing fast. Does not look like that's what this is, its just XML data to and from FCP and DP.

Apogee has a cool thing that works well, but you need Apogee Symphony to do it, an that is VBus. Bus any audio (multiple tracks) to and from any Core Audio app, even simultaneously. So you could take say 8 tracks of audio from FCP and bus them to DP 6 or Logic Pro 8 (even simultaneously) and all 8 tracks are recorded, sample accurate (time code accurate) in both apps (if you wanted to). Do your edits, plugins, mix, bounce to 2 track or surround if you wish and send back to FCP. Do your output to tape, Compressor or DVD SP.

this is awesome and I am totally on board with this for FCP, Logic, DP and Apogee and am recommending it my clients here in Hollywood / Los Angeles, CA.

[macsterdam]

could anyone tell me if VI's now only need one track instead of two, or at least have an option to be single-track? (if went through this thread, but didn't see an answer to this)

thanks.

[Shooshie]

Technically, they've only needed one track since V-Racks were implemented. DP Has the easiest VI implementation of any DAW. You set up your V-Rack (which can be loaded from other files, btw) and from that point on you only need to add MIDI tracks, which treat the VI's like any other rack-mounted MIDI equipment. I use a keyboard command to create a "similar track" to an existing one, and my instrument track is there instantly, ready to record its VI.

But to answer your specific question, I got the distinct impression that only one track is needed if you do your VI's "the old way." [edit: David Polich says no. I guess my impressions were off. Sorry. But still, V-Racks renders the question unnecessary, really. With V-Racks you only need create a regular MIDI track to use any VI. Takes a tenth of a second to have it ready to go.[/edit]

Shooshie

[David Polich]

To answer the two questions posted -

ProVerb will load ANY audio file that is in a format that DP6 supports. Altiverb is the only convolution reverb that has encrypted IR's. Everyone else uses audio files. So if you have, for example, all your Waves IR-1 impulse files they will load into ProVerb. Bear in mind, not every audio file will work effectively as an IR. An impulse response is just that - a reverberant response of a space. Someone yelling "hey" into a mic doesn't make for a good IR, unless you want really weird/bizarre/interesting effects (which you very well might).

VI's still require a track for MIDI, and a track for audio (if you want). But here's the thing. Since Bounce-To-Disk in DP6 includes VI's, you don't necessarily have to RECORD an audio track from the VI.

Personally, I really prefer the two-track per VI approach. Here's why - I run into many instances where I want to have the MIDI data trigger some other VI. It really doesn't take "that" long to add a VI track - we already have the option in 5.13 of adding a VI and simultaneously adding a MIDI track to drive it.

BTW, I spoke briefly with Magic Dave yesterday during a rare pause at the booth, and he said this was the most exciting NAMM for him in years. MOTU really really did listen to user requests and they really really do pay a lot of attention to this forum. I'm very excited about DP6, much more than I was for DP5. It's going to solve quite a few issues for me personally and it's heartening to see my favorite DAW continue to improve.

[macsterdam]

But to answer your specific question, I got the distinct impression that only one track is needed if you do your VI's "the old way."

Shooshie

thanks very much. great news indeed. that and no vertical zoom in the TO window were my two main pet peeves. will be checking out dp6 when it's released.

[Timeline]

To answer the two questions posted -

ProVerb will load ANY audio file that is in a format that DP6 supports. Altiverb is the only convolution reverb that has encrypted IR's. Everyone else uses audio files. So if you have, for example, all your Waves IR-1 impulse files they will load into ProVerb. Bear in mind, not every audio file will work effectively as an IR. An impulse response is just that - a reverberant response of a space. Someone yelling "hey" into a mic doesn't make for a good IR, unless you want really weird/bizarre/interesting effects (which you very well might).

VI's still require a track for MIDI, and a track for audio (if you want). But here's the thing. Since Bounce-To-Disk now includes VI's, you don't necessarily have to RECORD an audio track from the VI.

Personally, I really prefer the two-track per VI approach. Here's why - I run into many instances where I want to have the MIDI data trigger some other VI. It really doesn't take "that" long to add a VI track - we already have the option in 5.13 of adding a VI and simultaneously adding a MIDI track to drive it.

Hi David.

I don't like to render VI's either unless absolutely necessary like porting it to another DAW so here's another reason not to render. Composers like me who are just learning the in and outs of composition must constantly be able to change a part on demand... We're far from perfect.

To be able to bounce is interesting and I really want to compare sound with my current method of looping the mix back through an adat port on my IO.

[Shooshie]

But to answer your specific question, I got the distinct impression that only one track is needed if you do your VI's "the old way."

Shooshie

thanks very much. great news indeed. that and no vertical zoom in the TO window were my two main pet peeves. will be checking out dp6 when it's released.

See my edit to my post above.

[grimepoch]

I think the whole VI thing is highly subjective. I for one feel that the VI implementation is absolutely not more simple than Logic's implementation. How many people didn't even realize in earlier versions you had to freeze the VI track first before bouncing out a song? Granted this is gone now.

I DEFINITELY see power in the way it is implemented in DP, do not misunderstand me, it is WAY more flexible than Logic's implementation. It's just again, I'd like the best of both worlds. I want what is in DP now for things where I want more control, but in some instances, I'd love to add a track that worked just like Logics VI tracks. If you have 35 tracks of VIs in a song, having to have 70 tracks in DP can get frustrating at times.

But again, this is highly subjective.