A Critical Look at Snow Leopard and DP

[Phil O]

Anyone having issues when changing the sample rate? I get a pop up window that says the config was changed while MAS was running.... Never had that before....

Yeah, I'm getting the same thing.

Phil

[jlaudon]

I've gotten it running 5.13 on SL - have to play with 6.02 more to see if it happens as well.

[James Steele]

FYI, you probably knew this but drag & drop is messed up in Addictive Drums as well... not jut EZ Drummer. MOTU knows about this though and I'll be they fix it soon as the next update comes out... hopefully soon!

[Phil O]

Well I've only played with it for a day now, but overall I'd give SL and DP 6.02 a thumbs up. The pluses seem to outweigh the minuses on my installation. DP seems a little more responsive (fewer beach balls) and I haven't had a single crash yet. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Thanks for the details, Shoosh.
Phil

[SixStringGeek]

As far as I know it's not 64bit ready but I'm sure the techie guys here can confirm.

It doesn't matter if DP goes 64 bit. The ONLY plugs I have (and I have quite a few because I'm quite the toy addict) that have Cocoa UI's are the Apple ones that ship with Snow Leopard. Many of the sample AUs like AUDelay now sport nice looking Cocoa UI's instead of the very generic carbon UI's from before.

There is no 64 bit Carbon so every single plug out there will require having its UI rewritten in Cocoa before being 64 bit capable. We have a very long way to go.

I'm still kind of amazed at the lack of uptake of Cocoa UI, but then again there are a few popular hosts (Ableton Live) that don't support Cocoa UI's but most everyone supports Carbon.

[Shooshie]

I'm still kind of amazed at the lack of uptake of Cocoa UI, but then again there are a few popular hosts (Ableton Live) that don't support Cocoa UI's but most everyone supports Carbon.

It seems strange to me, too, but I've been baffled by anyone who hasn't wanted to adopt Cocoa and OS X in general. You can program for just about anything in OS X, and it's got UNIX under the hood. From the first time I read about it in 1999/2000, I've been blown away by the potential. I honestly thought programmers would flock to OS X, and that the people would follow. It had everything, and it was so intelligently designed. Even back then there were whispers that it would be ported to Intel (since it had come from Intel). What was not to like? In fact, a disproportionate number of people have migrated to OS X from the PC world, but I just expected everyone to want it.

But more to the point, it has been apparent now for quite some time that to be fully compatible in OS X, one must write in the Cocoa environment. Why have developers been so slow to adopt? They know their Mac clientele, and they know that there is either the choice of giving them up and focusing only on WIndows, or... pouring on the Cocoa. Why have they waited until NOW to begin?

Shooshie

[rodger1811]

My stand alone version of MachFive 2.2 is working as well in SL. I think it's as a result of all of the extra caution that I took installing everything as referenced in one of my other posts. Seriously, I own every MOTU plugin except for Ethno and Volta and they're working great! I pulled a 6-hr long non-stop session yesterday without a single incident. I had many instances of VI's, lots of waves, Drumagog, and UA and my rig is running the best it's ever run.

Once I get to work on it, would you be willing to compare contents of the folders that contain those MOTU files?

Absolutely!

Do you run those in standalone mode during your DP sessions? Are we talking about the same thing? Again, the plugin versions work fine in DP, no matter how long the session. But you're saying that you run the MOTU VI's in stand alone mode while working in DP, and not as a plugin?

Often I use MachFive and some of the other VI's outside of DP when I'm working on concepts and I've done this for extended periods of time as well. One of my musicians isn't very DP savvy but he is with MachFive so it gets used extensively outside of DP and within DP.

Did you update your iLok extensions for Snow Leopard?

Yes I did. I also own WAVES and I didn't have an issue.

Shoosh

[rodger1811]

My stand alone version of MachFive 2.2 is working as well in SL. I think it's as a result of all of the extra caution that I took installing everything as referenced in one of my other posts. Seriously, I own every MOTU plugin except for Ethno and Volta and they're working great! I pulled a 6-hr long non-stop session yesterday without a single incident. I had many instances of VI's, lots of waves, Drumagog, and UA and my rig is running the best it's ever run.

Once I get to work on it, would you be willing to compare contents of the folders that contain those MOTU files?

Absolutely!

Do you run those in standalone mode during your DP sessions? Are we talking about the same thing? Again, the plugin versions work fine in DP, no matter how long the session. But you're saying that you run the MOTU VI's in stand alone mode while working in DP, and not as a plugin?

Often I use MachFive and some of the other VI's outside of DP when I'm working on concepts and I've done this for extended periods of time as well. One of my musicians isn't very DP savvy but he is with MachFive so it gets used extensively outside of DP and within DP.

Did you update your iLok extensions for Snow Leopard?

Yes I did. I also own WAVES and I didn't have an issue.

Shoosh

[dinobass]

Reading the Snow Leopard review in Ars Technica, I was wondering if a 64-bit DP might handle 32-bit plugs the way Quicktime X and Safari do now. Quicktime and Safari, both 64-bit, run all their 32-bit plugs in a 32-bit app behind the scenes when necessary (Quicktime Player 7, I think). That's why when a plug-in in Safari crashes it doesn't take Safari with it. It made me think that that would be a great way for a 64-bit DP to handle its 32-bit plugs, because there would be no need to wait for all 3rd party plugs to become 64-bit, and if one plug-in crashes, the rest of the DP project keeps humming along.

[BobK]

This is not a very thorough or critical look, but this morning I installed SL on my Mac Book Pro (Core 2 Duo, 2.33 GHz, 2GB RAM), which I'm not currently using for any critical work.

I'd read about this, but it was still cool to see several GB more hard drive space available after the installation.

I opened a DP 6.02 project with well over 48 mono audio tracks (44.1/24), and I was startled at how fast the 'Loading Project' progress bar moved. (This project also had missing plug-ins and VIs which I didn't have authorized on my laptop - my iLok is on my G5 - along with detritus like a bunch of disabled tracks from old takes I hadn't yet discarded and a few already-rendered MIDI tracks. None of this seemed to cause any problems.)

When I played it back, DP's CPU meter was lower than I'd seen for just about any project I'd ever opened on my MBP. The Playback meter was almost hitting the top, but maybe I'd had the buffer settings low (I didn't check). The project was un-mixed, and had few plug-ins, but I was still impressed.

So while this is just a quick-and-dirty test, I'm a happy camper so far - except that it makes me want to replace my G5 with a Mac Pro.

[SixStringGeek]

Reading the Snow Leopard review in Ars Technica, I was wondering if a 64-bit DP might handle 32-bit plugs the way Quicktime X and Safari do now. Quicktime and Safari, both 64-bit, run all their 32-bit plugs in a 32-bit app behind the scenes when necessary (Quicktime Player 7, I think). That's why when a plug-in in Safari crashes it doesn't take Safari with it. It made me think that that would be a great way for a 64-bit DP to handle its 32-bit plugs, because there would be no need to wait for all 3rd party plugs to become 64-bit, and if one plug-in crashes, the rest of the DP project keeps humming along.

That's an option although I don't know if it would be performant. Might be though. It would be kind of like what people do with bidule now, but DP would do it behind the scenes and it would have to take care of sending the MIDI and getting the audio back across processes.

[Shooshie]

Well, that wouldn't be so unlike V-Racks. V-Racks could be a 32-bit home for plugins of any type. Since you can have multiple V-Racks per file, there could be one at 32-bits, and another at 64-bit. So it seems to me, anyway.

Shoosh

[mattfort]

Can others try to change sample rates from the pull down menu and let us know if you're getting the error pop up window like Phil and I are?

[twistedtom]

All MOTU plug ins working fine and are more responsive for me. I can change the sample rate from the pull down window. So far the few plug in not MOTU that I have work fine.
VI's I have are working, tried a few Motu ones and they worked. So far the only thing is the MIDI drag and drop issue but I had that before SL.

[rodger1811]

Can others try to change sample rates from the pull down menu and let us know if you're getting the error pop up window like Phil and I are?

Yep, I get the same message.