After trying everything, 7.1 is still a nightmare (for me)

[rsaltmarsh]

We have 3 DP 7.1 systems on 2 x 8 cores and 1 x 4 core Mac Pro and they are all fraught with problems. Crashes all the time. These are BIG projects though with a lot of tracks but it is very very frustrating.

It does feel like the end of the line to be frank. 3 out of 4 colleagues in LA who use DP are or have moved to Logic when presented with the DP6 to 7 upgrade and I, with much regret, will be following them having been with DP since Performer V1. I can't go on like this - its just wasting too much time and losing a lot of work.

I too started with Performer 1.0 on a Mac SE back in the day. I had a noted film composer in the studio just after I had upgraded to 7.1 and it was so frustrating and embarrassing, crash after crash, did not bode well for my business. And there I was defending MOTU over Lojac and BlowTools when that happened. Humble Pie for sure.

I just finished mixing the best sounding album I have ever done in 5.13 and have had rave reviews from many on the sonic quality, etc. All done in DP. I understand the complexity of programming and keeping compatible with so many 3rd party plug's and interfaces, etc. But it seems that MOTU may be very light on the beta testing before releases and do not test it enough on a wide variety of systems. Too many of us are having issues... what looks like to be on many of the same systems that are running it great. btw, I have nothing illegal or cracked on my system. All Licensed and recently updated. I would gladly pay the two C notes for no new features, but rock solid operation and bug fixes in the features they already have.

I still love using DP and can get around and do everything I need and I bet I haven't touched half of the feature set of what it can do. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope through the good suggestions from users on this forum that I'll resolve my glitches.

The adventure will continue...

[arielmusic]

I've also had a disappointing experience with 7.1. 7.02 has been perfect for me but I wanted to try 7.1 for it's new features. I opened 2 large 7.02 projects using the same process... I made a new empty project and loaded soundbites. I gave it over an hour before I tried playing the projects. Both played fine but the counter jumped and lurched around, unable to process the audio and run the graphics. These projects have been functioning perfectly. I then just opened the 7.02 songs in 7.1. I gave them hours to process the soundbites. Same symptoms. I have a nearly new quad core with 8 gigs of ram... I'm back to 7.02.

[Kubi]

I have been using EW Play instruments in Bidule and have yet to crash them, however I would consider my usage of Play to be light compared to many on this board.

I've wanted to set up Bidule so that DP doesn't take so long to save when using large EW Play setups. I'm going to have to try this now... Thanks for the testimonial!

Good to hear about the FW interface. Since I use PCI I never used FW for audio, just always mistrusted it. Looks like that is for no good reason! (Though I still prefer to use all available busses to max data throughput and stability, so for now that means PCI for audio for me.)

[James Steele]

Well this really hasn't been much of a troubleshooting post and has definitely moved into griping territory, hence it's going in the Gripes section.