Logic and Digital Performer

[sdfalk]

I got a newer computer, and switched to OSX and now things are better than my old system.

Getting a quad to run DP is like driving a ferrari that's dragging a trailer.

Exactly..
Getting a new computer doesn't excuse DPs problems.

[jon]

I always thought it was my setup. This kinda sux!

[Shooshie]

I don't want this to devolve into a "kick MOTU" fest. The fact is, Digital Performer is fantastic. I cannot believe what I can do with it. I'm just asking for them to fix MAS, so that it doesn't even get near the redline on the CPU Meter. Also, those damned clicks and pops. That is NOT ACCEPTABLE. We should be hearing pristine audio. No clicks. It comes out fine in the recording, but to have to put up with it while recording or just doing trial runs isn't right.

MOTU, before we go any farther, please, fix the audio system. Trust us, we love you. But it gets harder and harder to defend DP against people who listen to it and say "what's all that popping noise, and why is the CPU redlining with just one VI?"

Shooshie

[jon]

Also, those damned clicks and pops. That is NOT ACCEPTABLE. We should be hearing pristine audio. No clicks. It comes out fine in the recording, but to have to put up with it while recording or just doing trial runs isn't right.
Shooshie

Shooshie the pops and clicks show up on alot of my keyboard tracks post recording. I thought it was my Onyx and 2408Mk3 doing it.

[Spikey Horse]

...also for every step up in mac power there will always be a hundred new VI's, plugs, new mac OS's or just new versions of oold favourites that are right up there pushing the limits again.... and again...

So in reality a host is never gonna be given the luxury to put on a few pounds and loosen the old belt a couple of notches and enjoy the easy life with super duper proccesors to pour the G'n'T' s at 6 pm ....

So come on DP time to get down to the gym! Time to sweat some 0's and 1's.

[sdfalk]

...also for every step up in mac power there will always be a hundred new VI's, plugs, new mac OS's or just new versions of oold favourites that are right up there pushing the limits again.... and again...

So in reality a host is never gonna be given the luxury to put on a few pounds and loosen the old belt a couple of notches and enjoy the easy life with super duper proccesors to pour the G'n'T' s at 6 pm ....

So come on DP time to get down to the gym! Time to sweat some 0's and 1's.

I'm always happy with what's possible with DP, and t his shouldn't de-evolve
into a kick Motu fest.
There's alot about DP that's great, it's audio engine (doesn't appear)
to be one of those things.
If I can't get reasonable track counts with no plugins going AND all
third party plugins disabled, that's a problem.
I like the above..sweat those 0's and 1's.

[Spikey Horse]

Yes, of course I love DP too and would never wish to kick either magic Dave, Robin (motu tech guy) or indeed ...the er.... Unicorn.

(sorry those are the only Motu representatives I have ever heard of/ had dealings with - maybe there are more? or maybe Motu is just magic Dave, Robin and the Unicorn! - and why not?)

[richard]

Gosh, I've been weighing back and forth on buying logic pro 7.1, and then a friend who has an extra license was going to sell it to me for around $600. I said no (only a week ago), but this thread is making me reconsider.

I've heard recently on this forum (or was it the Mach V forum) that the MachV dongle will allow me to run it on a different computer if I unplug the dongle after DP has loaded. I haven't tried it since I figure my iBook running MachV though another sequencer wouldn't be worth the effort. It sounds like I might be able to get some use out of my iBook running the more CPU friendly Logic. But can I run two versions of Logic in my studio if I only have one dongle? (can I unplug the dongle after loading logic on my Powermac and plug it into my iBook and have both running?)

Richard

[billf]

Gosh, I've been weighing back and forth on buying logic pro 7.1, and then a friend who has an extra license was going to sell it to me for around $600. I said no (only a week ago), but this thread is making me reconsider.

A couple of points:

* There's nothing wrong with using DP and Logic together. I use both, although sometimes for different purposes.


* Logic has plenty of problems too. I've been bitten with errors like "cpu overload" and "disk too slow" messages that pop up unexpectedly and grind the session to a halt. Given that I've gotten these messages on a dual 2.7 G5 while running six or seven tracks in Logic, tracks which worked earlier in the day on Logic, but pop up and suddenly make Logic freeze, it doesn't bolster my confidence about the stability of the app. These errors do not pop up in DP (and yes, I've checkd the drives and they are perfect).

All that said, DP DOES need to be optimized. I have had the CPU spikes too, and they make no sense. My CPU meter sits at nearly zero, then suddenly spikes. It seems as though these software developers are in a feature set race, and are neglecting underlying performance. Anyway, you can check out the Logic forum over at osxaudio.com and see what folks have to say about Logic.

[Saintmatthew]

I'll put my voice for DPs optimization any day of the week. The fat definitely needs to be trimmed. I also think it merits considering though, what with all the comparisons to Logic, on whether or not Apple has advantages over MOTU having the inside track on the OS while programming Logic's engine. Even if they are sharing all the info needed to make a DAW run blazingly quick, Apple has a huge head start as far as access to this info, not to mention a great degree of cloat to make requests of those working on core audio. Not that this always guarantees a better product. Microsoft can't write an imaging program to compete with Adobe despite building the OS but still, one wonders.....

[stickwolf]

I just think everyone is missing the point.

I'd like to hold a vote that the United States should have a better economic situation, who's with me?

Now does my sarcasm mean I'm telling you that the economy is fine, deal with it. NO. The economy is being mishandled and the government and corporate structure is totally inefficient and ineffective.

But if we have 10 million signatures saying, "President Bush, please fix the economy" it really will have no functional impact on any policy decisions. A better wording could AT LEAST be "I believe the economy is the biggest issue at hand and should be our top focus and priority." Yes, you might get a little less total signatures, but then it would mean something.

Point is, don't have a petition comparing optimization to other features, blah blah blah. Just word it as "MOTU, we feel optimization should be top priority." NOT "MOTU, please optimize MAS." If I wasn't as thoughtful about it, then of course I'd sign the latter. But I'd only sign the former if I really felt I could clearly decide that I felt that was priority.

Seriously, anybody will take much more seriously a smaller number of signatures that all indicate a very clear position, as opposed to everyone in the world signing something that is set up to be agreed to.

Put simply, if you word your petition in a way that encourages agreement and makes it harder to say no to signing, then you've already de-valued the petition. It doesn't mean as much. Always try to come up with a wording that you feel real people might likely refuse to sign if they didn't share your full feelings and then you have something of substance.

The "petition" posting is frankly the poorest attempt I've seen at creating something that will convince the petition recipient to do anything. And I'm not trying to just criticize. I'm trying to convince people that care enough to listen and do this right. I'd hope you'll be successful.

[amerecordingstudio]

But if we have 10 million signatures saying, "President Bush, please fix the economy" it really will have no functional impact on any policy decisions. A better wording could AT LEAST be "I believe the economy is the biggest issue at hand and should be our top focus and priority." Yes, you might get a little less total signatures, but then it would mean something.

I don't think that those two situations can really be compared. MOTU has written the MAS engine and it is fully within their power to overhaul it and optomize it. Unlike the US economy. President Bush does not have the ability to say "go through the economy and make sure everyone has a job and that they can support their families". MOTU just needs to pay their programmers to look at an audio engine that has been neglected over the years. Therefore, when we're paying to buy DP and upgrade DP, i think it's perfectly legitimate to ask for a streamlined engine.

[sdfalk]

Just a quick thought on the petition:
I don't exactly get the point. If you want to compile a list of people who are having issues or have compared DP side by side with more optimized programs, that's one thing.
Would any DP user actually say "no, I don't think the code should be optimized" ?
What is the petition saying? That we want MOTU to make optimization top priority such that they hold off on any other changes? If the petition just says, "please work on optimizing the code" then that seems like a pretty pointless petition to me.

The above is from your first post on the subject.
You seem to indicate optimizing the code is a pointless excersise.

..and below is:

Point is, don't have a petition comparing optimization to other features, blah blah blah. Just word it as "MOTU, we feel optimization should be top priority." NOT "MOTU, please optimize MAS." If I wasn't as thoughtful about it, then of course I'd sign the latter. But I'd only sign the former if I really felt I could clearly decide that I felt that was priority.

Your second statement seems to indicate your agreement in generally
optimizing DP.
Perhaps the first was an attempt at sarcasm?
As for the bloated (almost) pointless analogy to George bush and the economy,
why not try getting directly to the point.
You seem to also suggest Motu is just to incompetent to understand
what people would want from this, I disagree.
Perhaps one person could post a petition on another site that everyone
could "sign" with one specific statement.
Stickwolf could write it (as long as he agrees to lose the George Bush
references)

[GvdB]

I think DP runs pretty good already. Logic is definately more optimized but I don't like the user interface.

DP is a little sluggish compared to some other apps, but actually that has been improved again for my feeling since v4.5. The consolidated windows improved it a bit and it also improved when I added RAM.

It even runs fine on my old ancient dual533 machine.

Optimization is always a good thing, because it's already packed with a lot of nice features, so what more is there to wish for? (well see the wishlist for 4.7 ). But I am afraid that if DAW X or Y comes out tomorrow with some new hot feature then everybody wants MOTU to incorporate that into DP as well. And then MOTU has to put other things on the side.

I think just asking for optimization is a bit bold. It's almost like saying that the engine is wrong. I am sure they also optimized it when they incorporated delay compensation and that dynamic cpu managment stuff.

Maybe doing a couple of polls is a good way of showing MOTU what we want?

[blue]

Just a quick thought on the petition:
I don't exactly get the point. If you want to compile a list of people who are having issues or have compared DP side by side with more optimized programs, that's one thing.
Would any DP user actually say "no, I don't think the code should be optimized" ?
What is the petition saying? That we want MOTU to make optimization top priority such that they hold off on any other changes? If the petition just says, "please work on optimizing the code" then that seems like a pretty pointless petition to me.

The above is from your first post on the subject.
You seem to indicate optimizing the code is a pointless excersise.

..and below is:

Point is, don't have a petition comparing optimization to other features, blah blah blah. Just word it as "MOTU, we feel optimization should be top priority." NOT "MOTU, please optimize MAS." If I wasn't as thoughtful about it, then of course I'd sign the latter. But I'd only sign the former if I really felt I could clearly decide that I felt that was priority.

Your second statement seems to indicate your agreement in generally
optimizing DP.
Perhaps the first was an attempt at sarcasm?
As for the bloated (almost) pointless analogy to George bush and the economy,
why not try getting directly to the point.
You seem to also suggest Motu is just to incompetent to understand
what people would want from this, I disagree.
Perhaps one person could post a petition on another site that everyone
could "sign" with one specific statement.
Stickwolf could write it (as long as he agrees to lose the George Bush
references)

i think his point may have been that code optimization is relative and infinite, and that, without a sense of urgency -- without coming out and saying optimization must be done to keep the ship from sinking -- it's not really going to register with motu as a legitimate complaint that deserves immediate attention. i think he's saying we have to make it clear to motu that this is an issue of necessity to us and one, perhaps, of economic importance to them.