I don't mean this post to be taken as negative. My intentions are just to, naively perhaps, try to get MOTU's attention, so they keep innovating and making DP better. Short of designing my own DAW, I don't see what else I can do about it other than venting here...
Here I go
So yesterday I spent my day at a friend's studio. He uses 2 of the youngest DAWs, one of them the one whose name rhymes with the nickname of certain pervert from old England. Sadly, I realized that, when it comes to MIDI note and CCs entering and editing, they simply BLOW - US - OUT - OF - THE - WATER .
Period.
Have you seen their editing tools? To my surprise, they make DP's look and feel clunky, clumsy and, frankly, toyish in comparisson.
Also, I saw first hand the wonderful ability of moving stuff around freely and NOT creating weird and unexpected CC and tempo ramps all over the place, as DP always does. Cutting, pasting and snipping always give clean and accurate results, no matter what you do or how many CCs and audio automation there is in any track.
The reason that this made me feel a bit bitter than expected is that I've complained and asked MOTU about this since DP4, and it's still as bad as always in DP9!
The fix, at least for this, is an extremely simple algorithm they could implement in probably one evening. But they haven't. WHY???
DP is still unique in many ways, and I won't be giving it up any time soon, but I would really like to see MOTU "modernize" many aspects of the program and give us better tools and features.
No more guitar plugins, please. I want to see real, innovative and cool features that let us work smarter and faster, with tools that do not require wasting time double checking and baby-sitting every track after simple arranging moves (see above).
I feel (not know) that they've wasted too many resources with their PreGen engine at the expense of basically stopping new feature development.
Like I said, based on what I saw from 2 of the "lesser" and youngest DAWs, DP is clearly no longer the MIDI king. It seems it's been demoted to a mere pawn in comparisson, and anyone who uses those DAWs or observes a user who knows what he is doing with them can not deny any of this.
I might get flamed for this. Bring it on, if you wish, but the fact will remain.
Have we slept on our laurels for too long? I think so...
The ball is on MOTU's court. Let us see what they come up with DPX. Hopefully they will address some of this and repair the parts of the program that are a disaster, such as:
-- the Comp tool and its resulting takes management: No option to make takes follow edits.
-- irreversibly messing up pitch automation after simple Conductor Track moves, such as tempo changes
-- takes not following global editing moves like snipping or moving the main take (could be optional, as discussed before ad nauseam)
-- folders being horribly clumsy and unreliable
-- moving, cutting, pasting and snipping stuff with CC, audio automation and/or Conductor Track tempo changes is a nightmare and ridiculously unreliable. It's an excercise of frustration. It ALWAYS creates unwanted and unexpected ramps
-- not being able to mute selected CCs ( ! ) without ridiculous workarounds
-- constant crashing with their own MF3 sampler
-- not being able to select tracks from the mixer
-- features that have never worked (Extract Tempo from MIDI)
-- Quick Scribe is a joke. Not having it wouldn't make much of a difference, really. How about implementing clef changes? Add dynamic marks? Simple slurs? Being able to establish rhythmic patterns in odd rhythms (2+2+3, 3+3+1, etc)?
-- tracks showing outside of the folder structure when importing clippings
... And all that is just fixing old things. What about comming up with great new features? Please notice what your competition is doing, and implement some of that in even better ways. We already have a looooooong "DP wish list" for your reference. Better yet, you could ASK US, your users, what we want and what we need.
MOTU??? What are you going to do about all this?
I can only hope DPX will be so much better and powerful. Hopefully this is why it is taking so long for this new version to materialize...
I debated myself whether to write this here or in the theoretical section of the forum. AFAICS, this is not theoretical at all, but a very sobering reality. So I opted to write it here, where I, perhaps mistakingly, thought it belonged.
Thoughts/perspectives please?
