When will DP offer articulation sets?

[dewdman42]

Some people actually do use DP as he described for live shows, it’s particularly useful for live theater shows, for example.

Regarding articulation management did you even read what I wrote. Logicpro, cubase and cakewalk CAN do the things mentioned which S1 does not.

But you are right that as of now, there is no single king of articulation management that can do it all.

I have been following articulation management issues I particular very very closely for the past few years, I’m even working on a plugin solution that may or may not see the light of day past my own studio. I have followed closely what various third party solutions can and can not do, what each daw can and cannot do; and what the user base out there keeps running into in terms of challenges with sample library Instruments and the desire to build large and convenient orchestra templates.

None of the daws seem to pick up all the things needed, they have all fallen short in a few areas that had left composers frustrated and often times just ignoring articulation management and either embedding key switches in their tracks or putting each articulation on its own track the old school way. The various articulation management features that have been provided are usually good enough for some simple scenarios but become inadequate once you get deeper into it.

I can say confidentially that the ultimate articulation management system would include the following features to cover 99% of use cases:

1. unlimited number of key switches per articulation, including cc and pc switches in addition to notes
2. able to channelize notes per articulation. This requires also that supporting cc, pitchbend and aftertouch events also be channelized to the same channels where the notes are going.
3. latency correction to make up for widely varying sample attack transients with a single instrument. Today composers have to painstakingly nudge each note ahead of the beat by varying amounts per articulation. This is a huge area being missed by daw systems today.
4. ability to attach articulation specifiers directly to notes or being able to assign specifiers that apply to a general range of time for any notes within that time. Cubase refers to these approaches as attribute or direction. Both situations are needed and useful.
5. ability to have articulation groups. Cubase is again a good example. That way you will not need a humongous list of every possible key switch combination provided by the instrument.
6. input switching mechanisms in order to play parts in quickly while changing articulations on the fly. Needs to be able to integrate with third party touchpad systems such as lemur and others, which means using MIDI, osc and other tech
7. visual representation on the piano roll and other places to see the articulation specifiers visually over time in relation to the notes.

[HCMarkus]

Dewdman... have you shared your list with MOTU? If not, you should!

[smashprod]

I agree, you pretty much nail it.

[gzap]

Some people actually do use DP as he described for live shows, it’s particularly useful for live theater shows, for example.

Regarding articulation management did you even read what I wrote. Logicpro, cubase and cakewalk CAN do the things mentioned which S1 does not.

But you are right that as of now, there is no single king of articulation management that can do it all.

I have been following articulation management issues I particular very very closely for the past few years, I’m even working on a plugin solution that may or may not see the light of day past my own studio. I have followed closely what various third party solutions can and can not do, what each daw can and cannot do; and what the user base out there keeps running into in terms of challenges with sample library Instruments and the desire to build large and convenient orchestra templates.

None of the daws seem to pick up all the things needed, they have all fallen short in a few areas that had left composers frustrated and often times just ignoring articulation management and either embedding key switches in their tracks or putting each articulation on its own track the old school way. The various articulation management features that have been provided are usually good enough for some simple scenarios but become inadequate once you get deeper into it.

I can say confidentially that the ultimate articulation management system would include the following features to cover 99% of use cases:

1. unlimited number of key switches per articulation, including cc and pc switches in addition to notes
2. able to channelize notes per articulation. This requires also that supporting cc, pitchbend and aftertouch events also be channelized to the same channels where the notes are going.
3. latency correction to make up for widely varying sample attack transients with a single instrument. Today composers have to painstakingly nudge each note ahead of the beat by varying amounts per articulation. This is a huge area being missed by daw systems today.
4. ability to attach articulation specifiers directly to notes or being able to assign specifiers that apply to a general range of time for any notes within that time. Cubase refers to these approaches as attribute or direction. Both situations are needed and useful.
5. ability to have articulation groups. Cubase is again a good example. That way you will not need a humongous list of every possible key switch combination provided by the instrument.
6. input switching mechanisms in order to play parts in quickly while changing articulations on the fly. Needs to be able to integrate with third party touchpad systems such as lemur and others, which means using MIDI, osc and other tech
7. visual representation on the piano roll and other places to see the articulation specifiers visually over time in relation to the notes.

I'll cede you articulation expertise but you'll need to cede me theatre experience, that's been my living for 25 years. Qlab and LCS (though its almost all retired) for audio/sfx playback, mainstage in the pits and ableton to run tracks/fx when its done in musicals, I've never seen or heard of DP used in any other theatre show, though you could do it. Though I'm in Canada and have worked every theatre up here I do admit its possible that some people are using it in the US, though I've never heard of it from other designers/composers or crew.

And again, for S1 I'm talking about the 'sound variations' update to 5.2 that was just released last week, which addresses some of your concerns and almost all of mine.

But some of your issues are problematic, for instance asking for lemur support. The iPad/lemur/osc thing is great but lemur is discontinued now, isn't it? Specifying a standard for custom iPad/osc builds? Offsets per articulation? That gets into taste, unless you can show composers agreeing on what that offset should be each time.

What I'm saying is right now DP is useless for articulations and the approach that looks the smartest is that from S1, even if it doesn't do everything on your list, which as you say only some can be done by other programs and only through scripting. Starting with doing as much as S1 can do today would be a massive upgrade and adding the things from your list would be great as well, but I"d just be happy with something instead of the nothing we've got now.

[Altauria]

Offsets per articulation? That gets into taste, unless you can show composers agreeing on what that offset should be each time.

I believe this is one of the most important requests. In fact, we should also be able determine offsets within articulations as well, whether it be based on velocity, cc data, etc. It's really not taste, but specified delays documented in the manuals of VIs.

Example: Cinematic Studio Strings has three different, specifically documented delays within its advanced legato articulation. Alex even gives us the specific times in milliseconds for a reason.

This sort of thing is the bane of the existence for many composers, who spend awful amounts of time nudging notes, often ruining otherwise good initial performances. Composers don't have to agree on anything, as long as the implementation is open enough, and doesn't involve full knowledge of JavaScript (Logic...).

The lack of this level of sophistication is why many composers, after initially being so excited about articulation maps, had ditched using them. Blakus (Blake Robinson) had admitted this as well, using Cubase. Not trying to shallowly name-drop, but my 'nobody' experience won't sell it.

[dewdman42]

And again, for S1 I'm talking about the 'sound variations' update to 5.2 that was just released last week,

yes I know, so was I. before 5.2 their support for articulation management was bad enough I skipped on the update to v5. 5.2 is much better, but....

which addresses some of your concerns and almost all of mine.

I have listed above in my earlier post all the reasons S1 v5.2 does NOT address some of the concerns...Some of which are addressed by cubase, LogicPro and Cakewalk Sonar. In short....S1 still has catch up to do to be on par with them in terms of output capability. The only thing S1 v5.2 did that was very interesting for a lot of people is add the automatic articulationMAP generation, if and when the plugin provides it (so far only some libraries from VSL). It has the appearance of a very seamless experience, but still has extensive limitations which are in fact addressed by the other DAW's in some capacity.

But some of your issues are problematic, for instance asking for lemur support. The iPad/lemur/osc thing is great but lemur is discontinued now, isn't it?

No its not discontinued. But there are other open solutions too. S1 is providing their own touch app for iPad, but see if they are still supporting that in 5 years, for example and without question it will be more limited then touchOSC, Lemur, Open Stage Control and other solutions...which will need to use open standards of communication such as MIDI, OSC, etc...rather then a proprietary API to communicate with a simple interface. Again...S1 is providing a complete seamless experience, the user doesn't have to understand any of that crap, they can just turn it on and have it working...and for simple use cases, many people will appreciate that. Power users will be hamstrung but its limitations.

Specifying a standard for custom iPad/osc builds? Offsets per articulation? That gets into taste, unless you can show composers agreeing on what that offset should be each time.

I'm not suggesting that anyone needs to standardize anything ,nor agree on anything. The articulation management framework needs to provide an ability for each composer to specify how much ahead-of-grid each noteOn needs to be on an articulation-by-articulation basis, and saved with the articulation map that they create.

Most people attempt to work around this by using negative track delay, but there are problems with that, if you are having all articulations come through one MIDI track, for example, as many like to do..that is one reason. Another reason is that in order to do it properly, you need to negative-delay NoteOn Events, but specifically NOT negative-delay NoteOff events. Also, you need to specifically not negative delay expressive MIDI events like CC, Aftertouch and PitchBend....UNLESS they are being used as instrument switches...then you do need to negative-delay them in front of the negative-delayed NoteOn events..etc. So most people are out there floundering around trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that sample libraries have attack transients that require the NoteOn to be ahead of the grid, which means they can't quantize. They have to nudge the NoteOn early somehow...either manually and painstakingly...or perhaps using scripting. I have a LogicPro script that can do it. It would be even better of LogicPro's articulation set feature simply provided a field for me to enter a latency value for each articulation and have it done automatically. Same for Cubase, S1, Cakewalk, S1 and everyone else. Right now LogicPro Scripter is the only solution I've seen for this to truly do it correctly.

What I'm saying is right now DP is useless for articulations and the approach that looks the smartest is that from S1, even if it doesn't do everything on your list, which as you say only some can be done by other programs and only through scripting. Starting with doing as much as S1 can do today would be a massive upgrade and adding the things from your list would be great as well, but I"d just be happy with something instead of the nothing we've got now.

I hear that you are S1 fanboy..and this is an exciting development for S1 to be sure, I look forward to seeing how far they go with it. I am following the future of S1 also and who knows it could become my primary DAW in the future, but as of now, Cubase and LogicPro are still superior in terms of actual articulation management, for power features...they are not as seemingly seamless as S1 with its touchpad app and plugin-generating articulation map (presuming more plugins get on board with that), but it is also more simplistic then any of the other DAW's I mentioned. For many simple cases, that may be fine and many users will appreciate the seamlessness. And hopefully MOTU and others take notes of some of that, but still....S1 has more catching up to do with Cubase and Logic to do everything that orchestral composers have been struggling with for a decade now.

I hope MOTU will pay attention to this thread and address more of the issues.

[dewdman42]

Offsets per articulation? That gets into taste, unless you can show composers agreeing on what that offset should be each time.

I believe this is one of the most important requests. In fact, we should also be able determine offsets within articulations as well, whether it be based on velocity, cc data, etc. It's really not taste, but specified delays documented in the manuals of VIs.

DEFINITELY!!! based on velocity, perhaps pitch range, or based on the current value of another controller such as CC11, etc.. I don't know, we'll be lucky if we get any latency adjustment feature at all, much less being able to specify different values for different velocity levels, but it is needed.

Example: Cinematic Studio Strings has three different, specifically documented delay responses for its advanced legato. Alex even gives us the specific times in milliseconds for a reason.

perfect example, just one!!

also, I think it would be beneficial to be able to send different keyswitches or send to different channels....based on velocity, pitch or some other CC's, etc.. in order to set up custom articulation setups spanning different instruments, etc.. I didn't want to mention this particular advanced use case earlier, trying to keep it simple for now, but definitely agree with you.

[Altauria]

Exactly! Being able to send to different channels would solve many of the issues, simply by isolated the 'problems.'

Cubase would've been able to manage inter-articulation delay adjustments, had their MIDI sends (using the modifier) been able to delay more than the existing limit of 50ms. Big facepalm.

[gzap]

I have listed above in my earlier post all the reasons S1 v5.2 does NOT address some of the concerns...Some of which are addressed by cubase, LogicPro and Cakewalk Sonar. In short....S1 still has catch up to do to be on par with them in terms of output capability. The only thing S1 v5.2 did that was very interesting for a lot of people is add the automatic articulationMAP generation, if and when the plugin provides it (so far only some libraries from VSL). It has the appearance of a very seamless experience, but still has extensive limitations which are in fact addressed by the other DAW's in some capacity.

I get your points, and I'm not an S1 fanboy, by the way. I'm just frustrated with DP and looking at which approach looks the best one to take in the future. So using S1's articulation track and mapping as the basis and figuring out how to include some of the scripting you and others want would be fine by me.

]No its not discontinued. But there are other open solutions too. S1 is providing their own touch app for iPad, but see if they are still supporting that in 5 years, for example and without question it will be more limited then touchOSC, Lemur, Open Control and other solutions...which will need to use open standards of communication such as MIDI, OSC, etc...rather then a proprietary API to communicate with a simple interface. Again...S1 is providing a complete seamless experience, the user doesn't have to understand any of that crap, they can just turn it on and have it working...and for simple use cases, many people will appreciate that. Power users will be hamstrung but its limitations.

Sure, if there was OSC or MPE standards that would be great. No argument there. But power users will likely build or get someone to build their own osc/lemur/ipad type solution regardless of which way it goes. Dp killed their IOS app, which is too bad, but for my uses its not as critical so I'm not that excited by S1's app.

I'm not suggesting that anyone needs to standardize anything ,nor agree on anything. The articulation management framework needs to provide an ability for each composer to specify how much ahead-of-grid each noteOn needs to be on an articulation-by-articulation basis, and saved with the articulation map that they create.

Most people attempt to work around this by using negative track delay, but there are problems with that, if you are having all articulations come through one MIDI track, for example, as many like to do..that is one reason. Another reason is that in order to do it properly, you need to negative-delay NoteOn Events, but specifically NOT negative-delay NoteOff events. Also, you need to specifically not negative delay expressive MIDI events like CC, Aftertouch and PitchBend....UNLESS they are being used as instrument switches...then you do need to negative-delay them in front of the negative-delayed NoteOn events..etc. So most people are out there floundering around trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that sample libraries have attack transients that require the NoteOn to be ahead of the grid, which means they can't quantize. They have to nudge the NoteOn early somehow...either manually and painstakingly...or perhaps using scripting. I have a LogicPro script that can do it. It would be even better of LogicPro's articulation set feature simply provided a field for me to enter a latency value for each articulation and have it done automatically. Same for Cubase, S1, Cakewalk, S1 and everyone else. Right now LogicPro Scripter is the only solution I've seen for this to truly do it correctly.

Again, all you're doing is confirming that its a really complicated problem that doesn't have an easy solution. Some composers want to quantize everything and some are against it, some music demands it some doesn't. So sure, it would be great to get that feature, but if DP was going to come out with some articulation mapping scheme I'd just hate to see them hold it back for 6 months or a year trying to add in this feature, should it take that long.

I hear that you are S1 fanboy..and this is an exciting development for S1 to be sure, I look forward to seeing how far they go with it. I am following the future of S1 also and who knows it could become my primary DAW in the future, but as of now, Cubase and LogicPro are still superior in terms of actual articulation management, for power features...they are not as seemingly seamless as S1 with its touchpad app and plugin-generating articulation map (presuming more plugins get on board with that), but it is also more simplistic then any of the other DAW's I mentioned. For many simple cases, that may be fine and many users will appreciate the seamlessness. And hopefully MOTU and others take notes of some of that, but still....S1 has more catching up to do with Cubase and Logic to do everything that orchestral composers have been struggling with for a decade now.

I hope MOTU will pay attention to this thread and address more of the issues.

I'm not an S1 fanboy, I still make my living on DP. But there are things that bug me and things I love. Can't work without chunks, the consolidated window is so problematic, would love to see cubase style loading of tracks, want some kind of articulation mapping and would love to see a chord track. Automation of v-racks would be great but then again so would Omnisphere taking patch changes easier.

[Michael Canavan]

Clips I disagree with, only because Live already does this and its really the software you should use if you're playing live.

I've been using Bitwig for the last couple years. Live is just catching up to Bitwig in terms of live use. You also seem to be acutely unaware of some features in DP that are massive advantages when playing live depending on the genre and instrument you use.

DP should be concentrating on the scoring niche and add extras that help that market, not taking time to try to become the F35 of warplanes, a non functional tool of all trades. (Not that I think of DP like that, but in my rather biased opinion they'd do better by making it the scoring software instead of another DAW with sort of ok clips as well).

So with Chunks there's Chunk chaining. I've switched from playing soft synths and some guitar in live situations to mostly playing guitar. I tend to use Amplitube these days instead of amps. Chunk chaining offers huge advantages over Live or Bitwig in this particular situation. Backing tracks in general where the show is pretty much automated and seamless between songs, DP beats the snot out of Live or Bitwig etc. If all you have in Chunks are CC and Program Change messages for controlling lighting and video, plus audio tracks etc. then they're much more seamless than anything Live offers in terms of performance. This is the reason DP is used on Beyonce, Roger Waters etc. etc. tours.
Live is great but there is no seamless way to change software instruments in a live situation if you're interested in playing an actual keyboard, the Rack switching does not relinquish CPU from a VSTi back to the computer, which for me in the past was quite the issue. It's set up more for tinkerers who massage loops and like tweaking FX etc. DJ style performance wise, it's fantastic. It's great if you treat it like a loop player and crude sampler. I've owned Live since v3 and DP since 2.11.

I'm only one opinion, but I have invested in both Live and DP as well as Dorico and Mainstage, all have their specific uses. I don't think one piece of software can do all of those well.

Yeah that's not really much of a question, a dedicated single instrument host like MainStage and a dedicated score application like Dorico are hard to beat. But, IMO MainStage is on it's way out in the sense that there are better performance oriented setups implemented in Bitwig, Logic and Live at this point.

Plus, DP is a warplane, so is Logic, Cubase, Studio One and Sonar etc. These older DAWs main advantage is the do all nature of them, not some specific feature of them that's nicely developed. I don't use DP because it's great at film work, I'm not enough of a film composer to care about that, but I really appreciate that it's in there. I like that it's easier than most DAWs to set up a large template in, I like the legacy MIDI features that newer DAWs don't have, and I completely 100% do not think implementing Clips in a logical way hinders any of that.

[gzap]

I've been using Bitwig for the last couple years. Live is just catching up to Bitwig in terms of live use. You also seem to be acutely unaware of some features in DP that are massive advantages when playing live depending on the genre and instrument you use.

Bitwig? Cool, nobody I know still uses that. What exactly does it do that you think can't be done in Live or Mainstage?
What features do you think DP has for live use that make it better then what most people are using, I'm curious?
Maybe I should check it out, if its that good.

So with Chunks there's Chunk chaining. I've switched from playing soft synths and some guitar in live situations to mostly playing guitar. I tend to use Amplitube these days instead of amps. Chunk chaining offers huge advantages over Live or Bitwig in this particular situation. Backing tracks in general where the show is pretty much automated and seamless between songs, DP beats the snot out of Live or Bitwig etc. If all you have in Chunks are CC and Program Change messages for controlling lighting and video, plus audio tracks etc. then they're much more seamless than anything Live offers in terms of performance. This is the reason DP is used on Beyonce, Roger Waters etc. etc. tours.
Live is great but there is no seamless way to change software instruments in a live situation if you're interested in playing an actual keyboard, the Rack switching does not relinquish CPU from a VSTi back to the computer, which for me in the past was quite the issue. It's set up more for tinkerers who massage loops and like tweaking FX etc. DJ style performance wise, it's fantastic. It's great if you treat it like a loop player and crude sampler. I've owned Live since v3 and DP since 2.11.

Mainstage is what the broadway folks use for patch changes and keyboard rigs. Its the best for that kind of thing, hundreds of patch changes, efx on inputs, etc. I'm actually workshopping an opera this summer I wrote for 3 singers and a mainstage rig for that reason and I sound designed an opera in Colombus with a mainstage rig for synth patches, live harmonizer and sampled chorus, oh and it fired video. But no backing tracks, I don't like them. Ableton does backing tracks and tempos just fine, better than DP really. Keys and patch changes you can manage, its easier than scripting keyswitches for logic, I expect. For controls Ableton kills DP, I did a live show where I played guitar, mixed live mics, use EEG, EKG and EMG OSC inputs on audio, including EKG (filter triggered by heartbeat on an actor was pretty cool) and then used audio to fire live lissagous curves on a laser from my guitar. I wouldn't have considered even opening DP for that show. Sure, MIlli Vanilli and Beyonce are running their tracks on DP. But I'll bet you the keyboard rigs and guitars are at most taking patch change info and not using hosted plugs. Oh, and check out NeuralDSP's amps, they're all the rage now.

Yeah that's not really much of a question, a dedicated single instrument host like MainStage and a dedicated score application like Dorico are hard to beat. But, IMO MainStage is on it's way out in the sense that there are better performance oriented setups implemented in Bitwig, Logic and Live at this point.

Plus, DP is a warplane, so is Logic, Cubase, Studio One and Sonar etc. These older DAWs main advantage is the do all nature of them, not some specific feature of them that's nicely developed. I don't use DP because it's great at film work, I'm not enough of a film composer to care about that, but I really appreciate that it's in there. I like that it's easier than most DAWs to set up a large template in, I like the legacy MIDI features that newer DAWs don't have, and I completely 100% do not think implementing Clips in a logical way hinders any of that.

Mainstage rules the broadway pits and church band scene, nice transitions, programmable MIDI controllers per patch... Nobody will move to logic. Maybe Bitwig, if anybody still talks about it. I really have no clue how good it is or how solid, its been off the pro radar for some years in my experience.

I use DP because most of my living was doing music for theatre (should that ever come back), dance and occasionally tv/film. Doing theatre shows in DP rocks, one big file to rule them all....But I'd also love better keyswitching, tracks that can be disabled (per chunk if possible) and a few other things.

[dewdman42]

Again, all you're doing is confirming that its a really complicated problem that doesn't have an easy solution. Some composers want to quantize everything and some are against it, some music demands it some doesn't. So sure, it would be great to get that feature, but if DP was going to come out with some articulation mapping scheme I'd just hate to see them hold it back for 6 months or a year trying to add in this feature, should it take that long.

Regardless of whether you quantize the notes or not, the problem still needs to be corrected, because the problem is related to the way sample libraries are made with slow attack transients....the MIDI NoteOn needs to happen earlier then the composer expects it to sound like its on the grid. quantized or not. Please do not dissuade MOTU from addressing this issue, its a severe oversight on every other platform and badly needed. You can spend a little time on vi-control to see just how much people need and want this. Not all sample libraries have this problem and perhaps yours don't, but many do. Actually its not really a "problem" per say, its an inherent issue with any realistically sampled library.

I asked Kirk Hunter about this once because his string libraries have 20-50ms of lateness to them. he said basically if you want to have the fully juicy glory of the string attack sample, and include the entire attack transient in the sample...then it will sound like its late. In the real world, string players start playing most notes slightly ahead of the beat so that the meat of the attack transient sounds like its on the grid...but they actually started drawing their bow across the strings earlier in order to make that happen. They do it intuitively. this is why many well sampled libraries need to have the NoteOn events nudged earlier one way or another. This absolutely needs to make it into articulation management systems, I hope MOTU will do it!

[Michael Canavan]

Bitwig? Cool, nobody I know still uses that. What exactly does it do that you think can't be done in Live or Mainstage?
What features do you think DP has for live use that make it better then what most people are using, I'm curious?
Maybe I should check it out, if its that good.

Yeah, your friends didn't "used to use it", it's only been out for about 5 years... I guess it's possible they tried it out, but "nobody I know still uses that" is a weird flex.

Best in class MPE implementation, it actually uses universal keyboard shortcuts like DP does etc. Modulation is also out of this world in Bitwig. It's pretty geared towards electronic music production though. I'm not here to sell you on Bitwig, it's a nice little DAW.

Mainstage is what the broadway folks use for patch changes and keyboard rigs. Its the best for that kind of thing, hundreds of patch changes, efx on inputs, etc. I'm actually workshopping an opera this summer I wrote for 3 singers and a mainstage rig for that reason and I sound designed an opera in Colombus with a mainstage rig for synth patches, live harmonizer and sampled chorus, oh and it fired video. But no backing tracks, I don't like them.

I'm not sure what you liking or disliking something has to do with the discussion at hand. I have a Memorymoog here, I use it all the time in the writing process. I'm not taking it onstage or sampling it, and I wouldn't want to torture a keyboard player with the simpler parts that are clips or backing tracks, and I wouldn't appreciate the noodling that one would be prone to do if asked to hit three notes for 60 seconds in a song. There are frankly dozens of styles of electronic music where the parts are not "fun" to play, and are better served as an audio file VS Maschine running on your laptop for instance.

Ableton does backing tracks and tempos just fine, better than DP really.

I don't agree, you seem to like to ignore that other people have a similar level of experience with the programs we're discussing here. I have no problem with you thinking it does something better, but when you state it as fact, that's when online conversations get heated.

As a guitar player using backing tracks and Amplitube with different patches fired etc. DP is just better for that set up from my personal experience. When you're for instance going over a song with a singer in your set, in Live it's either every song in the set all in the Arrangement, or Session slots as complete songs, neither of those methods are ideal for looping a chorus for the singer compared to individual Sequence Chunks all with their own marker sets. Chunks and V-Racks are ideal for this. I would even say for most scenarios with multiple songs using folly and backing tracks etc. DP is going to be easier to navigate using Chunks. Where Live has the advantage is the mature Clips and Session View section, it's much more capable of being used like a sampler instrument, it's at this point still easier to rearrange and mess with audio and MIDI in clips in Live.

Keys and patch changes you can manage, its easier than scripting keyswitches for logic, I expect. For controls Ableton kills DP, I did a live show where I played guitar, mixed live mics, use EEG, EKG and EMG OSC inputs on audio, including EKG (filter triggered by heartbeat on an actor was pretty cool) and then used audio to fire live lissagous curves on a laser from my guitar. I wouldn't have considered even opening DP for that show. Sure, MIlli Vanilli and Beyonce are running their tracks on DP. But I'll bet you the keyboard rigs and guitars are at most taking patch change info and not using hosted plugs. Oh, and check out NeuralDSP's amps, they're all the rage now.

Yeah I used Live in conjunction with Kore back in the day, Live could do cool things, but internally without Kore it lacks the ability to "let go" of soft synths, it also has pauses in the audio as you load a new Live Set, unless you load everything into a single set, then it's a navigation nightmare. It's workable, but IMO it's not ideal. It makes total sense for plays like you're doing I suppose, but again it would take only a few tweaks to what DP10 has with clips to pretty much eliminate any advantage Live has at this point.

Mainstage rules the broadway pits and church band scene, nice transitions, programmable MIDI controllers per patch... Nobody will move to logic. Maybe Bitwig, if anybody still talks about it. I really have no clue how good it is or how solid, its been off the pro radar for some years in my experience.

Yeah Mainstage is great if you just want to use virtual instruments live, it's IMO not great for synchronizing a whole stage show, DP or Live etc. would work better for that.

I use DP because most of my living was doing music for theatre (should that ever come back), dance and occasionally tv/film. Doing theatre shows in DP rocks, one big file to rule them all....But I'd also love better keyswitching, tracks that can be disabled (per chunk if possible) and a few other things.

this is what kinda strikes me as odd. you mention Live as better for music for theatre, then DP. If DP had a few things in Clips similar to Live, there wouldn't be any need for Live unless you wanted to mess around with Max 4 Live etc. and create something specific.

Firing cues for various parts of a performance using clips in Live, well that wouldn't be that hard in DP with instant launch, or no quantize to launch, among other small improvements. If you don't know it you can already use Clips to fire off CC, program changes, track automation etc.

IMO the big advantage of DP over Live, Bitwig, and Logic in terms of Clips is Chunks. The combination is so obviously powerful for the types of things you want to do I'm frankly shocked a bit at all the resistance you seem to have to the idea that DP Clips could replace Lives usefulness. The rabbit hole of DP remaining focused, just isn't a reality, it's a super complex program. That can lead to bugs of course, but personally I decided against upgrading Live to 11 because one of the features I thought was cool (audio tempo sync) is not working. So I wouldn't say DP is less stable these days, Live pretty much became a regular DAW stability wise when they grafted Max 4 Live to it.

[bdr]

What exactly does ‘channelizing’ involve? Is it sending out different articulations of the same patch (eg Violins 1) to different MIDI channels? So, in a simple example, legato to Ch.1, staccato to Ch.2? How does that work physically with tracks and VI’s?? What are the big advantages?
Sincerely, ‘Confused’ of Melbourne.

[gzap]

Regardless of whether you quantize the notes or not, the problem still needs to be corrected, because the problem is related to the way sample libraries are made with slow attack transients....the MIDI NoteOn needs to happen earlier then the composer expects it to sound like its on the grid. quantized or not. Please do not dissuade MOTU from addressing this issue, its a severe oversight on every other platform and badly needed. You can spend a little time on vi-control to see just how much people need and want this. Not all sample libraries have this problem and perhaps yours don't, but many do. Actually its not really a "problem" per say, its an inherent issue with any realistically sampled library.

I asked Kirk Hunter about this once because his string libraries have 20-50ms of lateness to them. he said basically if you want to have the fully juicy glory of the string attack sample, and include the entire attack transient in the sample...then it will sound like its late. In the real world, string players start playing most notes slightly ahead of the beat so that the meat of the attack transient sounds like its on the grid...but they actually started drawing their bow across the strings earlier in order to make that happen. They do it intuitively. this is why many well sampled libraries need to have the NoteOn events nudged earlier one way or another. This absolutely needs to make it into articulation management systems, I hope MOTU will do it!

Its a problem for those who quantize, if you don't and you're a good player you play to compensate for the attack the same way violin players and tuba players do. Tuba being the slowest instrument to sound. Its only really a problem for those who quantize. Doesn't everyone who records their parts already do this when they used different samples?

I understand the issue, but as you've pointed out in this thread the problem is multi faceted and very problematic to implement. So sure, ask Motu to add in a way for you to personally adjust timing per articulation and see if they can add it to their to do list. Are you going to ask for it ms or MIDI?