DO NOT INSTALL THE LATEST VERSION of SLATE VMR

[David Polich]

I installed the latest version of Slate VMR, which was released today (12/11).

Now when I launch DP, I see this message:
"MAS - failure to initialize. 275-10868 {-10868]"

DP will not finish launching, I have to force-quit. I removed VMR from my components folder, and downloaded the installer for the previous version from Slate Digital's website. However, when I open that installer, its reports that it is the VMS Installer, not the VMR installer.

So I currently cannot use any VMR plugs, and I am in the middle of several mixing projects.

So..I don't recommend installing the latest update for VMR (which Slate announced as "game-changing". Yeah it is.)

UPDATE: I sent a support request to Slate Digital and heard back. They acknowledge that the AU version of this update "probably doesn't work in DP" due to "DP's method of handling sidechaining". They also told me to "please note that we do not officially support Digital Performer", although the VST3 version of VMR "might work". And their reply included a link to the actual previous version of VMR, which I installed and am now back in business.

So here's the deal..the "game-changing" update to VMR includes sidechaining for every plugin..and that's it. This is no big deal to me..I don't use sidechaining. At any rate, I still recommend NOT updating to the latest version of VMR.

[monkey man]

At least Slate support is very-good and hooked you up right-away Brother Dave.

Hope you're well man and thanks for letting us know.

[corbo-billy]

With the 3.0.8. VMR version, I have not this message and this new version, installed with Slate Digital Connect work fine, at home .

[red333]

Do you have the link for the previous version of VMR

[mikehalloran]

Thanks for the heads up. I updated everything last week and hadn't gotten the news yet so will leave it alone for now.

[red333]

Slate Digital.

Dropped full compatibility with DP , as they say a few years ago, and because of this they are not obliged to warn us of possible in-compatibilities.

Which, unless they address the stance, makes Slate digital a no go plugin platform.

What do you think?

[David Polich]

I don't have the link. You have to email Slate Digital tech support and they will send you a link.

Dave

[kwiz]

The VST2 version seems to work fine on my system.

[kwiz]

Slate Digital.

Dropped full compatibility with DP , as they say a few years ago, and because of this they are not obliged to warn us of possible in-compatibilities.

Which, unless they address the stance, makes Slate digital a no go plugin platform.

What do you think?

Unfortunately, DP's foothold in the industry is slipping away by the day.
I guess third-party plugin developers see the writing on the wall because, at this point, DP is never mentioned as a supported DAW in most compatibility charts.
I almost wish that MOTU's owner would sell it to another company that is passionate about DP and restore it to its former prominence as the most innovative DAW in the game.

[Michael Canavan]

Unfortunately, DP's foothold in the industry is slipping away by the day.
I guess third-party plugin developers see the writing on the wall because, at this point, DP is never mentioned as a supported DAW in most compatibility charts.
I almost wish that MOTU's owner would sell it to another company that is passionate about DP and restore it to its former prominence as the most innovative DAW in the game.

IMO it's been an uphill struggle ever since Apple bought Emagic and released Logic as the "premium" DAW on Macs. Previous to that it was DP, Cubase, Pro Tools and Logic. Now it's PT, Logic, Live, FL Studio and Cubase, with Studio One and Reaper biting on their heals. I dunno though getting bought did not work out for Cakewalk too well?

I think 10 and 11 introduced some really much needed changes, but the issue now is UX and marketing. I see a bit of chomping at the bit on forums for the new version from people thinking about the cross grade and not wanting to be stuck a whole version behind etc. so that's good.

The elephant in the room is DP is within months of DP12 dropping unless something really weird is happening. 3 1/2 years is the maximum time between upgrade cycles since DP4 and that is coming up on January 6th 2025. So we should see something soon.

Another elephant, the audience is older for DP, mostly 40+ years of age, that's irrefutable at this point. It seems really common for people to not upgrade for whole cycles compared to Live, Bitwig etc. so the incentive to pop out new versions must be affected by that.

I also feel like the incentive to get modern features shows a desire by MOTU to keep DP relevant, but I do feel they missed the mark a bit and could use some lessons on UX design at this point. Some areas are tiny, and the new Clips window is HUGE graphically compared to the rest of the DAW, tracks are not resizable and some elements of a clip based workflow are missing when compared to even Logics version.

All of that said, it's always notable that with any DAW, if it's been years or months since an update or upgrade of any significance people start doom and glooming about the DAW. Same is true of Live, Cubase, Studio One, and even Bitwig who pump out updates all the time.

[kwiz]

Unfortunately, DP's foothold in the industry is slipping away by the day.
I guess third-party plugin developers see the writing on the wall because, at this point, DP is never mentioned as a supported DAW in most compatibility charts.
I almost wish that MOTU's owner would sell it to another company that is passionate about DP and restore it to its former prominence as the most innovative DAW in the game.

IMO it's been an uphill struggle ever since Apple bought Emagic and released Logic as the "premium" DAW on Macs. Previous to that it was DP, Cubase, Pro Tools and Logic. Now it's PT, Logic, Live, FL Studio and Cubase, with Studio One and Reaper biting on their heals. I dunno though getting bought did not work out for Cakewalk too well?

I think 10 and 11 introduced some really much needed changes, but the issue now is UX and marketing. I see a bit of chomping at the bit on forums for the new version from people thinking about the cross grade and not wanting to be stuck a whole version behind etc. so that's good.

The elephant in the room is DP is within months of DP12 dropping unless something really weird is happening. 3 1/2 years is the maximum time between upgrade cycles since DP4 and that is coming up on January 6th 2025. So we should see something soon.

Another elephant, the audience is older for DP, mostly 40+ years of age, that's irrefutable at this point. It seems really common for people to not upgrade for whole cycles compared to Live, Bitwig etc. so the incentive to pop out new versions must be affected by that.

I also feel like the incentive to get modern features shows a desire by MOTU to keep DP relevant, but I do feel they missed the mark a bit and could use some lessons on UX design at this point. Some areas are tiny, and the new Clips window is HUGE graphically compared to the rest of the DAW, tracks are not resizable and some elements of a clip based workflow are missing when compared to even Logics version.

All of that said, it's always notable that with any DAW, if it's been years or months since an update or upgrade of any significance people start doom and glooming about the DAW. Same is true of Live, Cubase, Studio One, and even Bitwig who pump out updates all the time.

Interesting points and I agree, UX and marketing seem to be a challenging hurdle for them.
I thought that adding the "Clips window" would attract a younger demographic when it was introduced but even with that. people have to know about it. (Marketing) I personally don't really use that function much, but when I do, I see the limitations that it currently has compared to Live; I haven't tried Logic's yet.

I also feel like DP lacks some the innovation that it was known for in the past. Back in 2004, having the ability to do pitch correction on an audio track albeit mono only at the time, was literally "game changing". Chunks are still one of the best features that makes DP a top contender in my book but other plugin manufacturers have been dropping DP as a DAW they support. That is seriously concerning for me. What are they seeing/hearing about DP that they feel isn't worth supporting anymore?

I don't know what's in store for version 12. I hope that it's so innovative that it catipults DP to a place of prominence again!
I'm a huge lover of DP; because I use it, I've been able to earn a great living and travel the world. With that said, I'm really concerned about MOTU and how DP is being promoted/marketed. Like you stated, "Another elephant, the audience is older for DP, mostly 40+ years of age." How does that perception change?

[Michael Canavan]

Interesting points and I agree, UX and marketing seem to be a challenging hurdle for them.

For a moment they had a young guy with tattoos as a sales rep, but I'm pretty sure he bounced. It's not like they can't do UX, DP7 was IMO a major improvement in UX, and whether people are happy about it or not finally succumbing to consolidate instrument tracks was a step in the right direction.

I thought that adding the "Clips window" would attract a younger demographic when it was introduced but even with that. people have to know about it. (Marketing) I personally don't really use that function much, but when I do, I see the limitations that it currently has compared to Live; I haven't tried Logic's yet.

It actually has a few advantages over Lives Clips, you can toss multiple audio files in a single clip like you can in Bitwig for instance. Creating an automation only clip is pretty easy really, no dance like in Live to get it to work. Fun stuff BTW, you can essentially create an LFO for an effect or instrument by automating a parameter etc. The main disadvantage is that clips in other DAWs stop playing when you fire another Scene or row of clips if they hit an empty slot, in DP they continue to play unless you insert a blank clip, which you then have to color something a control surface like the Launchpad can't read otherwise visual feedback is ruined, which personally it is partially by having all the blank clips in the Clips window. All of that requires prep work, which pretty much goes against the whole concept of Clips and Scenes, which is immediate looping to jam to, or flesh out a song.

I also feel like DP lacks some the innovation that it was known for in the past. Back in 2004, having the ability to do pitch correction on an audio track albeit mono only at the time, was literally "game changing". Chunks are still one of the best features that makes DP a top contender in my book but other plugin manufacturers have been dropping DP as a DAW they support. That is seriously concerning for me. What are they seeing/hearing about DP that they feel isn't worth supporting anymore?

I don't know what's in store for version 12. I hope that it's so innovative that it catipults DP to a place of prominence again!
I'm a huge lover of DP; because I use it, I've been able to earn a great living and travel the world. With that said, I'm really concerned about MOTU and how DP is being promoted/marketed. Like you stated, "Another elephant, the audience is older for DP, mostly 40+ years of age." How does that perception change?

UX improvements, I would say that's miles above any other thing they could do to attract a younger audience. Reaper is the only DAW that requires more customization and frankly you can go much much further in Reaper, it even allows access to most of the guts with the Lua scripting language. Logic and DP used to be the two most complex DAWs out there, although there are technologies in Logic that are miles above the others like AI etc. it also presents the basics right away.

Obviously because of the importance to MOTU of the film scoring crowd we're going to see improvements to surround and spatial audio etc. but more than that IMO they need to get DP to stop glitching when you turn the cycle on and off while the tracks are playing. I mean it's almost 2025 and no DAW I use glitches as bad that way.

Also I've said it a million times now probably, but Bitwigs answer to not being in the top 5 DAWs is to have sandboxing, so a plugin rarely "fails" evaluation, what happens instead is it crashes, but not the DAW, a pop up comes up telling you what happened and asking if you want to ditch it or reinstantiate it. This is on a per plug basis in case a plug in runs much better not sandboxed. Whether it's justified or not DP has a reputation as a crashy DAW, and it's always plugins, so IMO fixing that gets rid of that issue.

The hurdles of DP are really shown in how MOTU never really addressed plugin/track automation with V-Racks, that created a situation where in order to use V-Racks you need to stick to CC automation, which means that the super power of DP compared to other DAWs, Chunks, is somewhat flawed for using in a modern (as in the last 20 years), way.

One could be a new user with DP and immediately think that Chunks and the Song window presented a way to work on a song as parts, and as soon as you realize each Chunk has it's own instruments and FX you would realize it takes the time of loading a song to load a Chunk. Then if you move the instruments and FX to V-Rack you lost all the track automation. You might just close DP and walk away.

Personally I would be a major DP evangelist if MOTU made it possible for V-Racked instruments to write track automation. This is IMO the one major downside to working with Chunks and V-Racks. I pretty much use Chunks as alternate song edits, or VI Chunks and bounced audio Chunks.

Essentially there is a massive amount of little details to know about DP that prevent a person coming from Cubase, FL Studio, Pro Tools, Live etc. from feeling like they can get anything done. UX UX UX IMO is the answer.

[kwiz]

Obviously because of the importance to MOTU of the film scoring crowd we're going to see improvements to surround and spatial audio etc. but more than that IMO they need to get DP to stop glitching when you turn the cycle on and off while the tracks are playing. I mean it's almost 2025 and no DAW I use glitches as bad that way.

Exactly!! When you're in "Live Performance Mode" it doesn't glitch; the downside is a bigger cpu hit...
I guess it has to do with how next gen pre gen works. I hope they can get it to work with out being in LPM.

Also I've said it a million times now probably, but Bitwigs answer to not being in the top 5 DAWs is to have sandboxing, so a plugin rarely "fails" evaluation, what happens instead is it crashes, but not the DAW, a pop up comes up telling you what happened and asking if you want to ditch it or reinstantiate it. This is on a per plug basis in case a plug in runs much better not sandboxed. Whether it's justified or not DP has a reputation as a crashy DAW, and it's always plugins, so IMO fixing that gets rid of that issue.

True, I believe Studio One behaves in a similar way as Bitwig.

The hurdles of DP are really shown in how MOTU never really addressed plugin/track automation with V-Racks, that created a situation where in order to use V-Racks you need to stick to CC automation, which means that the super power of DP compared to other DAWs, Chunks, is somewhat flawed for using in a modern (as in the last 20 years), way.

One could be a new user with DP and immediately think that Chunks and the Song window presented a way to work on a song as parts, and as soon as you realize each Chunk has it's own instruments and FX you would realize it takes the time of loading a song to load a Chunk. Then if you move the instruments and FX to V-Rack you lost all the track automation. You might just close DP and walk away.

I haven't used DP for composing in years now. In the studio, I use it to track vocals/instruments and mixing.
I do most of my composition work in Maschine and occasionally Logic Pro.
I never knew that V-Racks had that track automation limitation.

Personally I would be a major DP evangelist if MOTU made it possible for V-Racked instruments to write track automation. This is IMO the one major downside to working with Chunks and V-Racks. I pretty much use Chunks as alternate song edits, or VI Chunks and bounced audio Chunks.

I mainly use Chunks for live show playback; I haven't found anything that beats it so far.

Essentially there is a massive amount of little details to know about DP that prevent a person coming from Cubase, FL Studio, Pro Tools, Live etc. from feeling like they can get anything done. UX UX UX IMO is the answer.

Agreed!!

[Michael Canavan]

I haven't used DP for composing in years now. In the studio, I use it to track vocals/instruments and mixing.
I do most of my composition work in Maschine and occasionally Logic Pro.
I never knew that V-Racks had that track automation limitation.

Funny, I used Maschine for years (MPC Live now) and honestly it kept me in DP, because using it as a plugin in a DAW the VSTi version allows for pattern changes via the DAW. Same thing hold true for the MPC BTW, the VSTi version works with DP, you can drag MIDI to the DAW and it plays back in the MPC software. I used Logic for years in the early 2000's but came back to DP when 7 dropped.

The only thing comparable to DP for live playback IMO is Live, and in many ways Chunks are better than Scenes, specifically for practicing, it's near impossible to loop a Scene across all clips, and the Arrangement page means you have a Massive project. Chunks makes the most sense.

[David Polich]

Slate Digital sent me a link to a new beat version of VMR which resolves the conflicts with DP. But they made me promise not to post the link publicly.

I tested it and yes it works.

So if any of you want the link, PM me with your personal email and I'll send you the download link.