Like to know your experiences about using DP the 1st time

[Pedwin]

Hy,

I'm trying to get prepared for buying and installing DP and would like to know how you experienced the learning curve and getting used to DP. I have worked with Cubase 1.1. on Atari back in 1990 - 1993 and later tried to work with Logic 3.0 on PC. I am looking for a program that I gives me the opportunity to concentrate on the music instead of the program. Logic and Cubase were not the right options for me. Can anyone tell me how you have experienced DP the first time you started with it, especially those who switched from another program. I'm very curious te learn from you guys. Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Pedwin

[Matcher]

Hi,

I had used Sonar and Cubase SX before dp and I still do some things with them. I suggest that you go through the getting started tutorials, but watch out there were some critical errors in the 4.5 getting started manual so don't pull your hair out even if the tutorials give you trouble. I can't say if dp is for you because I never felt that Cubase got in my way, but dp has more functions in it. It's not an app for the technophobe and some things in the manuals could be explained better. I was really disappointed by the getting started manual's idiotic errors and when I e- mailed motu about them, I waited a week for an answer that was not helping but with the help from this board I've been able to move forward.

[stephentayler]

I made the switch to DP just as it became Digital (with audio) and I came from Opcode Vision. Vision had some great MIDI and organisational features ( not recreated elsewhere ), but I found the learning curve on DP pretty straightforward.

Of course now it is way more sophisticated, but for the most part intuitive.


My main assessment of the main programs is:

DP and PT: American, Musical, intuitive if you come from a traditional recording background, preferable for audio editing ( my preference )

Cubase, Logic: European, Technical, leaning more towards programming, powerful.

These are just my personal feelings, they are all great.....

Stephen

[Pedwin]

. . .
My main assessment of the main programs is:

DP and PT: American, Musical, intuitive if you come from a traditional recording background, preferable for audio editing ( my preference )

Cubase, Logic: European, Technical, leaning more towards programming, powerful.

These are just my personal feelings, they are all great.....

Stephen

Hy Stephen, I am an absolute amateur but this is exact the same impression of the programs that I had, with exeption of PT as I don't know anything about this program.

Cheers,
Pedwin

[markwayne]

I started with Performer (non-digital) back in the early 90's. I moved to Studio Vision Pro as soon as it was released. I loved that program for its simple elegance. When I finally was forced to jump into OSX, I looked around and decided that I would upgrade my ancient copy of Performer to DP.

I missed SVP terribly for the first couple of months. It was really hard to re-learn things that I have done for ten years on a program that doesn't seem interested in conforming to any standards. I still find myself reaching for the manual to do things that should not require a trip to the manual. It's a powerful program and I enjoy using it for certain projects, but I have also since purchased Logic and find it (unlike most people) to be quite intuitive.

Wayne

[PSPartyband]

I too came from being a Vision user. When I wanted to upgrade to OSX I thought DP would be the best choice because it had many of the features that I was used to. It didn't take long for me to be up and running with it. I think it is real straight forward and easy to use. I like it mainly for MIDI production, and believe it is a great live performance sequencer. I also use Logic pro 7, and use it for all of my studio work now. I like the look and feel of Logic much better for audio production, but prefer DP for creating MIDI files, which is mainly what I do

[frontierfran]

I was a hard PT user for the past 9-10 years, and just jumped to DP. I now have a good grasp on using it for tracking, and very much like it way more than PT for tracking. Editing? another story. Naturally, I work quicker in PT, but from what Ive experienced and read, things like 'Insert Silence" and so forth being absent from DP...thats just bad. I dont even know how to consolidate several regions on a track to one track....I know i need to work more, and read more...but it's just not that intuitive for editing for me (so far..., that is)

but you cant beat its features, and I look forward to moving from novice to pro user.....some day.

[mikebeckmotu]

My first experience with computer-based recording was an early version of Acid, which might have given me the wrong impression of how things are usually done. As I progressed into full-featured DAW apps, there was a learning curve, but once I invested the time to understand the depth of features and how they inter-related, I did not want to go back to the "easy" apps.
DP took me awhile to learn. I didn't have a lot of uninterrupted time to spend with it. I ended up buying a few books to help speed up the learning process, and I would cross-reference things between the DP manual and the third-party books. Now that I've spent some time with it, I can see why DP users are pretty strong in their support of the program.
In a sense, DP reminds me of Photoshop - if you want to achieve something, there is a way to do it, and quite likely five users will have five different ways to do it and all will be valid ways. This is probably why it appeals to people in that it doesn't force you to conform to some DP way of working, if that makes sense.
Anyway, in case you're interested, the books I found most helpful were Digital Performer Power and Producing Music with Digital Performer. There was another book I looked at called Digital Performer Ignite, but I thought it was too basic for where I was at the time.
Of course, this forum has been better than any of the books, in that there is so much more to learn from the variety of experiences here, and the people are great.
Good luck!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Hy,

I'm trying to get prepared for buying and installing DP and would like to know how you experienced the learning curve and getting used to DP. I have worked with Cubase 1.1. on Atari back in 1990 - 1993 and later tried to work with Logic 3.0 on PC. I am looking for a program that I gives me the opportunity to concentrate on the music instead of the program. Logic and Cubase were not the right options for me. Can anyone tell me how you have experienced DP the first time you started with it, especially those who switched from another program. I'm very curious te learn from you guys. Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Pedwin

Frankly, I loaded the program and didn't use it for several years. I found the interface screwy as I was used to SVP. Even EditTrack on the Atari was better than DP as far as I was concerned.

When Gibson bought Opcode and closed them down, I HAD TO try that Performer thing. Once I got out of the mindset of SVP, DP was a breeze. It is not the learning curve. I can hadnle those and basically mastered Finale in a few days (I had no choice at the time). But DP was a hard nut to crack (and yes, I had the manuals - even paid for upgrades I never used).

But once you get the hang of it, DP is extremely intuitive IMO.

[Pedwin]

Thank you gents. Your feedback gives me some hope that the intuitive way of working that I am looking for might be achievable for me with DP. That's something I never got out of Logic and Cubase SX just did not feel right for me. After many brouwsing nights thru the web I started to get more interested in DP. If this package won't work for me I think I keep playing my guitar as I just would not be able to get the right things out of the system. I will keep you all updated and expect to get DP arround the end of July.

Thanks and keep up the good work.

Cheers
Pedwin

[emulatorloo]

Thank you gents. Your feedback gives me some hope that the intuitive way of working that I am looking for might be achievable for me with DP.

Hey Pedwin -- I'm late to the party, but just wanted to give you my 2 cents.

You will avoid a lot of head scratching if you dig in and go thru the tutorials in the "Getting Started" manual. They are short, fun, and pretty much give you everything you need to get started w the basic skills and concepts.

[Pedwin]

thanks emulatorloo, I will read it as soon as I got the manual in my hand.

cheers,
pedwin

[Shooshie]

I've been using this stuff for a long time, and over a period of 20 years or so I've talked to a lot of people. My observation has been that the vast majority of people like the first real professional app that they ever learned, and nothing else ever quite "compares" in their memory to that. I've heard it from people who started in Performer or Digital Performer and moved to other apps, and vice versa. Always there is something their first love did that the rest just can't quite measure up to. I think that's normal, but it's also largely psychological. We learn things a certain way, and that is the framework by which we measure all others from that point onward.

That said, I've also known a lot of people who came from Logic to DP who said "wow! This is what I've been waiting for." Not so much from Studio Vision or Pro Tools, where most users were basically happy with what they had. The older Logic (before Apple got hold of it) was not very user friendly; it drove people away if they weren't perfectly matched for it.

I tried a number of MIDI and audio apps in the early days, including Vision and StudioVision. Never did they have the particular features I had grown to depend on, so I always stayed with MOTU. I also did not like the interfaces of the others, but again, that's exactly what I was talking about above: After trying a few MIDI apps that were more text based, Performer was my "first love." It just rocked.

When I started with Performer, however, there were no graphic editing windows except for the Tracks Overview, which only showed blocks for measures. You could drag a bar or a subdivision of a bar to any other track or location, but you had to know what was in it. The only way to see what was in it was by reading the Event List. To us in that day, the Tracks Overview window seemed very advanced. It's evolved somewhat, but it still works pretty much the same way.

Phrasing music was difficult in the 1980s. You had to previsualize your phrase, then translate that into a series of velocities, typing them into the event list one-by-one. It went pretty fast with keyboard shortcuts, but it was never efficient or easy. The graphic editing window was a godsend. Again, we felt on top of the world when that came out, even though it only displayed or accessed one track at a time!

I've submitted dozens of feature requests over these many years, and nearly all of them have ended up in DP. The search window, the "preserve realtime performance" shift, "adjust barlines", the multi-colored multi-track editing window, and many others were things I begged for. Sometimes for years. Other times they put them in immediately. It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when the MIDI faders could not alter velocities; just CC#7 (volume). THe MIDI meters on the TO tracks used to display activity only, not velocity. As always it is pressure from us users that drives MOTU to keep making little modifications that benefit all of us. I used to know many of the MOTU people by name, and I think many of them knew me, as we used to talk for hours about what we needed out here in the field. With the exception of Jim Cooper and a few others, those people are all gone now, or else they've moved to other places in the company, and I've lost track of them.

So, it's hard to go back to a "first time" for me. It's like I've had 20+ years of continuous "first times," and each time I discover a new use for a feature I had not exploited to its fullest, it's like the first time all over again. When I go work for a client or for myself, at home, in a studio, or on the road in front of thousands of people, I feel like I've got the most incredible computer audio/MIDI system in the world. That's the way it SHOULD feel, no matter what application you use. I can honestly say that my career has been incredibly fun and productive because of MOTU. I would not trade my MOTU experiences for anything.

Shooshie

[mwalthius]

I used various versions of Cakewalk for MIDI sequencing for more than a decade. Then, after some time off, I switched to a Mac, and DP, and started to explore digital recording for the first time.

The good news is that DP is a mature product with a zillion features. The bad news is that DP is a mature product with a zillion features.

These days I am purely a "home hobbyist." While in the past I logged thousands of hours in recording studios, someone else was always engineering and I simply had to play keyboards. Bottom line: I am glad I made the investment in DP, but many aspects have had a rather steep learning curve for me. I wish I could work with it every day, but my day job is extremely intense and involves a fair amount of traveling. But there are worse problems to have.

Like any sophisticated piece of software, spending time with the manual is always a good idea. And people on boards like this (and the one at bigbluelounge.com) have been profoundly helpful to me.

[matwell]

Ah, memory lane. I started with Studio Vision from Opcode. I had the Studio Vision / AudioMedia III / SampleCell II combination and it was working pretty great (for the time). I hung on till the bitter end with Studio Vision, but the writing was on the wall.

Once I decided to move on, I tried DP at a friend's studio and thought that it was "ok". Everyone else I talked to was raving about Logic so I decided to buy that. This was Logic version 4.5 at the time.

Now, I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but I'm pretty comfortable with technology and feel like I can get up to speed with a computer pretty quickly. Not so with Logic v4.5! I couldn't get any work done for 3 days!!!

I finally couldn't take anymore, so I bought the competitive upgrade to DP 2.7 (shipped MOTU my Logic disks!). I installed DP and got everything setup.

I was working within an hour.

So, I agree with Stephen Tayler. I use Pro Tools in many different recording studios for the big work-for-hire projects I do, and I love it. In my home studio, I run PTLE and DP with my Digi 002R. Both apps are very musical, intuitive and comfortable.

Never tried Cubase, but I've been messing around with Logic Express lately (v7.0). Logic is still very technical and "cold", but it *has* come a long way under Apple's influence. If they made it more user-friendly, it could actually dominate, because it is so closely linked with the Mac OS. It has some preferences that I've never seen in DP or PT!

Right now though, I think the power duo is Pro Tools and Digital Performer. They compliment each other so well, and I know from personal experience that *so* many movies, TV shows and albums are produced with this great pair of apps.

So my recommendation is: Buy Digital Performer as your sequencer, and buy Digidesign audio hardware for your I/O. You'll get Pro Tools with the hardware, and then you're set!