MOTUnation.com

jloeb wrote:
With regard to performance, sorry but this is almost wholly inaccurate. Pre-rendering is hardly a "funny thing," and you can bet it will be the next thing that other DAW developers copy when they get around to it.

The reason? There's a performance gap alright, but it's the opposite of what you say it is. See:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 78#p305178


As far as VIs, my workflow mostly consists of importing audio recorded in the studio into DP 6.02 and mixing in-the-8-core box. I am threfore mostly VI based, and problems are very few and far between.

Well, to me it seems these the linked pdfs support exactly what I said - with VIs DP is, with pre-rendering, about half as efficient as Logic (and in my experience Live).
For audio tracks and fx plugins it is different, never said something opposed to that ...

The point is - Logic and Live get me twice as far without pre-rendering for VIs and show a much more stable CPU usage than DP. Therefore, the idea behind pre-rendering is great, but it seems to be on top of an architecture that is not competitive with those of other sequencers. And this is not only for AU VIs but also for the built in.

best
Steff

I'm in the same camp and try NOT to render. I keep everything fresh off the VI where possible unless it begins to bog down. I have had to freeze in these cases many time in my early 08 8 core but the 09 machine is quite a bit better. Don't know why but maybe it's slow because of hardware and not as much as future 32-64 will do, don't know. Also wonder if 7 will help any gridlocks that you claim as logic has bettered. That could make a difference in my purchase plans too.

I'm sure though that the 64bit system DP releases will likely attempt to make compatible 32bit VI's but I just hope/wish they would do a demo for us to try so we can test it before we buy in. For the first time I think they would do themselves a favor and keep people more on top of what works and what doesn't and keep this board from erupting after it's bought and installed. I would have loved a demo on 7 and I think allot of the talk here would have revolved more about those issues and not about the money thing. It's real hard buying something cold and finding problems after you just paid for it recently.

I just can't be the first this time.

Tares the 3.5gb sounds worse than I thought.
What is AU side chain?

James Steele wrote: I think we're splitting hairs a bit. I don't kow why you're ripping on the guitars. I mean I have some nice guitars, but your post comes off as unnecessarily mocking and denigrating. ... As far as the MOTU videos go, I don't know what the first guitar is. Offhand, why it looks like what is probably a mid-range solid body electric with a single bridge pickup. I don't recognize the fret markers. ...

Oh, I was mocking all right, and pointing and laughing. I don't even see a pickup on that thing!

I was just having some fun at their expense, I'm sure they'll get over it. The amp modeling sounded fine, as far as I could tell from the video. I'm interested to hear it in person even though I have Amplitube and Guitar Rig. I'm curious to see what the CPU usage is as well.

I have $200 guitars I use, actually most of my guitars are inexpensive. I'm not a guitar snob by any means, but I do have to draw a line somewhere. I'm speaking more of taste than expense.

bb

steff3 wrote:Well, to me it seems these the linked pdfs support exactly what I said - with VIs DP is, with pre-rendering, about half as efficient as Logic (and in my experience Live).
For audio tracks and fx plugins it is different, never said something opposed to that ...

Well, that's the first time I've seen that interpretation of this data, since that's not what it says. With prerendering enabled, DP maxes out at 59 VIs before choking, as opposed to 44 with Logic, i.e. DP is capable of running many more VIs than Logic in a mixing situation (see Mac DAW CPU comparison, 1st page).

The only way one can try to squeeze from this data that Logic is the more efficient is from the buffer reduction experiment. But on a fast Mac, even 128 is an extremely generous setting. On an 8-core, playability is still good even at 512k in most situations I've run into (and I would have liked to see VI data at that buffer setting, since it would give us an idea of the linear relationship of buffer vs. VI count increase for each DAW. From the data as it stands, it seems likely that DP and Logic would show comparable performance at an intermediate buffer setting).

The tradeoff is always there between buffer size and VI count, but in real world use (mine at least,) the more crucial issue is that I be able to keep more VIs running without rendering to audio so that I can edit parts. On that front, DP just trounces everything else.

If you're Jordan Rudess or some similarly insane chop-monster of a player, you may actually be able to feel the difference between 32 and 128k buffers, and in that case, Logic would be your choice for live playing. I stop being able to feel an appreciable difference at settings lower than 256 on the 8-core.

steff3 wrote:The point is - Logic and Live get me twice as far without pre-rendering for VIs and show a much more stable CPU usage than DP. Therefore, the idea behind pre-rendering is great, but it seems to be on top of an architecture that is not competitive with those of other sequencers.

I never use DP without prerendering on. It's essentially transparent to the user, so there's no reason whatsoever to do that absent compatibility issues, which I've never run into and I use a ton of plugs.

With regard to the supposedly "non-competitive" architecture, remember that DP is supporting real-time nondestructive pitch editing on every track. This means in DP, you can go into any monophonic track and display and edit in detail the pitch curve in a MIDI-like fashion without rendering to audio, Melodyne style. Logic doesn't do this; you're stuck using a plugin that does not allow this kind of on-grid pitch editing power or flexibility. So DP's architecture is giving you something more, not less. And with pre-rendering on, it still bests Logic in all but the most demanding live playing scenario. It has to be said that that's a pretty ingenious way to keep all the features while still managing to get better performance.

steff3 wrote:

jloeb wrote:Well, to me it seems these the linked pdfs support exactly what I said - with VIs DP is, with pre-rendering, about half as efficient as Logic (and in my experience Live).
For audio tracks and fx plugins it is different, never said something opposed to that ...

The point is - Logic and Live get me twice as far without pre-rendering for VIs and show a much more stable CPU usage than DP. Therefore, the idea behind pre-rendering is great, but it seems to be on top of an architecture that is not competitive with those of other sequencers. And this is not only for AU VIs but also for the built in.

best
Steff

Things aren't always what they "seem." You read the charts wrong. The 2nd PDF's first chart might support what you're saying, in the sense that you can get the I/O buffer down lower. All the other charts show DP coming out on top or at least in the ballpark with the others.

Someone back up the way asked when DP7 would be shipping. I asked that on Friday, and the person taking orders at MOTU said "within one to two days." So, it's happening very soon. Like... today.

Shooshie

I have already been charged so I assume it's very soon...

I have some down time next week.
It would nice to see it before then.

I just got a call from MOTU they accidentally billed my account twice.
They where calling to let me know a credit was in the works.

You can get MX4 2.2 for $99 with DP7. I have it all ready so I wish they would just give me $200 off of Mach5.

I am asking if any one can tell me about the new Au side chain in DP7. Is it like a side chain used for ducking? Will we use it to control effects with another effect? Is it the same as in Logic? Could this be used to create more complex effects?

wylie1 wrote:I just got a call from MOTU they accidentally billed my account twice.
They where calling to let me know a credit was in the works.

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =1&t=37960

I am also going to buy DP7 this week. I am running 5.13 on a dual dual core 2.66 right now and it is solid. I think I will keep this on another hard drive at first after I upgrade to Snow this week also. I think DP7 will be a good step forward!

By the way, the first guitar used in the video is a line 6 guitar. I wonder if they were using the modeled POD sounds in the guitar along with the dp modelers or not. That would kind of be misleading if so. It does not have any bearing on me purchasing though. Stability is the name of the game for me. Guitar fx are extras afaik even though I do play guitar.

twistedtom wrote:You can get MX4 2.2 for $99 with DP7. I have it all ready so I wish they would just give me $200 off of Mach5.

I am asking if any one can tell me about the new Au side chain in DP7. Is it like a side chain used for ducking? Will we use it to control effects with another effect? Is it the same as in Logic? Could this be used to create more complex effects?

We won't know until we see it. My suspicion is that it adds sidechaining capability to MOTU's AU implementation. That means it would be up to each plugin developer to add sidechaining to their plugins. But I may be wrong. They could have figured out how to add side-chaining to any plugin. I just don't think that's what they've done.

Shooshie

Well, I'm on board for DP7---I ordered it. I fall into the camp of users who tried DP6 but couldn't get it running well enough to trust moving over to it. So, I've stayed quite happily with DP5.13 and 10.4.11. And I have to say, I've enjoyed not dealing with an upgrade to Leopard.....hehe I never thought I'd skip a whole OS version, but I'm so glad I did. Things have been just humming along here quite efficiently.

So, when DP7 arrives, I'm going to start testing a big shakeup in my setup. I'm going to duplicate my OS drive and use the dup as a guinea pig. I'm going to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard, I'm going to try going from DP5 to DP7, and then I'm going to see if I can get all my plugins, VIs and DP7 to work in this new OS and DAW AS WELL OR BETTER THAN THEY DO IN DP5/TIGER. Is that an unreasonable request??!!!! This is 2 OSes and two versions of DP later.....shouldn't I expect to be DAZZLED by all the stuff I've been missing??!!!!!

Wish me luck......I can't say that I'm really looking forward that much to it.......I must be getting older.....I used to live for upgrades.....now I just dread all the problems I know are going to come with them. I guess the other problem is that I also have Adobe CS3....will that work? I have Final Cut Studio 2....will that work? I have a gazillion other programs that don't have anything to do with music but I rely on them on a daily basis.....will they work?

I have three different sets of audio hardware attached--Metric Halo ULN8 and Mobile IO, 2 MOTU 2408s and an MBox2.....will they work? hmmm Digi says don't upgrade to SL yet....

Will my eSATA card work for my external backup enclosure?

So much fun to be had! I can't wait!

If it doesn't work out, I will happily slap my Tiger drive back in and just continue to use it knowing that I can be 100% productive on it.

Wow....this turned into a rant.....hehe and I deleted all the really ranting stuff! I think I have some pent up latent technology frustration issues...... I guess it comes from years of working hard at making a stable setup that you can rely on, and then every few months, someone puts a game changer into the mix and you have to chase your tail and be your own IT person to figure how to make workarounds to get going again.

Ah well, it still beats being one of those people who works at the traffic violations office where people come in all day everyday screaming at them about why their car got towed or booted or whatever..... You know, those places have armed guards at them now because people get so heated? It can get pretty ugly.

-gabe