Digital Performer 11.32

[Tritonemusic]

And @James... ambulatory can be your next album name

Hahaha! I better hurry up and get it done while it's still true!!

LOL!

[monkey man]

FakeBook, InstantGlam and so on aren't for me.

Get off my lawn!

[HCMarkus]

As for the actual subject at hand, namely DP11.32, first full session today running this version under Sonoma.

No crashes. No anomalies. Smooth!

[James Steele]

No crashes. No anomalies. Smooth!

Nice!!!

[monkey man]

Wow, great news Brother Sir Markus.

Bodes well for the future...

[HCMarkus]

Day 2 of session with DP11.32: similar (perfect) results.

[Phil O]

Yeah, I'm having good luck with this version as well.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[stubbsonic]

I've recently completed two fairly long edit sessions (with a client present) and had zero crashes.

This is stubbsonic, and my bitchin' is legend, so that's saying something.

However the QuickScribe editor is still really unstable and prone to massive amounts gibberish. I hope they can sort out what's going on in there.

[sayatnova]

...the times DP gets mentioned on KVR or Gearspace it usually is followed by someone claiming it's a buggy mess etc. etc.

Well, I can tell you as someone who has recently become very interested in outboard gear, it would be nice if DP wasn't the worst Mac DAW (AFAIK) when it comes to hardware inserts. Sigh.

Sadly, this has been an ongoing problem for a while. The hardware insert plugin just does not work reliably once set (buggy) and then re-open the project. I have had two tech notes submitted in the last few years and it has not been fixed, yet. This is such a problem that I have just started to use another DAW for projects that I need my outboard reverbs and compressors for. That said, I have been with DP since Opcode got killed as my main DAW, and I love it. I truly hope they can get this sorted, it may not be a high priority for many but it is a big deal to me...

[James Steele]

...the times DP gets mentioned on KVR or Gearspace it usually is followed by someone claiming it's a buggy mess etc. etc.

Well, I can tell you as someone who has recently become very interested in outboard gear, it would be nice if DP wasn't the worst Mac DAW (AFAIK) when it comes to hardware inserts. Sigh.

Sadly, this has been an ongoing problem for a while. The hardware insert plugin just does not work reliably once set (buggy) and then re-open the project. I have had two tech notes submitted in the last few years and it has not been fixed, yet. This is such a problem that I have just started to use another DAW for projects that I need my outboard reverbs and compressors for. That said, I have been with DP since Opcode got killed as my main DAW, and I love it. I truly hope they can get this sorted, it may not be a high priority for many but it is a big deal to me...

I have been bending their ears over there at MOTU ever since I started getting into outboard hardware and discovering the glaring deficiencies in DP's implementation. This is much like my experience when I started using my Avid S3 control surface. MOTU claims DP supports EUCON surfaces, but it was just really bad when I first started using it. Fortunately, they made major strides in EUCON support, but there are still some annoying issues. For starters, forget about instantiating a plugin via a EUCON control surface. There is no menu hierarchy when searching for plugins. If you have 1,000 plugins installed in your system, you get to look for the one you want by paging through ALL of them. Sixteen at a time on the S3. Unusable.

As for the Hardware Insert... just fixing the basic functionality would succeed in putting DP just reasonably in the game. I have Pro Tools, Logic and Cubase on my system. I don't really use them much, but I did set them all up for external hardware and all of them are superior to DP and... they actually work.

As mentioned, DP's Hardware Insert plugin "forgets" the latency offset when a project is closed and then re-opened. You can open the plugin, and the number you entered is still there, but it's not being observed. You have to click in the box and hit "Enter" to get DP to recognize it again. And even then, when you close the project, it will be forgotten.

Let's see.... Hardware Insert plugin? What else? If you drag it to a different insert, pretty sure it loses connection with the hardware I/O and you have to open the plugin and reset both the send and receive by changing them to something else and changing them back. Insert a software plugin prior to the Hardware Insert plugin? Same thing. Connection to hardware I/O is lost, and you have to reset them again.

So yeah... just getting Hardware Inset to work reliably would be great. Did I mention pinging the latency can sometimes return a wildly wrong number of samples that is apparently influenced by the latency of plugs on the Master Track that individual track is linked to? That's why you have to ping twice sometimes. So I won't hold my breath for the plugin to appear on the Mixing Board with the NAME of the hardware device like other DAWs can do rather than "Hardware Ins..." which tells me nothing. Maybe a little "Notes" field in the plugin to note settings? I think there's a DAW that lets you actually drop a photo in there so you could take a picture of the front panel of the hardware? I'm using something called PatchRat Pro. I got a free subscription when I bought a piece of AudioScape gear recently. https://patchrat.com/ It's supposed to help you save settings of outboard gear.

Anyway, bottom line... here I am... solid DP user and evangelist for years and I find myself wanting to incorporate my Avid S3 and outboard gear into my workflow and as luck would have it, my favorite DAW is arguably the worst of any Mac DAW in those two areas. Seriously, if someone came to me and asked how DP stacked up in either of those areas—especially convenience when using outboard gear—I just couldn't lie to them. It would be hard to recommend DP. Those of us who have DECADES with the app may feel we have to just slog ahead, but someone relatively new might be better served using a different DAW until MOTU can beef up those areas. And it pains me to say that.

[toodamnhip]

I think I found a bug. The numeric indicators that are near the send controls are weird looking, a bit fuzzy, and greyed out, barely visible.. They are working, but there's some sort of graphics issue. This happens when floating the mouse near the FX send knob or manipulating the send control in a channel strip.

[HCMarkus]

I think I found a bug. The numeric indicators that are near the send controls are weird looking, a bit fuzzy, and greyed out, barely visible.. They are working, but there's some sort of graphics issue. This happens when floating the mouse near the FX send knob or manipulating the send control in a channel strip.

I'm running MoTools theme and I see that the send numeric indicators are grey, as opposed to black, but on my rig they are clear and quite visible.

[sayatnova]

Well, I can tell you as someone who has recently become very interested in outboard gear, it would be nice if DP wasn't the worst Mac DAW (AFAIK) when it comes to hardware inserts. Sigh.

Sadly, this has been an ongoing problem for a while. The hardware insert plugin just does not work reliably once set (buggy) and then re-open the project. I have had two tech notes submitted in the last few years and it has not been fixed, yet. This is such a problem that I have just started to use another DAW for projects that I need my outboard reverbs and compressors for. That said, I have been with DP since Opcode got killed as my main DAW, and I love it. I truly hope they can get this sorted, it may not be a high priority for many but it is a big deal to me...

I have been bending their ears over there at MOTU ever since I started getting into outboard hardware and discovering the glaring deficiencies in DP's implementation. This is much like my experience when I started using my Avid S3 control surface. MOTU claims DP supports EUCON surfaces, but it was just really bad when I first started using it. Fortunately, they made major strides in EUCON support, but there are still some annoying issues. For starters, forget about instantiating a plugin via a EUCON control surface. There is no menu hierarchy when searching for plugins. If you have 1,000 plugins installed in your system, you get to look for the one you want by paging through ALL of them. Sixteen at a time on the S3. Unusable.

As for the Hardware Insert... just fixing the basic functionality would succeed in putting DP just reasonably in the game. I have Pro Tools, Logic and Cubase on my system. I don't really use them much, but I did set them all up for external hardware and all of them are superior to DP and... they actually work.

As mentioned, DP's Hardware Insert plugin "forgets" the latency offset when a project is closed and then re-opened. You can open the plugin, and the number you entered is still there, but it's not being observed. You have to click in the box and hit "Enter" to get DP to recognize it again. And even then, when you close the project, it will be forgotten.

Let's see.... Hardware Insert plugin? What else? If you drag it to a different insert, pretty sure it loses connection with the hardware I/O and you have to open the plugin and reset both the send and receive by changing them to something else and changing them back. Insert a software plugin prior to the Hardware Insert plugin? Same thing. Connection to hardware I/O is lost, and you have to reset them again.

So yeah... just getting Hardware Inset to work reliably would be great. Did I mention pinging the latency can sometimes return a wildly wrong number of samples that is apparently influenced by the latency of plugs on the Master Track that individual track is linked to? That's why you have to ping twice sometimes. So I won't hold my breath for the plugin to appear on the Mixing Board with the NAME of the hardware device like other DAWs can do rather than "Hardware Ins..." which tells me nothing. Maybe a little "Notes" field in the plugin to note settings? I think there's a DAW that lets you actually drop a photo in there so you could take a picture of the front panel of the hardware? I'm using something called PatchRat Pro. I got a free subscription when I bought a piece of AudioScape gear recently. https://patchrat.com/ It's supposed to help you save settings of outboard gear.

Anyway, bottom line... here I am... solid DP user and evangelist for years and I find myself wanting to incorporate my Avid S3 and outboard gear into my workflow and as luck would have it, my favorite DAW is arguably the worst of any Mac DAW in those two areas. Seriously, if someone came to me and asked how DP stacked up in either of those areas—especially convenience when using outboard gear—I just couldn't lie to them. It would be hard to recommend DP. Those of us who have DECADES with the app may feel we have to just slog ahead, but someone relatively new might be better served using a different DAW until MOTU can beef up those areas. And it pains me to say that.

This is exactly my experience and sentiments, James. Let's hope they can fix it soon.

[HCMarkus]

After hanging out with Mr. Steele today, I was thinking about the Hardware Insert issue. James explained that Insert Plugin settings are not recalled or are lost when just about any operation is performed in DP.

Although MOTU must face (and hopefully will eventually), how about pinging the DA-AD latency once, recording the required offset, and simply advancing tracks (manually or via a plugin like Precision Delay) to be processed externally, then bussing to the outboard gear and back into DP in Input Monitor mode?

Latency should be a constant as long as buffer size is not changed.

Unless you have oodles of outboard gear, it would seem setting this up would be simple enough; it could be incorporated into a template.

Thoughts?

[bayswater]

After hanging out with Mr. Steele today, I was thinking about the Hardware Insert issue. James explained that Insert Plugin settings are not recalled or are lost when just about any operation is performed in DP.

Although MOTU must face (and hopefully will eventually), how about pinging the DA-AD latency once, recording the required offset, and simply advancing tracks (manually or via a plugin like Precision Delay) to be processed externally, then bussing to the outboard gear and back into DP in Input Monitor mode?

Latency should be a constant as long as buffer size is not changed.

Unless you have oodles of outboard gear, it would seem setting this up would be simple enough; it could be incorporated into a template.

Thoughts?

This is what I do when I want to use an old UAD card on another computer, or treat Logic as an external synth. I use the Apple delay plugins to set the latency. Of course the downside is you have to set up signal paths for the purpose, and then leave them as is for the duration of the project unless you want to be repeating the process many times. Or as you say, put it in a template.

It would be helpful if MOTU told us the conditions under which they tested this function so we know it’s limitations.