# Digital Performer 9.5 is here!



## DS_Joost (Sep 11, 2017)

So I just received word that Digital Performer 9.5 is shipping (download isn't available yet, but will be very soon).

http://motu.com/newsitems/digital-performer-95-is-now-shipping/

Some exciting new features, most notably a new time-stretching and pitch shifting engine, aand a detailed effects performance window where you can see which plugins are using the most resources, great for troubleshooting.

I, however, hope for something different. I own DP9 for Windows, and as is currently well known this version is suffering from tons of deal-breaking bugs. For me, I truly hope that MOTU has been listening and has updated DP for Windows. As of now, it is completely unusable. The radio silence for the past year or so truly hasn't helped.

For me, this is it. If this doesn't fix DP for Windows, I'm out, because if this isn't it, it might just take until version 10 to fix it's issues. And I'm sure as hell am not going to pay in order to get a program to actually work.

Shame, really, as I love it's feature set and workflow.


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## cc64 (Sep 11, 2017)

Hi DS,

i can't see anything about 9.5 on the MOTU site. The link gives me a 404 error...

Claude


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## jamwerks (Sep 11, 2017)

It would be about time. Isn't 9.0 over 3 years old?


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## Gary Williamson (Sep 11, 2017)

DP9 is working fine on my W10 machine. not perfect, but performs as well as my other DAW, Studio One 3.5, on the same machine. anyway looking forward to 9.5, thanks for the info!


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## danwool (Sep 11, 2017)

Looks like the page with DP 9.5 went to the server prematurely. MOTU posted this on MOTUnation site:
_
"Hey everyone, please allow me to clear this up. That link is a draft page that we haven't officially published. I'm not sure how it was found. However, there is a DP update on the way soon and I will let all of you know when it's live at motu.com/download. So please stay tuned!

Dave"_


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## DS_Joost (Sep 12, 2017)

Gary Williamson said:


> DP9 is working fine on my W10 machine. not perfect, but performs as well as my other DAW, Studio One 3.5, on the same machine. anyway looking forward to 9.5, thanks for the info!



It does perform well until you start to add more than a couple hundred midi or audio tracks. Doesn't matter if they're empty. In addition to slowing down considerably, it also randomly starts to crash. I've had constant crashes with more than 300 midi tracks, audio tracks, switching between chunks (with nothing in them, even!), adding tracks, adding clippings from the clippings window.

It's a mess. And an acknowledged mess nonetheless. My techlink is from halfway last year, and it still hasn't been fixed, despite MOTU saying they're working on it. Doesn't help that after that, they were completely silent about the issue for over a year.

I say this because I want to program to be good. It's fantastic workflow wise, and it has features that are absolutely great for film scoring. But I can't have a program that doesn't work in it's basic form, for what it was intended for, and I don't plan on paying for basic functionality either.


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## mikehalloran (Sep 12, 2017)

jamwerks said:


> It would be about time. Isn't 9.0 over 3 years old?


No. It shipped June, 2015 making it a little over 2 years old.


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## cc64 (Sep 12, 2017)

DS_Joost said:


> I've had constant crashes with more than 300 midi tracks, audio tracks, switching between chunks (with nothing in them, even!), adding tracks, adding clippings from the clippings window.



Hi DS,

Did you try disabling the audio tracks that you are not using?

Go to the main tracks window and find the ENA column. uncheck the ones you're not using

I have a template with a lot of aux returns and if i don't disable the unused tracks the CPU spikes even in idle mode. And i have a 12 core machine...

HTH 

Claude


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## JohnG (Sep 12, 2017)

Sorry you're having trouble with v9.13 -- no problems here at all. I have over 1,000 midi tracks in my DP template, also on a 12 core Mac, and I've found this to be the leanest and best version of DP ever.

I don't have a lot of Aux tracks -- haven't really pushed that in a long time but way back, maybe 10 years ago or more, having over 100 Aux tracks active did cause stress.


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## cc64 (Sep 12, 2017)

Hi John!

Yeah as you can see my solution to the problem i had talked to you about a while back was to disable the inactive aux busses...

Weird thing was that i had sent you my "aux intense" template and it worked well on your machine as is...It may be due to the fact that you did a CPU upgrade. Mine runs @ 2,66Ghz.

I finally did a complete clean install on my machine, took me a long time. Had to re-download all my Kontakt libraries because of the 5.6.8 Native Access issue. Very long, almost 1TB of sounds arghh, i still have the CPU spikes!!! Unless i disable the auxes.

In your setup i guess you minimize the aux returns by grouping and pre-mixing in VEPRO?

Thanks John!

Claude


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## JohnG (Sep 12, 2017)

cc64 said:


> In your setup i guess you minimize the aux returns by grouping and pre-mixing in VEPRO?



Hi Claude,

I am not sure if I would describe it exactly as a pre-mix in VE Pro, but I do send similar instruments collectively to a single Aux. For example, the "pulse" synths all go to a single Aux channel, the "kit" drums to another, and so on.

And you are right that I do have an upgraded Mac, 12 processors at 3.46GHz.

Kind regards,

John


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## mikehalloran (Sep 12, 2017)

Unused auxes contributing to CPU spikes is a known issue. Will 9.5 be an improvement? We'll know soon, I hope.


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## dgburns (Sep 12, 2017)

And it's ironic that a logic guy posts to tell the DP guys that 9.5 is now out.


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## mikehalloran (Sep 12, 2017)

It's available now. Downloaded 9.5 and installed this morning. So far, so good.


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## DS_Joost (Sep 13, 2017)

The problem isn't too many aux busses. Also, it is an acknowledged issue that DP9 gets very unstable when adding an x number of midi or audio tracks. It's also a windows only issue, so on mac, this issue is nonexistent. I'm talking about getting a null error pointer, after which DP just shuts down. Also, shutdowns without warnings. Gonna download 9.5 now, see if it's fixed.

Thanks for taking the time to help me, but as of now, none of these solutions work because it really is a bug, not a performance issue.


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## ResSerp (Oct 31, 2017)

DS_Joost said:


> The problem isn't too many aux busses. Also, it is an acknowledged issue that DP9 gets very unstable when adding an x number of midi or audio tracks. It's also a windows only issue, so on mac, this issue is nonexistent. I'm talking about getting a null error pointer, after which DP just shuts down. Also, shutdowns without warnings. Gonna download 9.5 now, see if it's fixed.
> 
> Thanks for taking the time to help me, but as of now, none of these solutions work because it really is a bug, not a performance issue.



How is 9.5? Did it solve your issue?


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## DS_Joost (Oct 31, 2017)

Unfortunately, no. It's truly baffling that DP is still so crippled on Windows after all these years. A shame, really. But alas, I've got music to compose, so for me, I went back to Cubase.

That said, I've gained more respect for Steinberg as a developer now. Say about Steinberg what you want about innovation and listening to customers, but at least Cubase just works when every other DAW I've tried gave up. It's not perfect, has bugs as well, but is for me the single most stable program when being put under stressful load. And that might just be worth a lot more than all the straight up advanced features and slick interfaces combined.


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## ResSerp (Oct 31, 2017)

Thank you for the response. I was really curious about DP, but it looks like I'll stick to Cubase, about which I feel the same as you.


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## Ultra (Oct 31, 2017)

ResSerp said:


> Thank you for the response. I was really curious about DP, but it looks like I'll stick to Cubase, about which I feel the same as you.



u can def work with DP on Windows - if u know the caveats and workarounds - I've been using it for a while now and my projects have always 700+ MIDI tracks + some AUX... 

I've not tested the Seq View problem (when having too many tracks) on 9.5, but there's a way around it anyways... but they need to fix that, it was reported Jan 2017 and they confirmed it...

but if u got CB up and running and u like it, prob better to just stick with that...


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## MatFluor (Oct 31, 2017)

I tested DP when I looked to jump to another DAW (leaving StudioOne). I really liked it and wanted to get it - but - I encountered a font problem on Windows, which made everything blurry und pretty much unreadable. The "fixes" I found didn't help, and support is not there for demo versions.
So I went for another one I tried, Sonar (not making ads here, just mentioning what I got for instead)


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## JaikumarS (Jun 13, 2018)

cc64 said:


> Hi DS,
> 
> Did you try disabling the audio tracks that you are not using?
> 
> ...




Hi Claude,

Is there a key command / shortcut to disable tracks which are not in use ?

Thank you.


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