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Now here...MOTU DP11

JohnG said:
Leaving aside the Cubase comparison (about which I am in the dark), DP's notation and the speedy ability to drag bar lines around is just indispensable for my workflow. I don't know what I'd do without it.

As @cmillar wrote, the DP notation has an uncanny ability to recognise what you intend, musically. And with MusicXML export it is 10x faster to move over to Sibelius / Finale (if you even want to).

Moreover, with version 11, I see they've added a lot of symbols to the notation so who knows where that goes?

Quite pleased so far.
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That sounds interesting, I always write better when I work in notation, but I don’t like jumping between programs. All I want is a DAW that does notation really well. Maybe DP is it?
 
JohnG said:
Leaving aside the Cubase comparison (about which I am in the dark), DP's notation and the speedy ability to drag bar lines around is just indispensable for my workflow. I don't know what I'd do without it.

As @cmillar wrote, the DP notation has an uncanny ability to recognise what you intend, musically. And with MusicXML export it is 10x faster to move over to Sibelius / Finale (if you even want to).

Moreover, with version 11, I see they've added a lot of symbols to the notation so who knows where that goes?

Quite pleased so far.
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I was a devoted Mark of the Unicorn Performer/Digital Performer/Composer's Mosaic user back in the '90s and early 2000s, before the term "DAW" was coined. I wonder if DP's current notation ability has finally caught up with MOTU's old Composer's Mosaic notation program. It was very good for its day and had lots of features, but it was as slow as molasses at rendering on those old Motorola processors.

Best,

Geoff
 
mjsalam said:
So any initial impressions on DP11 yet? Gamechanger?
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I suspect the playing field is pretty level these days. Each DAW will have its advantages or niche ways that might appeal to some over others. DPs film scoring features were the primary reasons i used it for so long. Additionally, it’s layout and navigation seemed better for orchestral composing to me over other software. I’ve been big into Studio One this past year but getting back to DP was not as hard as I thought. I still remember all of the short cuts! Muscle memory I guess from using it for so many years.
 
mjsalam said:
So any initial impressions on DP11 yet? Gamechanger?
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I haven't updated to DP11 yet.

As an observer at the moment, I applaud MOTU for the features in DP11 and the DP10 update before that. For DP users, updating to 11 makes perfect sense given computer and OS compatibility.

If using another DAW, then the devil is always in the details relevant to your intended use.

MOTU deserves credit for keeping older computers and OS in the loop compared to some DAW developers.
 
DP has some very compelling film score features for sure. I am still evaluating whether I will revert back to it with DP11.

In my view the big four daws for this space are logic, cubase, studio one and Dp. Dp doesn’t get talked about much on this forum I’m not sure why as it is quite capable.

But each of these have some different strengths and weakness. I feel that as of now cubase has the best support for articulation management, but logicpro has scripter which actually makes it even better for articulation management if and only if you have the ability to use scripter. S1 and Dp are very similar in their current articulation management, but not as good as cubase or logicpro.

Studio one has arguably the best notation with logicpro second behind that

DP has chunks! Nobody else comes close in that area. It also has unparalleled hit point calculation tools if you’re into film scoring.

They are all fine and can get the job done right now today despite the fact they all keep coming up a bit short on articulation management in my view.

I have watched S1 and cubase for a while but stopped keeping them up to date because they aren’t really jumping ahead in a way that would warrant changing over from my current daw, logicpro. Same with DP.

Dp is on my radar because of chunks but they would need to match or better what I can do in logicpro with scripter to manage articulations, which they didn’t quite do in DP11.

DP is getting closer then it was a week ago though so I am still pondering about it for chunks. It’s not an inexpensive upgrade and it’s a big deal to change daws frankly other then as an experiment.

S1, DP and Cubase are all on my radar also because of apple shenanigans and I may have to switch to windows at some point. It’s not clear yet which I would use.

Aside from specific orchestral music concerns I feel cubase and DP are the generally deepest daws of the four mentioned. Dp has been around a long time and has a lot of deep features related to sound production.

Logicpro is a close second though I feel it has drifted to second place due to long unresolved problems with pdc and other things like that, it’s very intuitive and capable daw but with a lot of very old code inside that never seems to get enough attention from apple to fix those old problems in the environment, etc… apple doesn’t charge for updates which is nice, but it also shows what happens when there is not update revenue to fund those kinds of needed updates. And it only runs in Mac, whatever that future is going to be.

S1 has a lot of promise but I feel it is the least deep of the four mentioned and still evolving. Lots of potential for it to become the best daw but it’s not there yet IMHO. They have to improve it some more before i can take it seriously over the other three. The main upside in my view is that it is not riddled with decades of old bug ridden code like the others. It has some crafty workflow concepts but it lacks depth of the other daws in many important ways as of now.

All of the above is just one man’s opinion
 
Dewdman42 said:
In my view the big four daws for this space are logic, cubase, studio one and Dp. Dp doesn’t get talked about much on this forum I’m not sure why as it is quite capable.
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Digital Performer never made much headway in Europe, and a lot of our forum members are from there; so that might explain it.

Best,

Geoff
 
Dewdman42 said:
why?
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I can only speculate as to why. Perhaps MOTU wasn't very good at marketing there. Perhaps it's because DP lacked the object-oriented approach that Cubase and Logic (and later, Studio One) favored.

Best,

Geoff
 
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PCs for many years reigned supreme on this side of the pond; unlike in the US, where Apple previoulsy was more dominant. Things have kind of levelled out here in the last few years, as the creative and IT fraternity have grasped onto the Macs as their platform of choice.

DP only over the last couple of years has been ported to PCs, and although it's less flaky than it was. DP tends to open up lots of files as it goes along, so over time your memory count starts decreasing. When it first opens up, I've noticed it grabs quite a bit of memory just to load in its plugins. I tend to use an app to release the memory from these apps. But still DP keeps grabbing memory as it plays through.

That's not great for Windows, as opening up lots of files leads to a crash fest down the line, when the OS thinks the program is behaving unresponsively, and eventually to prevent the OS from throwing a blue screen attempts to put the offending app into a Zombie state or worse of all throws a signal to close the app. DP then goes into a crash, and your only hope is to recover your work later when it reopens. Hopefully none of the files it's been holding open haven't been corrupted.

So I say it's a work in progress on Windows.
 
Al Maurice said:
PCs for many years reigned supreme on this side of the pond; unlike in the US, where Apple previoulsy was more dominant. Things have kind of levelled out here in the last few years, as the creative and IT fraternity have grasped onto the Macs as their platform of choice.
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Good point, Al. I believe that the Atari Falcon (which ran Notator Logic and Cubase) was also a more popular platform for sequencing software in Europe than in the US, back in the '90s when product loyalties were forming. Its timing was reportedly superior to PCs and Macs.

Best,

Geoff
 
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The Atari was, at the time, the best midi timing because MIDI was built into the Atari OS at a very low level to support gaming I suppose but with enough priority to ensure solid timing. I had a buddy here that owned a few Atari computers and was really into it, but they were really only useful for gaming in reality, or for a while as a sequencing computer as a musician. Not many people had them here. I almost bought one just to devote for sequencing, but glad I didn't since they disappeared.
 
Al Maurice said:
PCs for many years reigned supreme on this side of the pond; unlike in the US, where Apple previoulsy was more dominant. Things have kind of levelled out here in the last few years, as the creative and IT fraternity have grasped onto the Macs as their platform of choice.

DP only over the last couple of years has been ported to PCs, and although it's less flaky than it was. DP tends to open up lots of files as it goes along, so over time your memory count starts decreasing. When it first opens up, I've noticed it grabs quite a bit of memory just to load in its plugins. I tend to use an app to release the memory from these apps. But still DP keeps grabbing memory as it plays through.

That's not great for Windows, as opening up lots of files leads to a crash fest down the line, when the OS thinks the program is behaving unresponsively, and eventually to prevent the OS from throwing a blue screen attempts to put the offending app into a Zombie state or worse of all throws a signal to close the app. DP then goes into a crash, and your only hope is to recover your work later when it reopens. Hopefully none of the files it's been holding open haven't been corrupted.

So I say it's a work in progress on Windows.
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I wouldn't use DP on windows, macs are maybe more pricey but they are less fuss but more importantly DP has been on mac for a long time. (wait, I didn't start a flame war did I?).

DP11 so far is a bit snappier, I just switched in the middle of a big play going into tech this week, and only because I trust MOTU for solid updates. I'm on a 2017 macbook pro with only 16 gigs RAM, 'cuz I work in the theatre. So am bringing along a intel NUC for VEP now. But the show I'm on has about 250-300 cues/chunks, all with about 200 VEP tracks, so its been pushing my laptop. Really looking forward to an M2 macbook pro with more ram and fans that aren't on 11 all day long.

So far I'm happy with the upgrade just for being a bit faster, can't get into the articulation maps mid way through this one, I think. I've been on DP since 2.54, after leaving logic and studio vision. Along the way I've checked out logic, pro tools and considered studio 1 and cubase but each time I'm close DP does a catch up update that makes it worth staying.
 
Question from a DP idiot - does DP have a dual buffer system like Logic or Cubase's ASIO Guard? If not, aren't you at a big disadvantage having to play everything back at low latencies to record one track?
 
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When I was at Berklee, back in the early-mid 2000s, DP was the DAW they made everyone in the film scoring department use (in addition to ProTools). Im sure partly because of the film scoring features (and I’m not sure how advanced Cubase and Logic were at the time) but mostly it was because MOTU is Boston-based and they had a deal. Lol.
 
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