I am ecstatic to see Articulation Maps in DP, this addition is what is bringing me back to DP after a very long hiatus. I do think it could still use some refinement. I don't think its particularly any worse then the other DAW's, they could all use some refinement too! DP is at least on par with them as far as I'm concerned.
If you have suggestions for MOTU, make sure to send them to
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I think they are paying attention to this feature area right now and I hear down the grapevine that they are still taking in ideas and opinions, right now is a good time to make your desires heard.
The easiest and most obvious area it could use some refinement, IMHO, is in the GUI itself..the articulation lane. Its not making effective use of space in my view, its not hard to end up with a long list of articulations and a very very tall articulation lane that you have to constantly scroll through. Cubase and StudioOne share the same issue. I actually don't like the whole articulation lane bar concept that cubase, S1 and DP11 are all embracing now. MOTU and PreSonus just kind of copied Steinberg on this idea...and I think it could be much better using a lot less vertical space.
I'd rather see something like this where 127 different articulations can be shown in a more manageable amount of vertical space:
I do not like that it labels the articulation lane bars with note pitches, I wish they were labeled with the articulation name.
I had trouble selecting multiple events and assigning them to the same articulation, this only seems to be possible when they are multiple events of a chord. Would be an easy fix, I'm not sure why MOTU did that.
I'd like some control over colors and other ways to help identify articulations more easily when using the piano roll and looking at my notes.
Latency offset handling.
Channelizing behavior with
chasing and
following of expression events across channels where notes are being channelized on a per-articulation basis.
I don't think they will add groups, sadly, but something similar as Cubase groups, but with a much more intuitive way to use them, is really needed by all the DAW's, including DP. There are many situations where that can be used to cut down the vertical size of the articulation lane very substantially.
Anyway, I'm still loving my transition to DP so far. V-Racks and Chunks are just awesome. Track and folder organization is light years ahead of LogicPro. I'm still setting up a large template, which I never even bothered with LogicPro, but feel compelled to do with DP... The hardest part is figuring out which approach of track organization would suit me the best. There are many options.
I'm also making heavy use of Bundles and Midi Device Groups in oder to provide much better labels to all the midi and audio channels being sent/received to VePro. Once its setup I don't have to remember which channel or port per instrument, etc.. I really like this.
I'm also really liking the Track Selector window to quickly change which tracks or mixer channels I want to see in different views...can even save presets of this... Can easily re-arrange the mixer how I want...something unheard of in LogicPro really.