Digital Performer 4--in Da House, Yeah, I broke down and got it... Options

[Levon River]

How long can you stay mad at a unicorn?

This ain't yer granny's Digital Performer.

Just got it installed and launched once, opened an old, creaky DP 3x project, and it fired right up (after coughing a few times about missing--read: obsolete--OS 9 effects plugz that had been in the session). It played back like a champ.

I need to do some audio optimization (buffer, latency optimizations, etc.) because I have different hardware than I was running DP3 with, but overall it's a thing of beauty and grace. Several very nice GUI enhancements have made it even better than it was.

It does, by the way, have track "freezing": a sort of virtual (and revertable) "bounce" of a track or tracks, freeing up effects and other resources. Then you can "unfreeze" it to do further adjustments, etc.

This is really just a first-impression pre-review. The manual is about the size and mass of a concrete block. (Just kidding--sorta'.) I'm getting cozy with the Quick Start guide at the moment to see what is new and different, and will be gettin' serious with it here over the next day or two. I'll make this a sort of journal thread, with segmented reviews, and will answer whatever questions get thrown at me as I can.

Nobody will ever hear this boy sayin' "It was worth the wait," because I've already made my disgust with MOTU manifest over them dragging their horseshoes into OS X-land. But I will say that it seems, on first blush, that they did a thorough job of it. Now I'll see what happens when I crank 'er up to speed...

[fugu]

yo,

great news about dp4, i'm eagerly awaiting my upgrade. I have a question tho about the EZBus, i've got one and haven't experienced any trouble with it at all. I couldn't tell from your post, so excuse me if i'm going over this to specifically, but: In Audio/MIDI Setup, (midi setup pane) you have the EZBus i/o and it shows 3 interfaces. (1,2,3) Interface 1 is the Control Surface, and MIDI 2 and 3 are on the back of the EZBus. To use the Control Surface, you need to create a new device ('the ezbus control surface') and attach it to Interface 1 of 'the ezbus interface' (not: 'the ezbus control surface')

If you've taken the time to google for tasty icons like me it'll end up looking something like this:

EZBus MIDI Setup

this works fine and sends midi back and forth in Ableton Live and any other midi apps i've used in osx (not too many as i've been waiting on DP!)


hope this helps..